William Shaksper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, will receive his own monograph, as is fitting given his historical role. The pen-name of the author of the plays, while sometimes written William Shake-speare, will generally be written without the hyphen, that sometimes appeared on the title pages of his works, for search engine reasons. When a quote contains the hyphen, it will be retained.
Documentary evidence of the remarkable correlation between the biography of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, and key characters — generally, the central characters — of the plays of Shakespeare, will be cited in the end-notes to each section, including citations to my own numerous books and monographs. The reader is encouraged to check the citations him- or herself. She or he will discover that such evidence is plentiful. Much of it is available on the Internet.
I will not be including letters to, from or about Vere in the table-of-contents. To include them would make it ungainly. Instead, I will provide a single link to the Virtual Grub Street Edward de Vere Letters Index.1 When a specific letter is the source of information provided in a monograph, it will be cited individually in an end-note. It may also be quoted in excerpt. Personal letters from Edward's correspondents are rare. Only two personal letters from his wife, Anne Cecil, and another from one Thomas Vavasour from among all of his correspondents, would seem to have survived, though his own letters refer to numerous correspondents.2
Readers are welcome to comment on the individual sections of each monograph, or the monograph as a whole, so long as they become a member (unfortunately called “Follower”) of Virtual Grub Street and comment in a civil manner. Sections will also be linked from the Edward de Vere was Shake-speare Facebook Group and from the Bluesky social media accounts, Virtual Vanaprastha and Shakespeare Ink, where comments are also invited on the same basis by members.
Virtual Vanaprastha will only link to a selection of the monograph sections. It will also post links to interesting items of political and economic news, to my contemporary book and media reviews, and to my work in general literary history, philosophy, cultural anthropology and Information Theory.
II.
The history of Edward de Vere's family members is little known. More than a few are subjects of the Sonnets of Shake-speare.3 Edward married Anne Cecil, the daughter of his warder, William Cecil, in December of 1571. It was a grand affair even for a noble wedding. The most powerful commoner in England, Cecil had been raised to the baronage (Baron Burghley) immediately prior, as reward for being Queen Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, and in order that Anne should be of sufficient rank to marry an earl.
Edward refused to set up housekeeping with his wife in favor of continuing residence in chambers at the royal court as the queen's favorite. Elizabeth herself seems clearly to have preferred the arrangement as she glowered upon William Cecil's wife, Mildred, when she complained about it.
Husband and wife did spend enough nights together that Anne was pregnant in 1575. As she expected, for reasons not entirely clear, Edward declared that the child was not his. He returned from a year long trip to Italy to take up lodgings with a friend from which he frequently attended at court.
Edward brought back scented gloves as a gift for the queen. They immediately became the rage of fashion among noble women. His dancing already greatly impressed the queen and her ladies. His “sweet” sonnets had already passed among fellow courtiers for some years. His performance in tournaments was unmatched. He was the heart-throb of the court. The sonnets encouraging the queen to marry and produce an heir to the throne began around this time.
On the more substantial side, he had sent back a great many books from the booksellers of the Frankfort Fair and of Paris and Venice. His favorites were the French and Italian novellas. He was already fluent in French and Latin. His time in Italy went a long way toward fluency in Italian.
Edward became smitten with Anne Vavasour, a fiery lady-in-waiting to the queen. He would write her equally fiery sonnets that we now know as the Dark Lady Sonnets. In 1581, she would deliver their infant son.
Furious, the queen imprisoned Vavasour in The Tower. Realizing his danger, Edward went into hiding. Eventually, he negotiated a return with the agreement that he would be placed under house-arrest while his fate was being decided. His punishment consisted of a token stay in The Tower followed by exile from court until he would agree to set up housekeeping with his wife. Upon her release, Vavasour was also exiled from court. Her biography, from the point of becoming Edward's mistress, is also a remarkable one of boldness and historical importance. She was a feminist centuries before there was any such thing.
There are surviving letters in which his wife, Anne de Vere, pleaded with Vere to be taken back.4 There were clearly replies but all that would seem to have survived of them were the accompanying Shakespeare Sonnets #35 & 120.5 With their proper context restored, they inform us of a great deal. The two did finally establish a household, in 1583.
III.
This being an introduction, we jump to a few key facts as to how Edward de Vere's family was intimately involved in the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio. There is a great deal more family information that occurred before and after the Folio, and the table-of-contents to this monograph links to sections presenting this information.
William Herbert, the 3rd Earl of Pembroke, the brother of Vere's son-in-law, Philip, was the W.H. who collected the sonnets and to whom they were dedicated.6 He wrote a letter, as Chamberlain to King James I, forbidding any further publication of Shakespeare works,7 when an independent publisher had begun assembling a collection of his plays. Immediately thereafter work began on what we now know as the Shakespeare First Folio. A little more than a year later, the completed First Folio was dedicated to him and Philip.8
In earlier years, William Herbert had declared that he did not wish to marry. His parents and Edward de Vere's father-in-law, William Cecil, the Baron Burghley, contracted for him to marry Edward's daughter, Bridget, anyway. Edward wrote to Burghley that he was pleased with the arrangement. Herbert refused, however, saying that the financial terms of the contract were not sufficient.9
With these sample facts to begin to introduce the role of Edward de Vere's family in his life and Shakespeare's works, I invite you to explore the free monograph Shakespeare's Family as the mood strikes.
1English Renaissance Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. https://gwponlinebibliography.blogspot.com/2020/12/english-renaissance-letters-index.html
2There may well be other letters to Vere yet to be cited. In particular, among the Lansdowne MSS. The search goes on.
3 SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS. Neuer before Imprinted (1609).
4Ward, B. M. The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1928). 226-7. Citing Lansdowne MSS., 104. 63, 64. Ogburn, Carlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare (no date, 1984). 649.
5Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward De Vere was Shake-speare: at long last, the proof (Digital 2013, Paper 2017). 93, 136. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/
6The dedication was by the publisher as Vere himself had been dead for some 5 years.
7The injunction was against publishing any plays written for the King's Men company (formerly the Lord Chamberlain's Men) in order to avoid awkward questions.
8Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Edward de Vere was Shake-speare: at long last the proof. Introduction. https://www.amazon.com/Edward-Vere-was-Shake-speare-proof/dp/1543136257/
9Purdy. Edward de Vere was Shake-speare, 242, 258.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- On the Possibility that Edward de Vere and Shakspere of Straford Shared a Beer in Southwark. February 9, 2026. "The Earl of Oxford would have taken this route in 1575, as would Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne,"
- Du Bartas – Dinosaurs = Shakespeare's Gaunt Speech in Richard the Second. November 30, 2025. "After quite some time it was discovered that one John Eliot's French lesson book Ortho-epia Gallica included..."
- Sonnet 130: Shakespeare's Reply to a 1580 Poem by Thomas Watson. September 7, 2024. “Interesting to see our Derek Hunter debating with Dennis McCarthy, at the North group,...”.
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the V.G.S. Oxfordian Shakespeare Poetry Page for many poems by Shakespeare together with historical context.
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