FOREWORD  TO  THE  FIRST  FOLIO

A  Study  In  Duplicity

An objective proof that William Shakespeare was the pen name adopted by Edward de Vere for the stage productions of his many plays has now been established. The purpose of this discourse is therefore to reinforce that proof with a lucid, rationale for the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. The potential for adversarial exchange, given the controversial nature of this enterprise is clearly obvious. But with proof that de Vere was Shakespeare firmly in place, the problem becomes one of explaining how the editor and compilers of the first folio dealt with the problem of authorship.

  Upon opening the first folio, attention is quickly drawn to the frontispiece. This shows the figure of Shakespeare from the chest upwards, and was drawn by a young artist, unknown at the time, named Martin Droeshout. He was apparently the grandson of Flemish immigrants, and aged twenty-one or twenty-two when his print was published. One is therefore entitled to remark that for such an important volume as the collected plays of Shakespeare, this choice of artist was strange. Strange, not simply because of his youthful inexperience, but because he was required to draw the younger version of someone who had died at the age of fifty-two; a time when the artist was barely fifteen years of age and, presumably unacquainted with his future subject.

While it is an attractive thought that Droeshout used a portrait of Shakespeare to copy from, the fact is that no such portrait has ever come to light, nor have contemporaries of that age even mentioned one. This would instead suggest that Droeshout drew his figure according to instructions. That in itself is another oddity, because there were many artists of talent and maturity living at the time who would have known and met Shakespeare on numerous occasions, and who would have gladly accepted the commission of producing a frontispiece for the first folio had it been offered to them. The portrait on the left, for example, shows a young man in a similar pose to the one on the right, and was painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1617; note especially the symmetry of the young man's doublet, as compared and contrasted with the asymmetry of Shakespeare's doublet.

  The asymmetry of this garment is immediately obvious, and the reason for its odd appearance quite easy to ascertain when De Vere's authorship of the Shakespeare plays is understood. Faced with the general public's recognition of Shakespeare as a man of the people, but unwilling to give total consent to an impostor, the compilers of the first folio opted for a compromise. An artist was commissioned to draw a portrait of a two-sided man. This explains why Droeshout was employed. No artist with a reputation to uphold would have compromised his recognition in society by drawing a cartoon for such an important project as the first folio of Shakespeare's plays, and for which he was required to show, without explanation, two halves of a man purporting to be the author.

This oddity in apparel is so striking, and so clearly deliberate that it begs attention. Yet, the Shakespearian literati simply gloss it over. This is perhaps understandable, since an explanation requiring the editor's concern to be taken into account completely undermines their position.  What their entrenched attitude requires instead is a total disbelief that the commissioners of the publication, faced with endorsing an impostor as the author, preferred to show Shakespeare with his back turned to the reader, thus avoiding recognition. For this, essentially, was the position in which de Vere operated. To signal this fact, Droeshout has clearly been instructed to draw only the left half of the front of the doublet, including the front of the left sleeve, and to join this by a row of buttons to the left half of the back panel, together with the back part of the same left sleeve. This result is confirmed by the finished print and was endorsed by The Gentlemen's Tailor (1911), experts in fashion and dress. But the Stratford professorship is a law unto itself, and collectively dismisses expert testimonials if they contradict one of their embedded presumptions.

At this point it would be remiss not to mention the reaction that the Droeshout picture has had upon committed advocates of Stratford’s Shakespeare. Apart from one or two, who have drooled over it, the majority have preferred to hurl abuse at the artist, dismissing him as an incompetent. Some of these criticisms have even rubbed off on to the editorship of the first folio, blaming it for laxity in not employing someone more experienced. But the reason for what happened is now clear. The decision was undertaken to satisfy questions of conscience. There being something sufficiently repulsive in transferring a great man's art onto the life of a man unworthy of that honour, even if it was seen in post-feudal England as being politically justified. The compromise reached by the editorship was that of being seen to bow to authority, while at the same time secretly indicating the existence of a hidden author. Any accusations of complicity could be countered by the catch-all excuse that is still put forward today—it was Droeshout's fault, which of course, was precisely the reason why this inexperienced artist was chosen in the first place.

Although the asymmetrical doublet serves as a striking warning that the figure of Shakespeare is suspect, there are other more subtle features to be observed. For example, it has been pointed out that the light in the picture comes from two different directions, thus indicating the opposite points of view from which the two aspects of the figure were intended to be seen. It has also been observed that the figure has two right eyes. If true, and Great Britain’s former leading ophthalmic surgeon, Lord Brain, acknowledged this fact, it again serves to confirm that only one half of the figure of Shakespeare was intended by the drawing. Another curiosity is the apparent mask before the face. This is indicated by the outline of a mask extending from the ear down to below the chin. A mask placed atop the two separate halves, back and front of a doublet provides the perfect composition for a figure upon whom maximum doubt was intended.

  Proof of de Vere's authorship of the Shakespeare canon, far from being compromised by the Droeshout etching, is in fact advanced by it. It is therefore time to consider the next part of the first folio – the five couplets by Ben Jonson pertaining to Droeshout’s drawing. For, if the conclusions drawn above are to be accepted, then this short poem must confirm it by continuing to describe the two sides of Shakespeare – the public image of the man familiar to everyone, and the faceless author with his back turned to the audience.

The poem, addressed ‘To The Reader’, begins—This Figure, that thou seest put, / It was for gentle Shakespeare cut. The Oxford English Dictionary’s opening definition of the word ‘gentle’ is – “Well-born”. In heraldic language, it means, “having right to bear arms”. And its archaic meaning was: “generous, noble, courteous”. But Jonson is also saying, that this is the man for whom the copper plate was cut. In other words, it was done for him, and this is certainly not the same as an assertion that it was of Shakespeare. In other words there is a quite deliberate double meaning buried in the phrase. But, then, this type of ambiguity is precisely what the Droeshout print is all about.

The next couplet reads—Wherein the Grauer had a strife / with Nature, to out-doo the life. It is clear from this that Jonson has acknowledged the difficulties faced by the engraver when trying to capture the subject’s true genius. Nevertheless, Jonson's words can still be understood as having relevance to what has been said above; the more so, presumably because of the constraints placed upon the engraver.

The tribute continues in a similar vein—O, could he but haue drawne his wit / As well in brasse, as he hath hit / His face; the Print would then surpasse / All, that vvas euer vvrit in brasse. Once again, there is an obvious ambiguity in this sentence. Quite apart from brass being a compound of copper and zinc, the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word as meaning “effrontery, shamelessness.” Surely, Jonson was not unaware that his sentence was capable of being read as: – “this Print would then surpass all that was ever written in shamelessness and effrontery”? 

Those who are more than willing to brush this aside should pause longer, and take time to reconsider Jonson's deliberate use of the word brass, which he has employed twice in quick succession. Etchings are not made on brass; they are made on copper. Jonson has therefore deliberately stretched a known fact just to employ the word brass, with its obviously defamatory meaning for the person recognized as Shakespeare. By taking Jonson’s words seriously, as he no doubt intended should happen, he has again confirmed that the familiar figure of Shakespeare is not a person to whom the following tributes, including his own, should be applied. They are really all a shameless exercise in duplicity.

The poem concludes with the couplet—But, since he cannot, Reader, looke / Not on his Picture, but his Booke. The explanation is simple. The engraver has been unable to show the true figure of Shakespeare; therefore, there is no point in regarding it as such. Instead, go to his collected plays, for that is the place where the real Shakespeare will be recognized.  

The first example of this shameless effrontery is the letter addressed jointly to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery appearing at the front of the first folio. The second is the letter to the ‘Great Variety of Readers’. The authors of both letters were John Heminge and Henry Condell, two men associated with Shakespeare and the theatre, and whose names appear as signatories. If these two men did not actually compose what was written, as has been suggested from text analysis, one may still conclude from their names at the foot of the letters that they approved all that was contained in them. The question that must therefore be asked is—‘Do the letters include any information that contradicts, or throws into doubt the inferences drawn from Droeshout’s picture or Jonson’s poem?

It is clear from those who have studied these two letters that they contain nothing to indicate who Shakespeare actually was. The past tense is important, because in both letters the authors refer to Shakespeare as being no longer alive. As they say: "he not hauing the fate, common with some, to be exequutor to his owne writings ... We haue collected them, and done an office to the dead,". The man customarily accepted in that role died in 1616, twelve years after retiring from London and resettling in his home at Stratford-upon-Avon. The rather obvious fact is that he had plenty of time to have been "exequutor to his owne writings", had he been the author. Twelve years is along time. So this represents a quite deliberate error contained in the letter. It also means that the true author of Shakespeare’s plays died suddenly, as did Edward de Vere in the summer of 1604. From a purely logical point of view, it must therefore follow that anyone alive in 1623, when the first folio was being prepared for print, can be eliminated as a viable authorship candidate; exit: Francis Bacon and William Stanley.

Following the two letters by Heminge and Condell, Jonson reappears with a fairly lengthy poem dedicated ‘To The Memory Of My Beloued, The Avthor Mr. William Shakespeare: And What He Hath Left Vs.’ Once again it is incumbent upon the investigator to examine each sentence fairly for any indication that Shakespeare of Stratford was intended as the sole, unambiguous object of Jonson’s tribute. But in eighty lines of verse, Jonson refers to Shakespeare by name only four times; twice using the possessive pronoun my as though to distinguish him from the man others might think of as Shakespeare. And only twice does he come close to providing information, which can be thought to have direct relevance to the authorship question.  

This first occasion occurs when Jonson writes—For, if I thought my judgment were of yeeres, / I should commit thee surely with thy peeres, / And tell, how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine, / Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line. But these three men belong to an earlier era than that in which Stratford’s Shakespeare is said to have flourished (1592–1616). Marlowe was killed in a tavern knife fight during the Spring of 1593, Kyd died a year later, and Lyly’s last work of any note was Midas, written in1592. Yet, Jonson issues a conditional statement to the effect that if time governed his judgment, these would be the men he named as peers of Shakespeare. Reading between the lines, Jonson is using verbal cunning to indicate that his tribute is being censored. If only he could extol Shakespeare amongst his true peers, he says, then it would be to men who wrote throughout the late 1570s and 1580s: far too early for the Warwickshire man born in 1564. Lyly's major works, Euphues. An anatomy of Wit and Euphues and his England were published in 1578 and 1580 respectively. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy deals with Spain's conquest of Portugal in 1580, and was performed a few years later; publication followed in1592. Marlowe's Dido, Queene of Carthage is thought to have been written while he was studying at Cambridge, and Tamburlaine was written before 1587.

Taken together, the double meanings derived from Droeshout’s print and Jonson’s comments about Shakespeare all contribute to an overall picture that Shakespeare was not the familiar figure from Stratford, but an older man: a man of “gentle”; i.e., noble birth who wrote during the same period as Lyly, Marlowe and Kyd. Yet, the Shakespeare professorship again ignore this obvious clue to the authorship question, and date Shakespeare's plays at a time pleasing to them, and when the writers mentioned by Jonson were either dead or, in the case of Lyly, retired.

The second point of interest occurs when Jonson addresses his subject as “Sweet Swan of Auon!” Since the growth of the ‘Shakespeare Industry’, which only began late in the eighteenth century, Stratford-on-Avon has acquired for itself the sole interpretation for Jonson’s epithet. But when Jonson coined his Swan of Avon phrase, Stratford-on-Avon was a provincial market town set aside in a rural corner of Warwickshire, and no more thought of than, say, Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire, or any other town resting on one of the several Avons that flow through England. It is therefore to another Avon that one must look for the truth behind Jonson's duplicitous remark. Duplicitous, because Jonson has appeared to be obeying authority by directing attention towards the birthplace of the man officially credited with Shakespeare's plays, while yet allowing a quite different Avon to be interpreted from his remark: one that has significance for Edward de Vere.

 It was at Wilton House, across whose parkland another River Avon ran, that Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Arcadia. Wilton House was the home of William and Philip Herbert, Sidney’s nephews. In later years they were to become the “incomparable pair of brethren” to whom Shakespeare’s first folio was dedicated, and to whom Heminge and Condell addressed their opening letter. It is therefore important to note that at the time Jonson was penning his tribute to Shakespeare he had become a frequent visitor to Wilton House, which at the time housed one of the best libraries in England. For Lady Mary Herbert, Sir Philip Sidney’s sister, ran Wilton House like a college, and it was frequented by the greatest scholars of the age. In fact, it made the perfect setting for the real Shakespeare to have put in a frequent appearance, the more especially since he being of "gentle" birth.

There is referential evidence that de Vere was at Wilton House as early as 1592, in which case, the literary association between him and the River Avon extends to over a decade; the same period that Shakespeare’s work was being performed publicly. De Vere would certainly have been at Wilton in 1603 to arrange the forthcoming nuptials of his daughter, Susan, to Lady Mary’s son, Philip. Most interestingly, 1603 was also the year that existing court records confirm Shakespeare's attendance at Wilton as a 'house guest' in the presence of King James. It will be recalled that the King broke his journey in order to return to Wilton when he heard that 'Shakespeare' had arrived. A miracle? For, what else but a miracle would allow a trader's son, employed as an actor for a rival company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, to become a house guest at the Earl of Pembroke's home? This problem baffles the Stratford literati as much as trying to understand another miracle. How the mere mention of Shakespeare's name could be an inducement for the King of England to break his journey and return to a place he had left only weeks earlier. No miracles are required when the identity of the houseguest happens to be Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England and a favored friend of the King's. [Details of the visit by King James and Shakespeare to Wilton House are dealt with in The Swan of Avon].

  De Vere would also have been at Wilton House in 1597 to agree the marriage arrangements of his other daughter, Bridget, affianced to the Countess’ other son, William. These two projected marriages clearly indicate the strong bond that had grown up between the cultured Herbert family and the de Veres of Hedingham. Unfortunately, Lord Burghley, Bridget's grandfather intervened to prevent the marriage by demanding too high a dowry. The two families were therefore forced to await Burghley's demise before arranging the second marriage.

  The next tribute to appear in the first folio is a sonnet to Shakespeare, written by Hugh Holland, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Though full of praise for the playwright it carefully avoids making any statement that could be construed as pertaining to the Stratford man. Of greater interest is the poem that follows. Leonard Digges, a scholar from Oxford University, was the author, and he addressed his tribute “To The Memorie Of The Deceased Authour Maister W. Shakespeare.” Further confirmation, were it needed, that Shakespeare was, by 1623, quite dead.

  Digges begins his poem by splitting Shakespeare’s name into the hyphenated form used by Thomas Thorpe for his cryptogram; he then repeats this twice more in lines 9 and 21. Digges' claim is that his subject's great dramatic works will outlive the tomb in which he is buried. More duplicity! Why? Because Shakespeare of Stratford was not buried inside a tomb. He was committed to an ordinary wooden coffin and buried beneath a ledger stone inside the church of the Holy Trinity at Stratford-on-Avon. By contrast, it was Edward de Vere who was placed inside a tomb, which his widow ordered to be erected at the church of Saint John near their house in Hackney. (The de Vere's house was called King’s Place; it having once belonged to Henry VIII. It did not acquire its name of Brooke House until after 1621 when the head of the Greville family, Baron Brooke, bestowed his name on the property after purchasing it).

Digges then becomes totally pluralistic with his terminology. “When that stone is rent”, he says, referring still to Shakespeare’s “Tombe”, “And Time dissolues thy Stratford Moniment.” This is the first mention of any direct link between Shakespeare and Stratford. It also contradicts Jonson’s earlier statement—“Thou art a Moniment, without a tombe,” (line 22). It would appear that the effort to make statements apply to two very different men is causing contradictions to emerge. But, Digges’ reference to Stratford is also ambiguous, because Stratford le Bow lies just to the north of the Isle of Dogs, on the River Lea, below and adjacent to Hackney, which was then the centre of the largest parish in Middlesex. Literary-minded readers, familiar with the Prologue in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where Stratford le Bow is referred to, would therefore have been more likely to associate Digges’ reference to Stratford with this village, and by association, the parish of Hackney, rather than a market town in Warwickshire, which at that time was unknown to the world of literature.

  Digges continues with the words: “This Booke, / When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke / Fresh to all Ages.” Neither of these two materials have any direct connection with Stratford-on-Avon; that is, unless brass was intended to refer to its dictionary definition of “shamelessness and effrontery”. Furthermore, the monument inside the church at Stratford-on-Avon in its original form showed the figure of Shakespeare nursing a sack of farm produce, and was carved from alabaster not marble. Yet, though Edward de Vere's tomb can no longer be identified with certainty, a marble tomb from which the brass had been removed was lately discovered in Hackney, and this is still thought to have been that in which Lord Oxford was laid to rest. So, once again, there is nothing to separate the introductory material at the front of the first folio from the proof that Edward de Vere was the real author of Shakespeare's work. This leaves just one more tribute, that of I. M. (possibly James Mabbe, a friend of Leonard Digges, or possibly John Marston).

Like Digges, who hyphenated Shakespeare’s name, I. M. begins his short tribute with the caption “To The Memorie Of M. W. Shake–speare”. The hyphenated form once again calls to mind Thorpe's use of this form in his cryptogram. It is a short tribute, and one which adds nothing to the authorship debate, except to confirm what all the other contributors have said, the playwright was dead.

In summary, this discourse began by referring to the verifiable proof that William Shakespeare was a pen name used by Edward de Vere. And that William Shaxpere of Warwickshire was the front used by de Vere to conceal his theatrical involvement, and so placate an authority fearful of the political consequences. On that basis, it was necessary to confirm that the introductory material presented in the first folio did not contradict this proof. If anything, it should be seen to confirm it. That is now the case. The authors and editor of the introductory material appearing in the first folio have done an expert job by appearing to serve the public image of Shakespeare, while in the same breath clothing their tributes with subtle undertones easily perceptible to the more discerning mind: one that is already aware of Shakespeare's true identity. 

Seen as a separate issue, the first folio is adversarial, with the possibility of verbal forays being launched from side to side. That is a mistake. The introductory material should be seen as a follow-up from the concealed message inside the Stratford Monument, which also shares the same date. As such, the first folio is not an adversarial battleground, but a confirmation of everything implied and said by the existing proof contained in the inscription.

There is one further point studiously avoided by traditional advocates. The "incomparable pair of brethren" to whom the first folio was addressed were, on the one hand, Edward de Vere's son-in-law, Philip, Earl of Montgomery, and on the other hand the Earl of Pembroke to whom his daughter, Bridget had earlier been engaged. Dedicating the first folio of Shakespeare's collected plays to these two men was therefore very much a family affair, and for which there can be little doubt that the family had agreed to bear the cost of its publication.

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