Recalled to Life

The ruse to present plays and poems written by the Earl of Oxford under the guise of an allonym came abruptly to a halt by the close of 1594. The allonym of Shakespeare or Shake-speare (by those who wished the world to know they had not been taken-in by it) is last mentioned in connection with the stage or literature in December 1594. The occasion was the Countess of Southampton's attempt to complete the accounts of her recently deceased husband, Sir Thomas Heneage, which went all the way back to 29 September 1592. The Queen had written to her expressing the fact that "At the decease of your late husband, Sir Thomas Heneage, he had £1314.15s.4d in hand as Treasurer of the Chamber . . . . You as Executrix, have paid up £401.6s10d., and £394.9s.11d., to the guard and others . . . . We require immediate payment of the balance £528.18s.7d to the Treasury of the Chamber." [N.B. If these sub-totals are correct then the balance is £518.18s.7d. with a £10 profit for the Queen.] Her response was one familiar to any accountant in the present day faced with having to put together a set of accounts based upon incomplete records. She was forced to ask questions from anyone who might possess answers. One such person was her own son, Henry Wriothesley, whose connections with the theatre were well attested, and who had in the same year lent his name as 'patron' to promoting William Shakespeare as an allonym for Oxford's plays and poetry. Since part of the ruse was that Shakespeare should become a recognizable member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men so as to provide a background for his 'literary achievements', it was perfectly natural that Southampton would include this name along with the other members of that company.

To Will Kempe, Will Shakespeare & Richard Burbage servants to the Lord Chamblain . . . . for two several comedies or Interludes shewed by them before her Ma. in Christmastime last past, viz. upon St. Stephen's Day [27 December] and Innocents' Day [28 December] £13.6s.8d and by way of Her Majesty's reward £6.13s.4d. [The Elizabethan Stage: E.K. Chambers, Vol. IV p.316.]

Shakespeare's Stratford enthusiasts make much of Lady Southampton's record of this payment to their man, but the factual considerations suggest other interpretations are wiser. In point of fact, the entire entry is a piece of creative accounting. On Innocents' Day in 1594, the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing The Comedy of Errors at Gray's Inn before an assembly of law students, and not, as the Chamber records suggest, entertaining Her Majesty at Greenwich.

Late on the night of 28 December, a 'Comedy of Errors', 'like to Plautus his Menechmus', was presented by common, i.e. professional players, and the references to it leave little doubt that it was Shakespeare's play. . . . The date raises a difficulty, for the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber show that payments were made to Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, for performances at the Court, which was at Greenwich, on the evenings of 26 [ surely 27?] and 28 December 1594. The same accounts also show a payment to the Lord Admiral's Men for a play on 28 December. [The Comedy of Errors: Ed. R.A. Foakes, p.115-6].

11 AUGUST 1596 - "Hamnet, filius William Shakspere" (sic), Judith's twin brother, who had been named after a close neighbour, Hamnet Sadler, was buried at Stratford.

20 OCTOBER 1596 - An application made 20 years earlier by Shakespeare's father for a coat of arms was re-submitted, this time successfully.

29 NOVEMBER 1596 - "William Shakspare" (sic) and three others were served with a Writ of Attachment obtained by William Wayte "for fear of death and so forth", which required the party of four to keep the peace.

4 MAY 1597 - "Willielmus Shakespeare" purchased the second largest house in Stratford, a property called New Place.

NOVEMBER 1597 - "William Shackspere" (sic) appeared on the list of tax defaulters in London's Bishopsgate Ward.

24 JANUARY 1598 - Abraham Sturley, a Stratford businessman, wrote to Richard Quiney, suggesting that "our countriman Mr Shaksper" (sic) might be approached "to disburse some money upon some old yardland or other at Shottery."

4 FEBRUARY 1598 - "Wm Shackespere" (sic) of Chapple Street Ward, Stratford, was reported to be storing 10 quarters of grain contrary to orders from the Privy Council that excesses of grain were to be sold off in order to alleviate shortages brought about by three wet harvests.

OCTOBER 1598 - "William Shakespeare" was once again reported for tax evasion in the parish of St. Helens Church, Bishopsgate.

25 OCTOBER 1598 - Richard Quiney, who had arrived in London, to plead the case at court for a reduction in the tax assessment levied against Stratford upon Avon, addressed a letter to "To my Lovinge good ffrend & contreyman Mr W^mShackespere" (sic) "cravinge yowre helpe with xxxll [£30] uppon Mr Bushell's & my securytee or Mr Myttons with me." But the letter was never sent, and was eventually found among Quiney's papers.

These references all pertain to the man behind Edward de Vere's allonym. It seems apparent that during this particular period the plays of Shakespeare continued to be performed publicly. This would account for the popularity of several pirated editions of the plays having been made public at the time, but with their author remaining anonymous,. As Professor Laroque of the Paris Sorbonne nouvelle wrote:

Between 1595 and 1598, Henry Sixth, Part 3; Richard III; Romeo and Juliet, and Richard II were published. But with each edition no mention was made of the author's name, thus complying with the censorship order imposed upon any new publications associated with the name Shakespeare, and which followed the publications of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Willobie His Avisa, (see Part 2 of the Evidence).

On 5 August 1598, Lord Burghley died aged 77. He had for some time been ailing and had pleaded with the Queen to be allowed to rest "between business and the grave". But Elizabeth obstinately denied his request. As a result, the influence of Burghley's "Regnum Cecilianum" within the Chamber of the Privy Council finally came to an end when his much weakened state ended in death. As if to signal his approaching end, and possibly with advanced news of Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, Love's Labour's Lost was entered for publication in the Stationers Register during March that year. Upon publication, it presented itself as: "Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakspere". The name had been written as pronounced, and ignored the spelling which appeared on Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, even though both poems were then still in circulation. It was, however, the first written mention of Oxford's allonym in connection with literature since the Countess of Southampton entered it in her accounts for December 1594. By then, it may have been thought, Burghley was too ill to care. Then, on 7 September 1598, Palladis Tamia: Wits Treasury followed Love's Labour' Lost onto the Stationers Register. This book seems to have been deliberately planned to fill the vacuum caused by the censorship of Shakespeare's name during the past four years. For it contained a list of Shakespeare's plays, as well as the first reference to his Sonnets.

The author, Francis Meres, was a young man of 33, and a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge. After the publication of Wits Treasury, he settled down to live the obscure life of a schoolmaster at Wing. His account does, however, cover the history of English Literature from Chaucer to his own day. Uniquely, however, he mentions only the titles of works written by Shakespeare, thereby implying that a need had arisen during the censorship years that would allow Shakespeare's plays to be identified. With that achieved, they could then be set alongside the titles of other great writers whose work required no confirmation of authorship. In this way, the name of William Shakespeare would be integrated into the history of English literature without compromising the covert political issue of a member of the ruling class having written plays for performance before the paying public.

Meres does, however, refer to "Edward Earle of Oxforde" whose name he places at the head of those "best for comedy amongst us". This would have been an acknowledgement of the entertainment written for the Queen and her Court by Oxford, and which had become so widely discussed by the performing actors outside the palace that Meres was forced to acknowledge what was already in the public domain. Meres then distances Oxford from Shakespeare's name by including the latter among the seventeen authors that follow. Under different circumstances the presence of both names would be taken as evidence that Oxford and Shakespeare were, indeed, two very different men. On the other hand, if Meres' Palladis Tamia was written to fill the gap in English literary history, caused by Shakespeare's allonym having become an accepted, but censored feature of the literary scene, (i.e., because of the damaging and ridiculing effect it might bring to the ruling class), then a different interpretation is justified.

Factually, Meres' book does everything required to establish Shakespeare as a genuine part of the English literary scene. It was what the lower classes of England had been led to believe; it was therefore what they expected to see confirmed in print, and it is also what has been uncritically, and all too trustfully, adopted by the professorship of western universities today. By 1598, Shakespeare's name had already appeared on two major poems, both of which were selling well. His name would also have been frequently mentioned in connection with the plays in London that he was said to have written. It was essential, therefore, to allow this view to become set in print, and become part of the history of English Literature. It was a political decision, no doubt recommended to Elizabeth by the Privy Council for the good of the State. What seems to be true, also, is that Oxford's name, too, had by then become sufficiently well known as a maker of plays for him to be acknowledged alongside those who had written well. It may even have been hinted that he was Shakespeare. Meres seems to have been aware of this danger, for he deliberately distanced the Earl of Oxford from his alter ego - William Shakespeare - by listing the plays this other man had 'written'. The strategy worked, as may be judged from the biographies of Shakespeare that have since followed during the course of the past four centuries.

In the same month that Meres' Palladis Tamia was advertised in the Stationers Register, Ben Jonson's play, Every Man In His Humour was enacted. Among the list of "principal comedians were: Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips, Joh. Heminges . . . . ", however, this information was only made public in 1616, the year of Shakespeare's death. Another reference to Shakespeare, concerning the year 1599, was made at an even later date. In 1619, John Heminge and Henry Condell testified that "William Shakespeare" had been a shareholder in the Globe Theatre, erected in 1599. This was subsequently confirmed much later, by Cuthbert Burbage, when in 1635, he testified that "to our selves were joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Heminges, Condell, Philips and other partners". These testimonies became a legal issue because the Globe Theatre had been erected on land bequeathed to Surrey landowner, Nicholas Brend, before contracts had been exchanged, and because the Globe had been built with timbers, which had been surreptitiously removed from the Shoreditch Theatre at the dead of night and carried across the Thames to Bankside. Shakespeare's name was brought into the dispute because in 1599 he had held a 10% share of the proceeds and liabilities of the newly erected Globe. Further confirmation of his presence in the area at that time was provided by Nicholas Brend's father, Thomas, who listed among his assets: "One house, newly built, with a garden pertaining to the same in the parish of St. Saviour's aforesaid . . . . in the occupation of William Shakespeare and others." One may surmise that this was the plot of land on which the Globe was subsequently erected. All of which provides compelling evidence that Oxford's allonym, William Shakespeare, had become a recognized member of the company of actors that performed plays under his name. The evidence, so far, does not confirm anything more than this man's connection with the Globe and the actors who performed there. And that, after all, was precisely the intention behind putting on Oxford's plays under the pretext that they had been written by one of its members. If Shakespeare had had no connection with the Globe, the allonym would have been unconvincing.

In the same year, 1599, an epigram by John Weever, written in the style of a sonnet, was published. Twice the author refers to Shakespeare by name amid lines that combine to bring in characters from his poems and plays. It was also in 1599 that publisher, William Jaggard, brought out an unauthorized anthology of poems by a variety of writers and called it The Passionate Pilgrim by W. Shakespeare, although in fact it contained no more than two or three of his poems.

John Weever has also been credited with contributing to the writing of the Parnassus Plays: a trilogy produced between 1598 and 1602 by the students of St. John's College, Cambridge. The plays are full of satire, and Shakespeare's name comes into the banter on several occasions. In the Return From Parnassus, Part Two, Kempe addresses Burbage - the names of both characters being identical to the two actors who were members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men - "Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, I (Aye) and Ben Jonson too, O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him bewray his credit." Jonson's Poetaster was first performed in 1601. It concerns an attempt to defame Horace. with whom Jonson identifies. But, after a trial before Augustus in which Virgil was judge, Horace is acquitted, and the poetaster, Crispinus, who instigated the conspiracy, is made to take a purge that forces him to vomit his nonsense until he is cleansed. Exactly what purge Shakespeare gave Jonson that forced him to 'involuntarily reveal' his 'credit' can only be guessed at. It does, however, sound as though Shakespeare had revealed Jonson's sources to the public, and this had been of a sort for which Jonson was unable to take credit.

In Part One of the Return From Parnassus, a character with the revealing name of Gullio; that is, someone easily gulled into believing anything, exclaims: "O sweet Master Shakspeare, . . . . I'll have his picture in my study at the Court." Not only is Gullio made to pronounce Oxford's allonym as it was spoken naturally in his native Warwickshire town, but he also draws attention to "his picture". There were, of course, no pictures of Shakespeare, nor could there be. A picture of Edward de Vere would have revealed the nobleman behind the name. A picture of the man from Stratford upon Avon would have allowed him to be identified by his fellow townsfolk, and these were people that had known him all his life. They, more than anyone, knew his limitations. The total ridicule and scornful laughter that would have greeted any suggestion that their money-lending corn merchant was London's great literary genius would have spread and spread throughout England, and its echoes would have even carried across the Channel. As for Gullio actually hanging Shakespeare's picture up at Court, were such an event to have occurred, it would have had a devastating effect upon those members of the government faced with preventing the scandal they envisaged, should this knowledge ever reach the public domain. As a piece of theatrical satire, it was therefore perfect. It also tells us that the truth behind the Shakespeare allonym was understood by the university audience, and this implies that the strategy of using Francis Meres Palladis Tamia to establish Shakespeare's credentials in the public mind had already become an 'open secret'. There could be no going back.

The reason for this sudden rush of references to Shakespeare's literary and theatrical connections, from 1598 onwards, should now be clear. Francis Meres' book had provided public sanction for them. He had established a portfolio of plays for this man, and as a result, Shakespeare's name was able to be used openly. William Shakespeare's identity and his credentials as a writer had very effectively become a matter of record, and was from there afterwards to be associated with the Stratford-born man who was Oxford's allonym. A lie that has been endorsed by the highest office of a totalitarian governing body is not to be gainsaid, especially since it was considered to be a matter of state security. The only avenue left open for those who cared about the truth was cryptography: the art of encoding secret information in documents that might be decoded by a future generation. Ben Jonson, who had loved Shakespeare "this side idolatry" did exactly that when he composed the couplets on Shakespeare's Stratford Monument and revealed the true author to be Edward de Vere. [Refer: The Straford Monument Speaks]. Thomas Thorpe, too, allowed his conscience to be his guide when he published "Shake-speare's Sonnets" and wrote a dedication that contained the same hidden truth confirming de Vere as William Shakespeare. [Refer: The Sonnets Dedication]. It is important to note that the medium chosen for these two encrypted secrets were also the most appropriate. For both the dedication at the front of the Sonnets and the inscription on the monument would be expected to endure the passage of time, thereby increasing the opportunity for their hidden message to be discovered.