A Review of Last Will and Testament

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Last Will and Testament

First Folio Pictures Inc. (2012)

DVD format. Color. Stereo. 85 minutes.

Films on the Shakespeare Authorship controversy are such a new genre that there might be considerable question as to how they are properly judged on their merits.   Getting Sir Derek Jacobi, Vanessa Redgrave and Mark Rylance on board can only be considered a notable accomplishment.  High quality in each aspect of cinematography, in Last Will and Testament, is another measure which sets this documentary apart from most of the competition.

While this movie clearly favors Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, as the author of the poems and plays of William Shakespeare (as do I), it still chooses to give the opposition its say.  Professor Stanley Wells, Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, in Stratford, England, provides considerable stolid footage of no particular inherent value to the film or controversy.  His entire contribution is simultaneously to provide gravitas and a foil (yes, documentaries have them).  His is a stock character (yes, documentaries have them), making rebellion appear highly attractive to viewers who otherwise would be bored 15 minutes in.

Prof. Jonathan Bate, of Oxford University, is openly and wittily insulting throughout.  Professor Bate uses his witty denunciations to cover the ridiculous nature of his quote-unquote serious assertions.  We learn from the good professor that “Historical facts happen.  People denying them: that’s dangerous.”  (The relationship of this 2012 assertion to a recent tendency to compare Oxfordians to Holocaust deniers is not clear.)  Of course, he is saying as much in a film entirely undertaken in order to ask the question: Just what are the historical facts?  Bate asserts an insuperable knowledge as to what are the facts of history within his area of expertise.  Challenging his understanding, it turns out, is dangerous.

The seemingly unwarranted warning left me stunned.  In my shock, I almost feared for the survival of the planet should Oxford be declared author of the works of Shakespeare.  A quick dip into the Biblical Book of Revelations seemed to support his thesis.  Surely, denying that William Shaksper of Stratford on Avon was the author of the works of Shakespeare is prophesied as a sign of the final days.  Was it Oxfordian theory, perhaps, that drove the Unibomber to isolation and horrifying criminal acts?

When Bate followed up with the assertion that he “could have easily mapped the life of Elvis Presley onto a work by Shakespeare as [he] could map the life of Lord Burghley or the Earl of Oxford”, I could only believe that he was channeling the pop star’s tacky rhinestone agent Colonel Parker.  Why the director of the film didn’t call it a wrap and hurriedly seek funding for an Elvis Presley was William Shakespeare film documentary with accompanying Graceland theme park, I cannot imagine.

In a more scholarly vein (and priggish demeanor), Bate also informs the viewer that

There are so many other dramatists that you can produce: the argument that Chapman didn’t write the plays of Chapman or Webster didn’t write the plays of Webster because there’s far less evidence about their lives and their links to the plays than there is with Shakespeare.  

This is followed by a very meaningful look, eyebrows raised, head slightly tipped to the side in attitude of implication.

But nobody seems interested in doing that for some reason.

In the case of Chapman, at least, this is simply and resoundingly incorrect.   All that is being asserted, here, is that one should not be allowed to contest the authorship of the works of Shakespeare without first answering for the authorship of every other poet and playwright’s works roughly contemporary with Shakespeare.  It is a standard conservative trope: You cannot make your claim until you qualify to do so by first completing the equivalent of the scholarly Labors of Hercules.  That oughta keep ‘em busy for a while.  Apparently Professor Bate's Harvard PhD came with a “best used by date” that has long ago expired.

But what does this say about the film Last Will and Testament?  It says that, regardless of a certain lack of scholarly integrity, this is a highly entertaining piece of work.  It also makes clear the limitations that can only come along with this medium.  To attempt to collate a series of finely argued scholarly points would make it a boring and a failed film.

Between the clips of interviews with a dozen or so experts, period recreations of London and Stratford keep the visual aspect of the film engaging.  Visuals of the tiny number of period documents relating to the Stratford man drive home points of the Oxfordian argument.  One by one, the Oxfordians present not a compelling scholarly case but a compelling film presentation.  No one point is irrefutable.  The weight of the evidence makes the case.

As might be expected, personal presentation is more compelling than fact.  The always personable Derek Jacobi knows audiences supremely well and is the film’s most convincing Oxfordian quite apart from the fact that he offers no facts to speak of.  He is so personable that he can get away with saying “Over the years we’ve been duped in a sense.”  If any other Oxfordian says this line a clown pops out of a cake.

Or at least he would be most convincing if Vanesa Redgrave weren’t so delightfully mischievous in her presentation of intriguing generalizations.  While the two present passing evidence already shown to be weak (or worse) decades ago, it is impossible not to feel encouraged by their spirited support.

Among the tweedy Oxfordian sorts, Diana Price presents her fine analysis of the biographical information on various period playwrights to some effect.  There is some question if it isn’t a bit too tame for a popular film audience.  The presentation was, however, well-crafted for the genre.  The visuals may not have been compelling (especially in the wake of Redgrave) but they were clear and simple.  It was she, as well, who was elected to present the compelling fact that “For the record, William Shaksper of Stratford-on-Avon is a man of no recorded education.”  Traditional scholarship struggles mightily with this fact while declaring that it is not struggling in the least.

The most effective representative of the Oxfordian tweed, however, is easily Charles Beauclerk.  I smell a style consultant somewhere in his preparation, and a damned effective one.  Beauclerk is more than a casual clothes horse with his boyish hair-style parted in the middle, though.  The most effective Oxfordian talking points are put in his mouth: “…when Shakespeare dies in 1616, absolute silence.  No one says our greatest writer’s died.  There isn’t a single eulogy, elegy, anything.”  While Ben Jonson was considered far and away the greatest writer at the time — and George Chapman might have been considered next behind him — Shakespeare was definitely of sufficient stature that the theater world might have been expected to gather at a public memoriam of some sort and to publish eulogies/elegies to follow.  Still, Beauclerk’s point remains valid.

Roger Stritmatter also shows up well on celluloid.  His 2001 graduate thesis on the relationship between the works of Shakespeare and the hand-written notes in Edward de Vere’s copy of the Geneva Bible instantly made him a major name in authorship studies.  The topic is a bit too abstruse for documentary film, however, while Stritmatter’s confidence is not.  He gets to offer a choice bit of evidence: “Almost all of Shakespeare’s plays,” he informs us, “were set in a Court and he is fascinated by the complex inner workings of power.”  Elsewhere, his choices are less effective.

A rather more seedy Daniel Wright gets to make perhaps the most powerful observation on the Authorship controversy as a whole.  “There is a strong emotional component to keeping Shakespeare the man that he has become because he’s been shaped into an icon.  That to some extent makes him almost a religious figure and one can’t touch him without creating schisms and sects, and the authorship inquiry risks that kind of response because it wishes to challenge orthodoxy.”  Nothing ever argues with more effect against the Oxfordian theory.  Traditional scholars uniformly depend upon and assiduously nourish this unscholarly religious quality in order to direct attention away from the considerable gaps in their theories.

But the weakness of the Oxfordian position soon floods in from behind these well-chosen materials carefully built into a rampart against the religious assaults of traditional Stratfordian scholars.  As the film approaches its final third it proves necessary to forward the more peripheral Oxfordian theories.  Hints as to Oxfordian authorship are discerned covertly scattered throughout the literature of the time.  They “would have been clear to all educated persons of the time.”  Many of these hints may well prove to be true after the Oxford authorship itself has been generally acknowledged, but they undermine the effort, in the meantime, to present the Oxfordian case to the public.  Secret ciphers (or the like) fairly shout out “lunatic fringe!”

But still these theories are forwarded by much-beloved figures and must be credited in order to prevent the Oxfordian movement from flying apart.  In the final third of Last Will and Testament they and their adherents receive their 15 minutes of film glory.  Not only is Oxford the true author of Shakespeare but he is Queen Elizabeth’s bastard son and her lover and the two conceive the Earl of Southampton.  An attempt is made to be reportorial in order to distance the film from certain of the theories it is about to describe with impressionistic brush strokes:

With only a thin trail of evidence, a small number of Oxfordians have suggested that Elizabeth and Oxford were the parents of Southampton.  This hypothesis is known as the Prince Tudor theory.  And an even more controversial theory is that Oxford was Elizabeth’s son.

Elsewhere it embraces other theories only slightly less unbelievable.  Rather than draw a line at the suggestion that a 12 year old Edward de Vere might have lent a hand on a few passages of his uncle’s classic translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it cannot resist the suggestion that the young Earl may have written the entire work.  Shakespeare, we are informed, would surely have ended up in prison for his plays, the Royal Court being intimately aware of every detail of the theater world, if he hadn’t been an Earl.  Somehow, for all these plays deserve prison, by this theory, it is also widely believed among Oxfordians that they were simultaneously being paid for under-the-table by the Queen.

While in the world of dusty tomes one admires and appreciates the effort and the information that has often been gleaned as part of the research into these peripheral theories, the public can hardly be expected to credit such distinctions.  Even Jacobi gingerly suggesting that Prince Tudor theories are “a leap too far” for his taste does not begin to stanch the hemorrhaging.

Another reason for this scholarly misjudgment lies in the nature of film.  It should not be missed that none of this reduces the quality of the documentary.  It needs to be well produced, entertaining and attract the largest possible audience, in order to be successful.  Prince Tudor theory makes for compelling narrative.  That, in the end, perhaps only diehard Oxfordians and UFO enthusiasts are left to credit the authorship of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, is far less important than the fact that some meaningful number of viewers — of whatever stripe — have been satisfied on some level, have been entertained.

That said, Last Will and Testament does end on a strong note.  Some excellent observations are made on Queen Elizabeth’s death and Shakespeare’s poem “The Phoenix and the Turtle”.  Again, the day is saved by an observation put in the mouth of Beaucerk.

It’s interesting that the only volumes of Shakespeare to bear dedications – Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, the Sonnets and also the First Folio volume were dedicated to men who were all either married to the Earl of Oxford’s daughters or had been engaged to them at one time.

The movie ends with the Earl of Oxford’s grandchildren at the family seat of Wilton House next to a river also called Avon near a village called Stratford-sub-Castle.

“Academia feels that it has the authority,” the viewer is informed, by the Oxfordian William Leahy, “to say what is legitimate to say about Shakespeare and what is not legitimate….  Millions of people are interested in the Shakespeare Authorship question.  Academia isn’t.  So what happens?  Those millions of people bypass academia altogether.”   Among the means of persisting outside of academia is the occasional film documentary on the subject. This is easily the best such film on the subject to date.

More from Virtual Grub Street on Shake-speare and Edward de Vere:

• Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)

• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?

• Shake-speare and the Influence of Ronsard

• Shake-speare's Greek
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Click here to visit my "Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Subjects Information Exchange" Facebook Group.

A Shake-speare Authorship Primer

Shakespeare: Who was He?  The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon by Richard F. Whalen.  Connecticut: Praeger, 1994.  208 pp., $39.24 cloth, $19.00 paper, $18.05 Kindle.  ISBN-13: 978-0313360503

Having decided to do reviews of books past and present relating to the Shakespeare Authorship Question, I begin with Richard Whalen’s Shakespeare: Who was He?  Published in 1994, it seems fair to describe it as something of a standard S.A.Q. reading-list item.

Whalen’s book is an introduction to the debate as it stood at the time but not an exhaustive one.  In the Introduction to the book itself, he gives a passing explanation as to why the only viable candidates as the great English poet and playwright, William Shake-speare, are William Shakspere from Stratford upon Avon and Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford.  He seeks to quickly catch the reader’s interest with a list of well-known names involved in the authorship debate and mention of the fine PBS documentary then current on the subject.

He makes a virtue of moderation.  He strives to remain within strict bounds in order to avoid the kinds of claims that provoke accusations of “conspiracy theorist” or just plain “nut job”.  The reader is provided the main categories under which the dispute generally proceeds.  Limited detail is provided sufficient to illustrate his points.

The text is uncluttered and straightforward at all times.  The goal is to remain within easy grasp of the general reader and it seems fair to say that the author succeeds admirably.  We learn that there is considerable information regarding the minor business dealings of William Shakspere, of Stratford-upon-Avon, but none whatsoever, during his life, connecting him to writing of any kind.  The now standard references to Mark Twain’s cynicism about the traditional assignment of the author of the plays are cited.  A quote from the venerable Ralph Waldo Emerson is brought in for incidental support.

Whalen points out that a very young Shakspere, busy hustling for a living, on the streets of London, could not possibly have found the time to extend his provincial command of the English language to such a high level, and to simultaneously become an amateur historian, a classical scholar (learning “Latin, French, Italian, and at least some Greek and Hebrew”) and much more, before the appearance of the already highly sophisticated early plays of Shake-speare.  This was already long a mainstay of the Oxfordian argument, by 1994 — context rather than evidence, safe territory.  The author is writing to introduce the neophyte to the common lines of battle and to gain audience for the debate.  Little or no new information is presented.

Whalen does introduce us to the importance of a particular lacuna regarding the man traditionally said to be Shake-speare.  Shakspere’s son-in-law, the Doctor John Hall, made a point of entering some bit of personal description in his records, at least once, indicating his pride at treating a poet.

Dr. Hall kept medical diaries in Latin and referred to one patient, Michael Drayton, as “an excellent poet.”  But he left not a word about his father-in-law, Will Shakespeare.

The importance of this detail had never dawned on me.  I am not sure that it had been introduced into the debate prior to this book.  While not determinative, is it thought provoking.  Shakspere was often at New Place in Stratford (both his and Dr. Hall’s home), especially at the time the doctor married into the family.  Presumably a small town such as Stratford had few doctors.  One of their number was his very competent son-in-law.  The likelihood that Hall was his personal physician is high.

As for Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, the neophyte learns that:

The works of Shakespeare mirror Oxford’s life.  In them can be found a surprising number of parallels and allusions to his education, marriage, travels, theater activities, and personal concerns.  Some of them are specific and quite striking.

Again, this is quite general indicating the author’s consistent attempt throughout to provide, in Shakespeare: Who was He?, a primer for the uninitiated.  By way of example, Whalen points out the now famous parallel between Prince Hal’s youthful indiscretion, in Shake-speare’s Henry IV, Part 1, in which the Prince involves himself in a highway robbery committed by Falstaff (and his rag-tag gang) and a corresponding incident in the life of Oxford.  Letters discovered since Oxford was first advanced as prime candidate for the true author of the works of Shake-speare accuse Oxford himself of being involved in just such a youthful indiscretion at precisely the same location.

Whalen also points out that the First Folio of the plays of William Shake-speare, while it seeks at least on the surface to connect the plays to the Stratford man, was dedicated to two very close nobleman friends of the Earl of Oxford.  Oxford had known William Herbert (eldest son of the then Earl of Pembroke) since at least the year 1598, when he was advanced as a husband for Oxford’s daughter Bridget.  William’s younger brother, Phillip, married Oxford’s youngest daughter, Susan, shortly after her father’s death in 1604.

There is much more, all of it painted with a broad brush in order to prevent Whalen’s effort from being vulnerable to arguments over the fine detail.  In this way, few outright errors find their way into the text.  As is common, even at present, the theory that Oxford was paid by Queen Elizabeth to write his plays as propaganda is noticed.  There is no particular evidence to support the highly popular claim.  The Earl had been out of favor since his affair with a lady-in-waiting to the Queen.  His return, upon demand of the Queen, to the wife he had spurned, regained him only the right to attend once again at the Royal Court.  All appeals of which we know for the return of Elizabeth’s favor met with evasion or worse.  Documents indicate that Oxford’s annuity from the Crown was provided in exchange for turning over control of his estates for management by the Crown.

Perhaps the only outright misconception in the book is the off-hand description of Ben Jonson, the director of the production of the First Folio, in 1623, and famous playwright in his own right, as

Ben Jonson, who later became, in effect, the queen’s poet laureate,…

Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels, was written as if it had been intended to be shown before the Queen and Court, and was performed at Blackfriar’s Theater which she sometimes attended, but no record survives of Her attending a performance.  There would seem to be no other basis for a claim that Jonson was the equivalent of poet laureate in Her estimation or that of Her Court.

Ben Jonson did, in fact, become the de facto first poet laureate.  He held the unofficial rank, however, under Elizabeth’s successor King James I.  Jonson would have become familiar with James’s Lord Chamberlain, William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, during the nobleman’s youthful fling among the denizens of the London theater districts some twenty-five years before.  Soon after Pembroke rose to his exalted position, Jonson was receiving an annuity from the royal coffers.

Among Jonson’s most cherished privileges, he seems to have had an open invitation to the breakfast table of Pembroke’s countess.  The Lord Chamberlain himself gave Jonson an annual New Year’s gift of ₤20 towards the purchase of new books.  Given the dedication to Pembroke (and to his brother, Phillip Herbert, the son-in-law of Edward de Vere) as the patron(s) of the First Folio, Jonson would seem surely to have been recruited by him to direct the project.

Whalen begins the last chapter of the book: “Maybe it’s all coincidence.”  He follows the sentence with a brief overview of how big the coincidences would have to be in order to properly dismiss out of hand claims for Oxford as author of the works of Shake-speare.  He lobbies for an “interdisciplinary study by a university or humanities foundation”.  The first signs that some very few universities will no longer dismiss the authorship debate without hearing only now appear.  That effort remains nascent and could too easily be starved in the cradle.

The four appendices to Shakespeare: Who was He?  The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon are well-chosen but lack detail.  The notes and bibliography, on the other hand, are extensive for such a volume, and strike just the right balance for an introduction to the authorship debate.

On the whole, Richard F. Whalen’s Shakespeare: Who was He?  The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon is an excellent introduction to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Gilbert Wesley Purdy is the Review Editor of the online journal Eclectica Magazine. He has published poetry, prose and translation (from Italian, Spanish and Latin) in many journals, paper and electronic, including: Jacket Magazine, Poetry International (San Diego State University), The Georgia Review (University of Georgia), Grand Street, SLANT (University of Central Arkansas),The Evansville Review (University of Evansville), Consciousness Literature and the Arts (University of Wales, Aberystwyth), Orbis (UK),and Valparaiso Poetry Review. His work in online journalism has been cited by Newsweek.UK and Huffington Post.  [See more about Gilbert here >>>]

More from Virtual Grub Street on Shake-speare and Edward de Vere:

• Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)

• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?

• Shake-speare and the Influence of Ronsard
• Shake-speare's Greek
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Click here to visit my "Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Subjects Information Exchange" Facebook Group.

Shaksper’s Second Best Bed: the (almost) final chapter.

Last week I decided to look into a theory I had about the Last Will and Testament of William Shaksper, the Stratford commodities speculator, loan shark, and, after his success in these areas, investor in, among other things the Globe theater.  It is only to be expected that some Oxfordians might have a feeling of anger towards the man with whom they are so regularly beaten over the head.  For myself, I think his hustling his way to a modest fortune is, in itself, a fine example of the “new man“ of the times: largely bereft of formal schooling, full of energy and natural intelligence.

One often gets the impression that Shaksper’s reputation suffers still more in our circles because Stratfordians gleefully point out Edward de Vere’s often rash behavior.  He did, after all, kill an under-cook.  The incident is further blackened by the fact that William Cecil, deeply invested in the success of the young Earl, arranged for the death to be declared a suicide.  There is also the fact that he treated his first wife badly for reasons history can presently only guess, got one of Queen Elizabeth’s Ladies-in-Waiting pregnant, was reputed by some of his servants to be a harsh master, and bankrupted the Earldom of Oxford into the bargain.  The Stratfordian argument hardly needs recounting here: “Oxford,” they crow, “was a colossal jerk, a murderer and more.  Such a man could not be the author of the works of Shake-speare.”

“Oh, yeah!  Oh, yeah!” Oxfordians rejoin, “Well Shaksper only left his wife his second best bed!  Now that’s being a jerk.”

Addressing the behavior of De Vere must await its own essay.  What can be said in passing, is that often the greatest literature is written by people who profoundly struggled in their personal and financial lives, in many cases proving destructive to those around them as well as themselves.  The claim that De Vere’s biography excludes him is equivalent to claiming that Baudelaire did not write the poems of Baudelaire, that Caravaggio did not paint the pictures attributed to him.

If, then, we may put all of the background noise aside, an unbiased look into Shaksper’s Will might be fruitful.  In a distant way, it is part of the record relating to the theater of Shake-speare’s time.

I began my recent researches with a preliminary question that I’ve long promised myself I would answer.  When was the first transcription of the Will published and did it give us the same text as we presently find in facsimiles of the Will?

The transcript we generally accept now was first provided by the great Shakespeare scholar Edmund Malone, in the “Prolegomena” to his 1790 edition of The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare.[1]  In a footnote to the third page of the Will, Malone mentions the, until then, standard transcription, attributing it somewhat vaguely to Lewis Theobalds.  A Ms. Bonner Miller Cutting, in her recent essay, ‘Alas, Poor Anne: Shakespeare’s “Second-Best Bed” in Historical Perspective,’ cites Samuel Schoenbaum[2] who offered an alternative attribution:

Malone attributed the mistake to Louis Theobalds, but, as Schoenbaum notes, Theobalds had died three years before the will was discovered. The rapscallion who offered the erroneous transcription is unknown, but Philip Nichols signed off on the 1763 Britannica entry, and at a minimum is a responsible party in the mistake and/or deception.[3]

With this we come upon our first finding… and our first mystery.  The Britannica of 1763 does in fact reprint the earliest published transcription of the Will.  But it is not the source of the transcript.  The first instance I could discover of the transcript was published in the introductory material to the first volume of the 1762 edition of Lewis Theobalds’s The Works of Shakespeare. It may have appeared as early as the third edition of 1752 (actually, the first complete edition) but it seems the first four editions are quite rare and I have yet to find them.

So then, Malone is somewhat vague in his attribution, one assumes, because Theobalds had died long before the 1762 edition of his masterwork went to press.  In his place, one or another of Theobalds’s dwindling number of assistants is a prime candidate to have executed the transcription.  I am not informed that Philip Nichols was among them.  Moreover, Philip Nichols took great pleasure in declaring his authorship and would not likely have let the transcription go without attribution if it had been his own.  He almost certainly took the transcript for his Britannica article from the pages of Theobalds.

It bears mentioning, however, that the exhaustively thorough Theobalds could possibly have discovered the Will, in the Archbishop of Canterbury's court records, before it was officially discovered by Joseph Greene in 1747.  If Schoenbaum’s description of the discovery is correct[4], the Will would have actually had to be discovered in Stratford, surely a frequent stop for Theobalds et. al.  In the final analysis, Greene himself transcribed the Will[5] and he is the most likely source of all published transcripts prior to Malone.

The one striking difference between Malone’s reading and that of Greene is the latter's reading of the bequest to Anne Shaksper of his “brown best bed”.  It is to Malone that we owe the fractious correction to “second best bed”.  More on that momentarily.

What I had achieved to this point, then, was to verify that a transcript that clearly describes the text of the Will manuscript we have, appeared no later than 1747.  The genuineness of the interlineations in the manuscript of the Will, soon lost and later recovered, cannot be denied.  The transcript of 1747 includes them. The facsimiles we have, therefore, are taken from the original Will as it was drafted on the 22^nd of June, 1616.  There have been no alterations, deletions or additions.

I have long wondered whether Malone’s “second best bed” was what I was reading in the interlineation that had been entered in the third page of the Will.  High quality reproductions, however, are hard to come by.  It seemed to me that the more likely reading was “crowne post-bed”.  The closely crimped lettering of the interlineation could definitely account for a single inconsistency with that reading.  I had my theories and reasons but insufficient proof.

The Age of Computers having arrived, however, I now found myself possessed of tools of increasing power with which to work.  I would one day assemble a clearer, magnified facsimile… when the time came available.  Last week the time came. 

I poured over each of the three pages checking to see precisely how the particular scribe who had written the Will formed his letters.  There are, of course, variations in the Secretary Hand between individuals.  Soon I was quite confident about how each letter was written in each of the circumstances common to taking a dictation: upper case, lower case, first letter of a word, last letter of a word, interior letter.  But, still, my case was not perfectly clear.  I loaded my scans into the basic Microsoft Paint, the photograph program that comes bundled for free in Microsoft Office software.  Suddenly I could magnify the third page and carefully erase the surrounding text.

After several “erasing trials” I discovered that I could find “crowne post-bed” but with two “slips of the pen,” one of which seemed pretty much the death-knell of my theory.  In fact, the only erasure trials that exhibited no anomalies, minor or major, revealed the phrase “second best bed”.  Malone had been correct.

After all of this, however, Ms. Miller Cutting’s essay lingered with me.  The bulk of her essay seeks to provide alternative answers to a question.  In the words of the author:

The second-best bed has remained a controversial bequest as it does not evoke the proper image of the cultivated, genteel poet/dramatist that is consistent with Shakespearean iconography. It does, indeed, invite an element of ridicule. For this reason, generations of Shakespearean biographers have searched for ways to cope with its undesirable implications.[6]

Subsequent pages list a number of ways the matter might be framed.  Some suggest less than an intimate familiarity with the law or customs of the times (I'm not sure such a thing exists as to the law and its enforcement with the lower classes).  Those that remain are a little vague.

I suggest that the Will itself provides us all the information we need in order to understand the likely reason for the paltry bequest to Anne Hathaway-Shaksper.  The house in which she had lived with her husband (when he was in Stratford), a substantial amount of money and the vast majority of all her husband’s chattel was bequeathed to Susanne.  A much smaller bequest went to the younger daughter, Judith.

Anne was 61 years of age when the Will was written.  That was quite an advanced age for persons of her economic class at the time.  Beyond the inconvenience and considerable expense of soon drawing up and probating another Will for Anne, and almost certainly in order to assure that the property was finally bequeathed precisely as Shaksper desired, Susanne was directly made the main heir.  Furthermore, only the bed and furniture was bequeathed to Anne because these were the items that furnished the room she had occupied for some time already, once her energies waned and the management of the house was turned over to Susanne (who likely had lived in New Place for all of her life, taking care of her aging parents in the end).  While the Will does not indisputably prove these as the facts, it certainly strongly suggests that this is the reason.

---

[1] Malone, Edmund. “Prolegomena”, The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare (1790), Volume 1 @ 190

[2] Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare’s Lives (1991) @ 93

[3] Cutting, Bonner Miller ‘Alas, Poor Anne: Shakespeare’s “Second-Best Bed”,  THE OXFORDIAN Volume XIII, 2011, 76-93 @ 87n

[4] Ibid. Schoenbaum @ 92

[5] ‘When Mr. West of Alscot was the first, in 1747, to exhibit a biographical interest in this relic, the Rev. Joseph Greene master of the grammar school of Stratford-on-Avon, who made a transcript for him, was also disappointed with its content, and could not help observing that it was “absolutely void of the least particle of that spirit which animated our great poet.” It might be thought from this impeachment that the worthy preceptor expected to find it written in blank verse.’  The Aldus Shakespeare (1909), Volume 1, “The Life of Shakespeare,” @ 181.  This account is frequently repeated in various editions of Shakespeare.  The original source of the information would seem to be New Illustrations of the Life, Studies, and Writings of Shakespeare (1845) by the eminent antiquarian Joseph Hunter, Volume 2 @ 339-40.  Several copies of the Joseph Greene’s hand-written transcription can be verified to exist at locations presently beyond my reach.  The copy cataloged as  Landsdowne MS 721 has been sufficiently described and excerpted to verify that the interlineations existed in the copy of the Will that he transcribed in 1547 as they do in the copy we presently possess.

[6] Ibid. Miller Cutting @ 77

More from Virtual Grub Street on Shake-speare and Edward de Vere:

• Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)

• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?

• Shake-speare and the Influence of Ronsard
• Shake-speare's Greek
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

Click here to visit my "Edward de Vere, Shakespeare and Elizabethan Subjects Information Exchange" Facebook Group.

Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)

Elizabeth Wray,
3rd Baroness Norris of Rycote.
Daughter of Bridget de Vere.

Standard Citation: Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. “Desperately Seeking Bridget (de Vere)”Virtual Grub Street. 24 August 2014.

1. The least well known of Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford’s, daughters is Bridget.  She was born on April 6, 1584, and was the middle of the three daughters born to Edward and his Countess Anne Cecil.

2. Even most people who assert that the Earl of Oxford was the poet and playwright Shake-speare (a group to which I resoundingly belong) do not seem to know that she was engaged, in 1598, to William Herbert, soon to inherit the Earldom of Pembroke, much less that she is likely the model for the character of Katherine in the play Jack Drum’s Entertainment, based more or less upon the events of that love story.[1]  The contract between the families would fall through, however, and Bridget would marry Francis Norris in 1599.  Norris would inherit the title Baron Norris of Rycote two years later upon the death of his grandfather.

3. Herbert would go on to become the Lord Chamberlain to King James I.  His brother Philip would marry Bridget’s younger sister Susan, during the Royal Christmas holidays of 1604, and, shortly thereafter, be created the Earl of Montgomery.  The two brothers would oversee the publication of the First Folio of the plays of Shake-speare.

4. Bridget’s years as Lady Norris (or Norreys), Baroness of Rycote, have been represented as nearly barren of historical record.  Francis Norris’s grandfather was much more in the news at Court than he and clearly among the most blunt, aggressive lords of the time.  Signs are that the grandson followed suit and was even psychologically unstable.  Bridget may have lived a dark life under his domination.  The two had a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1603.

5. For some reason, Francis and Bridget had a small private wedding.  Such a fact was quite unusual for persons of their station.  Suggestions have been made that the recent death of her grandfather, William Cecil, the Baron Burghley, essentially the highest ranking non-royal citizen of the realm, and/or a number of recent deaths in Norris’s family led to the decision.

6. Until her marriage, her Uncle Robert Cecil, Principal Secretary of England, had managed her financial affairs.  In October of 1601, he entered a final accounting of her finances in his records.   In it we learn that her portion from her grandfather’s will was ₤6,537 in ready money and ₤1,256 in jewels, plate and other chattel.  She already received over ₤600 annually from unspecified rents.

7. Bridget’s final balance, however, left her with a debt of some hundreds of pounds largely due to an unspecified “purchase” amounting to ₤6,217.  Her Uncle being zealous in her behalf, it appears likely that this represents his having placed the bulk of her inheritance into a trust or annuity out of the reach of her husband and possibly also as a safeguard against her lending to her father, Edward de Vere, from whom it is said Burghley had rigorously arranged to protect his granddaughters’ inheritances.[2]

8. In 1605, Lord Norris fell ill for what would be a protracted time.  The next we hear of Lady Norris is recounted in Charles Dalton’s excellent history of the Wray family.

The next mention made in the letters in the State Paper Office (from the published abstracts of which letters I derive my information) regarding the young Lord Norreys, is in a letter dated 1605, and is as follows: “Lord Norreys is at Bath, separated from his wife.” And a letter dated a few months later says: “Lady Norreys is at Cope Castle, separated from Lord Norreys.”[3]

Notwithstanding his illness or two year old daughter, the Baron Norris refused to meet the compromises offered by Robert Cecil and other intermediaries in order to be reconciled with his wife.  The details of Norris’s counterproposals are a matter again of presently inaccessible state papers.  For all intents and purposes, the Baron seems clearly to have felt it was her responsibility to return to her lord and master without conditions.

9. The well-known public servant Dudley Carleton seems to have been able to get along with the erratic Baron as well as anybody.  As matters worsened, Cecil, then Earl of Salisbury, called upon him to intervene with Francis.  Bridget had set up house in Cope Castle (later known as Holland House).  In April of 1608, Carleton received assurance from Norris that “His half-yearly payment to his wife is ready.”[4]  Another letter, of August 1608, preserved among the State Papers of the time, gives an overview:

“Lord Norreys is very ill at Bath, and not likely to recover. He is practising to disinherit his daughter. The Earl of Salisbury is desirous Carleton should go to Bath to prevent so unjust an act. It would confirm the scandal cast upon Lady Norreys at the time of her separation from her husband.”[5]

The two were already continuously separated for some two years by this time.  This was in no small part because the Baron had traveled to the continent (largely to Spain) in respect of the extended illness for which we have only the most limited information.

10. Among the reasons the Baron may have wished to disinherit his daughter, Elizabeth, might have been the pregnancy of his mistress Sarah Rose.  He could not, however, yet have known that the child would be a boy.  Young Francis would be the Baron’s cherished child and would, via an indenture established in 1619, receive a portion of his lands upon his death.[6]

11. All we would seem to know of Bridget de Vere, Lady Norris, between 1608 and the Baron’s death, is that she resided at Cope Castle, and received a semi-annual allowance for her needs.  For the time being, her uncle, Robert Cecil, was watchful for her welfare, Dudley Carleton as his primary agent.  Upon Cecil’s death, in 1612, what protection and support she might have received would have come from Edward de Vere’s son, by his second marriage, Henry de Vere, the 18^th Earl of Oxford, and from the far more powerful Herbert brothers, the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery.

12. Suddenly, around the year 1610, the Baron Norris was much more in the news of the time.  The Vere’s and Herberts were by no means the only supporters Bridget had.  In that year, the Baron is said to have been rebuked for his behavior toward her, by Peregrine Willoughby, after services in a church.  Willoughby was the second son of Mary de Vere, sister to Edward de Vere.  Norris, as aggressive and unstable as always, drew upon Willoughby, on the spot, and seriously wounded him.  Willoughby’s servant was killed.

13. While Norris was every bit the unstable peer described here, however, he was also a cultured, a spirited and a dedicated member of the King’s social circle.  James I highly valued those qualities in him.  During the next session of the courts, Norris was found guilty of manslaughter and was released after a short incarceration.   He requested and received a pardon from the King.[7]

14. In 1620, the King further showed his favor by creating Norris the Earl of Berkshire and Viscount Thame.[8]  Perhaps as the result, he began being particularly violent and unstable in 1620 and in 1621, and, during the latter year, was arrested for physically jostling Lord Scrope in the House of Lords, in Parliament.  Such an act in such a place against such a person could not be overlooked and Norris was imprisoned for a time as punishment.  In January of 1622, shortly after his release, he was found dead of self-inflicted crossbow wounds.  The coroner’s verdict was suicide.

15. Even to gather together this much about Bridget de Vere’s life and the events surrounding it, requires unusual persistence.  It would seem to be all that is generally known of even among the few professional historians who have spent time researching her life.  Actually, it is somewhat more than was harvested until now.

16. Upon the finding of suicide, the Bridget was stripped of the titles that came with her husband.  Francis’s lands were confiscated to the crown.  She could no longer style herself Countess of Berkshire or Baroness Norris.  Unless one searches with unusual persistence, it seems, at this point, as if Bridget disappears from history.  No one is precisely sure when she died.

17. Bridget’s 19 year old daughter, Elizabeth Norris, however, became a ward of the King, who lodged her with her uncle, Philip Herbert, the Earl of Montgomery.   Montgomery would manage her estate until she should marry.  This arrangement led to the standard rumors that the pretty young woman became Montgomery’s mistress.

18. But Bridget did not disappear.  Her powerful allies at Court, through the Vere and Pembroke lines, the latter great favorites of King James, arranged that her daughter Elizabeth could take back the title of Baroness Norris de jure (i. e. by legal judgment).  It is unclear just what lands might have been restored but they must have been considerable given the interest for her hand in marriage.

19. And marry Elizabeth did.  Her uncle had been determined to make her a match with a brother of the young Court favorite, the Earl of Buckingham, which she resisted.  Her personal choice fell upon Edward Wray, gentleman Groom of the Bedchamber to the King.  Montgomery’s word being law, she took matters into her own hands:

The Earl of Berkshire's daughter who was kept at the Earl of Montgomery's, got out of the house early, walked three miles on foot, and was there met and taken to Aldermary Church where she married Mr. Wray; of the Bedchamber; they thence went to the Earl of Oxford's house in Fleet Street, he being in the plot. Lord Montgomery sent to fetch her away but Oxford would not give her up. His commission is taken from him and Wray put out of the Bedchamber.[9]

Wray and Oxford were clapped in prison for their efforts.  Edward Wray was released on February 15, 1623.  The Earl of Oxford was not so lucky.  Whereas Wray was a member of the circle of friends surrounding the Earl of Buckingham, Prince Charles’s favorite, Oxford decidedly was not.  His total time in prison came to some 20 months, after which the appeals of his inamorata, and cousin, Lady Diana Cecil, brought him freedom and a wife of his own.

20. In an interesting sidelight, Pembroke and Montgomery were also engaging the services of Ben Jonson, while all of this was going on, to produce the aforementioned First Folio of the plays of Elizabeth’s grandfather, Edward de Vere, who wrote under the penname William Shake-speare.[10]  The edition would come out in November of 1623 while Edward’s son, Henry, pleaded to be released from prison.

21. Oxford’s freedom was short lived, sad to say.  He was reputed to be more than a little overweight.  Two years later, in June 1625, he died at The Hague from “a sunstroke”[11] he suffered from over exerting himself during the battle of Breda.[12]

22. Oxford’s biography in the Dictionary of National Biography[13] refers to the cause of death as “a fever”.  This perhaps due to the fact that the Earl also suffered a minor bullet wound.  Such a wound suggests that Infection might have been the cause.  Horace Walpole, however, who is the ultimate historical source of obscure information about the noble houses of England, directly states, in a note in his Life of Edward, Lord Herbert, that Oxford died of “a sunstroke” suffered during the battle.  The fierce engagement, at Terheyde, in which he received his wound occurred mid-May.[14]  The city capitulated on June 2^nd.  Somewhere within those two weeks Oxford, having over-exerted himself, removed to the Hague where he perished, the word of his death being dispatched to family and friends by June 12^th.

23. As for Bridget, it is said that, shortly after her husband’s death, she was being mentioned as a prospective wife of Philip Mainwaring.[15]  Upon her husband’s death, she would have been 38 years old.  Mainwaring was member of the House of Commons, in Parliament, and a hanger-on at court who years later would manage to acquire a knighthood at the cost of a highly dubious reputation for serial brown-nosing.

24. That she did not marry Mainwaring is clear, as she did marry Hugh Pollard.  Pollard was the son of a wealthy and influential country squire.  In 1627 his father would be created Baronet of King’s Nympton.  Hugh himself would inherit the title in 1641. 

25. Bridget gave Pollard his only child, Margaret.  This would suggest that she remarried very shortly after her first husband’s death.  I can find neither birth records for Margaret nor funerary records for her mother.  At present, the only fact that would seem to be known about Margaret is that she was born.   Bridget is said to have died in 1630 or 1631.  Based upon what evidence I cannot say.  She would appear to have shared one last trait with her father, Edward.  The two were the only two members of the direct line of the Earls of Oxford, during their time, who do not seem to have been interred at Westminster Abbey.

26. There is, then, only one further and fascinating fact left to learn of Bridget de Vere’s life.  Her daughter Elizabeth remained titled “Baroness Norris,” but the title did not extend to her husband.  Nevertheless, Elizabeth would have a daughter, Bridget, born in 1627,[16] who would receive the title upon her mother’s death.  This may have been because of the terms by which she received the de juris restoration of her title.  Or it might reflect the Royal disfavor at Edward Wray's having disobeyed the laws regarding marriage contracts between noble families.

27. Edward being the third son of a Baronet, he lived his life without title and with moderate wealth.  Dismissed from Royal service in any capacity and refused knighthood, presumably for his infraction, he and Elizabeth, the 3^rd Baroness Norris, lived all their lives quite apart from London and the Court.

28. Elizabeth’s daughter, named after her grandmother, however, would marry well — eventually, very well.  Bridget first married Edward Sackville, second son of the Earl of Dorset[17] shortly before her mother’s death in October 1645.  Sackville, it turns out, was murdered the next April by one of his own soldiers at the Abingdon Garrison.  The presumption is that the death was a result of the Civil War then in progress.

29. Soon afterwards, Bridget married Montague Bertie, the Earl of Lindsey.[18]  It may be interesting to note that Bertie was another of the Willoughby Berties, descended from Mary de Vere, sister of Edward de Vere.  For this reason, when Henry de Vere’s death ended the direct Vere line of the Earls of Oxford, the hereditary position of the Earls of Oxford, as Lord Great Chamberlain to the King, was awarded to him, the husband of Edward’s great granddaughter.

30. The Marriage was the Earl’s second.  He and Bridget added three sons and a daughter to his already burgeoning progeny.  James, the eldest of the sons, would become the 5^th and last Baron Norris, and the Earl of Abington, as the Barony was allowed to lapse upon his death in favor of the latter title.

31. Bridget herself would become the grand matron of the various families to which she was related.  In 1649 or 1650, she received a poetry manuscript of 52 pages dedicated to her in her full panoply of titles: “To the Right Noble and vertuous Lady, the Lady Bridget, Countess of Lindsey, and Baroness of Eresbie and Ricot, in verse, with Verses to the Right Hon. Francis Lord Norreys, Earl of Berkshire (in his day).”  The Francis Lord Norreys, refers to her grandfather, the 2^nd Baron Norris, indicating that the verses to Francis were written at the time Bridget de Vere’s husband was still living and that the poet must have been a servant of the Baron. 

32. The poem to Francis appears as a fragment, in the manuscript, perhaps a reflection on how long the poet had kept it among his manuscripts.

5
O true nobilitie, and rightly grac’d
With all the jewels that on thee depend;
Where goodnesse doth with greatnesse live embrac’d,
And outward stiles on inward worth attend;
Where ample lands in ample hands are plac’d,
And ancient deeds with ancient coats descend:
Where noble bloud combi’ d with noble spirit
Forefathers fames doth, with their forms, inherit:
6
Where ancestors examples are perus’d
Not in large tomes or costly tombs alone,
But in their heires; and, being dayly us’d,
Are (like their robes) more honourable growne:
Where Loyalty with Piety is infus’d,
And publique rights are cherished with their owne;
Where worth still finds respect; good friend, good word;
Desart, reward. And such is Ricot's Lord.
7
But what make I (vaine voice) in midst of all
The Quires that have already sung the fame
Of this great House, and those that henceforth shall
(As that will last) for ever sing the same?
But if on me my garland justly fall,
I justly owe my musique to this name:
For he unlawfully usurps the Bayes,
That has not sung in noble Norrey's prayse.
8
In playne (my honour’d Lord) I was not borne,
Audacious vowes, or forraigne legs, to use;
Nature denyed my outside to adorne,
And I of art to learne outsides refuse.
Yet, haveing of them both enough to scorne
Silence & vulgar prayse, this humble Muse,
And her meane favourite, at your command
Chose, in this kinde, to kisse your noble hand.[19]

The poet, William Basse, began as a musician and writer of songs, in 1602, and wrote occasional poems, for many years. He also wrote poems to pass in manuscript between his friends, as was then the style for gentlemen, before he finally published a volume of his poems, late in his long life, in 1653.[20]

33. For all the man was a fine poet, well worth preserving, he is actually known now for a single poem.  In 1633, the first volume of the collected poems by John Donne was published.  In that volume was an “Epitaph upon William Shakespeare”.  The poem was not republished with any of the subsequent editions of works of John Donne. 

34. Instead, it was next included in the 1640 edition of the poems of William Shakespeare, under the initials “W. B.,” and the title “On Mr. Wm Shakespeare, he dyed in aprill 1616”.  Numerous manuscript copies discovered later establish the attribution of the poem to William Basse.

35. But the “Epitaph” is a very special poem, indeed.  It is an undisputed fact that Ben Jonson’s elegy on Shakespeare, in the front matter of the First Folio, contained lines written in direct response to the “Epitaph”.  Therefore, it had to be written before the First Folio was being produced, in 1622-23.

36. Moreover, the “Epitaph” seems clearly to indicate that the author understood Shakespeare to have no monument, at the time they were written, and no epitaph on a simple tomb in which he lay.  It is for this reason that the poet provides his “Epitaph”. 

Epitaph upon William Shakespeare

Renowned Spencer lye a thought more nye
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumond lye
A little neerer Spenser, to make roome
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe.
To lodge all fowre in one bed make a shift
Vntill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt ye day and yis by Fate be slayne,
For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.
If your precedency in death doth barre
A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,
In this uncarued[21] marble of thine owne,
Sleepe, rare Tragoedian, Shakespeare, sleep alone;
Thy unmolested peace, vnshared Caue,
Possesse as Lord, not Tenant, of thy Graue,
That vnto us & others it may be
Honor hereafter to be layde by thee.

Jonson’s answer (and the new title given to the “Epitaph” in its next appearance, in the Poems of 1640) could easily be construed as an attempt to explain away these incongruities in a highly popular poem which was widely circulated in manuscript prior to the First Folio and would subsequently be even more widely circulated in one of the most popular books of poems published between the Folio and the Poems of 1640.

37. What has yet to be noticed is that there is another among the incongruities involved with this “Epitaph”. William Basse, the poet who wrote it, was a familiar and servant to Francis, Baron Norris, husband of the original Bridget, Baroness Norris, the daughter and son-in-law of Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, who wrote under the penname Shake-speare.  How remarkable a coincidence that two of the sons-in-law of De Vere oversaw the publication of the First Folio of the plays of William Shake-speare and that a servant of his third son-in-law wrote the earliest known poem celebrating his greatness after his death, a poem that seems to described not the Monument in Stratford but a simple, unadorned slab of marble such as that under which Edward de Vere was buried in Hackney.

38. The Earl of Lindsey was a staunch Royalist in the English Civil War.  Upon the execution of King Charles I he retired from public life and managed to keep his lands intact.  Bridget, his wife, died in March of 1656, some months after the birth of her last child, Mary, in September 1^st, 1655.  She was buried in the St. Andrew’s Chapel, at Westminster Abbey, the final resting place of many of the members of the branch of the Vere family directly descended from the Earls of Oxford.[22]

---

[1] Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, is portrayed as Edward Fortune, Katherine’s father.

[2] Calendar of the manuscripts of the Most Honorable the Marquess of Salisbury, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1906.  Volume 11 @ 399.

[3] History of the Wrays of Glentworth 1523-1852, Volume 1 (1880) by Charles Dalton @ 180.

[4] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, James I, 1603-1610.  (1857) @ 422.

[5] Wrays @ 183; Dom. James I August 30, 1608 @ 454.

[6] Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 14. @ 565.

[7] Wrays @ 184.

[8] The Extinct Peerage of England (1769) by Samuel Bolton.  @ 204.

[9] Wrays  I @ 193.

[10] Edward  de Vere was Shake-speare: at long last the proof  (2013) by Gilbert Wesley Purdy @ ix-xii.

[11] The Fighting Veres (1888) by Clements Markham @ 427-8.  “The Earl of Oxford was wounded and received a sunstroke, dying at the Hague a few months afterwards, aged thirty-six.”  The Life of Edward Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Written by himself. (1778) ed. Horace Walpole.  Note @ 184.   “Henry Vere earl of Oxford. He died at the Hague in 1625 of a sickness contracted at the siege of Breda where being a very corpulent man he had overheated himself.”  The Walpole note seems clearly to be the source of this assigned cause of death in later works.

[12] See also my own “Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?”  Virtual Grub Street, August 3, 2014.  On the possible propensity of the Vere Earls of Oxford to suffer high blood-pressure and stroke.

[13] The Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 58, 234-5 @ 235.

[14] Fighting Veres. Note @ 428.  ‘In a letter to his Countess, dated May 15, 1625, at Gertruydenburg, he wrote: “This letter is to show I am well lest reports might err. The vanguard attacked Terheyde under the Lord General Vere and myself. Our nation lost no honour, but many brave gentlemen their lives. My ensign T. Stanhope was killed upon the place. Captain J. Cromwell is dangerously hurt. We fought as long as our ammunition lasted, and I was shot in my left arm.” (Letter in possession of Miss Conway Griffith, Carreglwyd, Anglesea. Fifth Report of Comm’rs App.’

[15] Wrays @ 198.

[16] Ibid. @ 201.

[17] Wrays @ 203.  ‘The date of Edward Sackville's death is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, as mentioned in a topographical account of Witham: “I646, April 11. Mr, Edward Sackville, second son to the Right Honourable the Earl of Dorset, unfortunately slayne by a souldier of Abingdon Garrison, near Commer, in the County of Berkshire, was buried here May 18.”’

[18] Ibid. @ 204-5.  Mr. Dalton refers to Bridget’s “numerous estates,” bestowed with her upon Bertie, which seems to be an assumption.  I am not aware of any accounting which shows what lands of the 2^nd Baron Norris, which reverted to the Crown, he being a suicide, were subsequently returned to the Baron’s heirs.   My assumption is that some portion of the lands must have been returned in order for Norris’s immediate female descendants to remain attractive marriage matches.

[19] The poetical works of William Basse (1893) ed. Richard Warwick Bond. @ 153-4.

[20] The Pastorals and other Workes of William Basse (1653).  This volume is by no means a collected poems and it did not include the “Epitaph Upon Shakespeare” as w ell as a great many other of Basse’s poems.  Most were drawn from his later poems.

[21] The poetical works of William Basse @ 115-16.   I have restored the phrase “Under this carved” to “In this uncarved” as it appeared in the earliest known texts.  The later variant was made the standard text in order to make it conform with the facts of the Stratford Monument.    Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse (2^nd Edition, 1879) by C. M. Ingleby.  Expanded and edited by Lucy Toulmin Smith.  Pp. 136-140 @ 137.  A note by Toulmin Smith makes clear that per Ingleby the earlier manuscripts of the poem read “In this uncarved” and the later manuscripts “Under this carved”.  Her dating of the various manuscripts is in perfect accord with the accepted scholarship.  Ingleby: ‘We believe that the Fennell version (adopted as our text) “In this uncarved marble” is an earlier, as it is unquestionably a much finer reading, than either “Under this carved marble,” or “Under this sable marble,” which last occurs in the Sloane copy.’

[22] Wrays @ 208.

More from Virtual Grub Street on Shake-speare and Edward de Vere:

• Shakespeare Authorship, March the 17th and Social Media. May 13, 2018.  “This is how international financial transactions had been accomplished for centuries until the 16th century and beyond.  The traveler had to carefully make arrangements ahead or be stranded and extremely vulnerable at some point in his trip.”
• Edward de Vere's Memorial For His Son, Who Died at Birth May 1583.  July 5, 2017.  "The brief Viscount Bulbeck being the son of the renowned poet and playwright Edward de Vere, we might have hoped to have the text of the father’s own memorial poem.  As far as traditional literary history is concerned, no such poem has yet been discovered."
• Did Shake-speare Die of a Stroke?  August 03, 2014.  "In October of 1601 De Vere begins to complain of his health again in letters to his brother-in-law, Robert Cecil, who was representing him in certain legal matters at Court."
• Shake-speare's Greek.  May 08, 2014.  "It is not at all clear from Jonson’s limited comments on Shakespeare, throughout his life, whether he was aware that the Bard may have actually translated a Greek text popular for many centuries."
• Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

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