Alias William Shakespeare - by John O'Donnell
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Alias William Shakespeare
by
John O’Donnell
O for a Muse of Fire that would ascend
The brightest Heaven of Invention:
A Kingdom for a Stage, Princes to Act,
And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene.
Who but William Shakespeare!
But which William Shakespeare — the man from Stratford, or someone else of
the same name?
For despite the examination of literally millions of documents over the past
few centuries there is not a jot of evidence during the lifetime of the man from
Stratford to suggest that any of his contemporaries even for a moment
considered that he might be the writer of the poems and plays. On the
contrary we have evidence of bewilderment about the authorship of the
works published under the name “William Shakespeare”. In the period 1595–
1601 at least four writers alluded to the enigmatic authorship, two of them
proposing Francis Bacon, one Samuel Daniel, and another simply a gentleman
of rank.
Bafflement over the identity of William Shakespeare the author extended
right up to the Queen, whose best intelligence was unable to furnish her with
the identity of the author of the subversive Richard II, performed on the eve of
the Essex Rebellion in February 1601, despite the fact that the play had
already been printed three times, first anonymously, the second and third
times under the authorship of “William Shakespeare”. The Stratford
Shakespeare was not in London at the time of this performance. Nor was he
implicated as the author in the days of reckoning following it. It follows that
the name printed on the play was recognised as a pseudonym.
What then do we actually know about the Stratford man?
We have records of birth, baptism and death for him and his family. We have
evidence that in November 1582 he was issued a licence to marry Anne
Whately of Temple Grafton and that on the following day a marriage bond
was posted for him with a different bride, Anne Hathaway of Shottery. He
married the latter, though we lack evidence of the ceremony. We have a will,
famously bequeathing to his wife his second-best bed, but alarmingly not
mentioning a single book or manuscript. We have evidence of part-ownership
in a theatre and participation in a theatre company. We have evidence of
business deals including money-lending and the renting and purchasing of
properties. We have recurring evidence of defaults in payments of tax. We
have evidence that he stockpiled grain during a famine. We have evidence
that when asked about the authorship of a particular play written by acontemporary, whom we know to be George Greene, he was unable to
provide the name of the author. We have evidence that his memory failed
him when he was required to give testimony at a domestic lawsuit in 1612.
And that’s the sum total of our knowledge of William Shakespeare of
Stratford. Anything else that we may read about him has been fabricated to
provide at least the semblance of a biography that would explain the life of
someone whom the world claims to be its greatest writer. Among the most
imaginative of these must be William J. Rolfe’s 256-page monograph
Shakespeare the Boy from 1897.
But surely he attended Stratford Grammar School: everyone knows that.
He may have, but since the records are not extant even this is conjecture. And
given that his father and his daughters were illiterate — his only son didn’t
survive infancy — it is quite possible that he lacked even a basic education.
The only written words we have from his pen are six signatures on legal
documents, all of which suggest a hand that struggled to form letters.
And when William Shakespeare of Stratford died on 23 April 1616, nothing
happened. He was not buried in Westminster Abbey, as fellow playwright
Francis Beaumont had been just six weeks earlier; he was not given a state
funeral, as Ben Jonson would receive. And in the months that followed
“nothing continued to happen”, as Douglas Adams would have said.
Inveterate diarists and letter writers made no mention of his passing. Fellow
poets did not write tributes. He was simply interred in the parish church at
Stratford with a few lines of doggerel inscribed on his tomb.
Small wonder that questions have been asked! Small wonder that 19th-century
British statesman John Bright declared, “any man who believes that William
Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a fool.” Small wonder that
there is a Shakespearian Authorship Trust, founded in 1922, and still probing
the authorship question.
Of the myriad books dedicated to the problem, Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s
Unorthodox Biography, published in 2001, presents the most devastating
analysis of the Stratford Shakespeare’s shortcomings. As she points out in
alphabetical fashion, Shakespeare the author shows detailed knowledge of
ancient history, archery, art, astrology, astronomy, the Bible, botany, the
classics, court politics, coursing, dancing, falconry, fencing, France, heraldry,
horsemanship, hunting, Italy, languages, law, literature, medicine, music,
ornithology, politics, seamanship, royal tennis, and tournaments. Further, she
pertinently observes, “Shakespeare used technical terms to create imagery.
Writers don’t exhaustively research a subject for the purpose of tossing off a
well-turned metaphor when describing something else; they draw directly
from their personal knowledge and experience.”
A particularly strong chapter of Price’s book is devoted to “Literary Paper
Trails”, and an appendix presents a table of twenty-five Elizabethan and
Jacobean writers, for each of whom she records a “yes” for each of ten criteria
that have been met. The criteria are:
1. Evidence of education2. Record of correspondence, especially concerning literary matters
3. Evidence of having been paid to write
4. Evidence of a direct relationship with a patron
5. Original manuscript extant
6. Handwritten inscriptions, receipts, letters, etc. touching on literary
matters
7. Commendatory verses, epistles, or epigrams contributed or received
8. Personally referred to as a writer; miscellaneous records
9. Evidence of books owned, borrowed, or given
10. Notice at death as a writer
For Ben Jonson a “yes” is recorded in all ten categories. The remaining
authors score a “yes” in three to nine categories, with the sole exception of
William Shakespeare of Stratford, who records a blank in all ten categories.
* * *
Some fifteen years ago I answered the phone to a voice that proceeded to
inquire whether I knew any music by William Byrd relating to Shakespeare.
The caller, anticipating my negative response, proceeded to explain the
reason for this: Shakespeare was none other than Edward de Vere,
seventeenth Earl of Oxford, for whom I should undoubtedly know that the
composer had written a march. I was advised to do my homework on the
nobleman and consider designing a program of music around him as
Shakespeare.
The authorship question was not new to me. In my formative years my
mother had mentioned that many people held the view that Francis Bacon
was secretly the author of the Shakespeare canon. And I remember listening
to an ABC radio program exploring the question in the late sixties or early
seventies. Australians of my vintage or beyond may recall a weekly fifteen-
minute show called Scope, which shared with a current television quiz an
appreciation of imaginative contributions over factual ones. On the segment
that I’m recalling, tongue-in-cheek contributors made authorship cases for a
variety of contenders, from Edward VI — whose death in 1553 was staged so
that he could quit affairs of state and attend to his preferred vocation as a poet
— to the Virgin Queen herself.
Today the authorship question is divided into Stratfordians — those who
contend that there is no question, that William Shakespeare of Stratford is
indeed the author, and that any claim to the contrary belongs to the realm of
conspiracy theories or, indeed, heresy — and Anti-Stratfordians, who come in
a variety of denominations. These include Baconians and Oxfordians as well
as Marlovians — those who claim that Christopher Marlowe survived his
murder on 30 May 1593, after which he wrote under the pseudonym
“Shakespeare” — and enthusiasts for Mary Sidney Herbert (Countess of
Pembroke), William Stanley (sixth Earl of Derby), Roger Manners (fifth Earl of
Rutland), the Irish rebel William Nugent, and a host of others. Adherents of
these authorship contenders can invariably find messages in the Bard’s
output to support their respective positions. And, humans being humans,
there are schisms among the principal denominations. A Baconian offshoot
claims Francis Bacon, alias William Shakespeare, as the bastard son of Queen
Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester. Not to be outranked, some Oxfordiansespouse the Prince Tudor theory, also known as the Tudor Rose theory,
according to which Henry Wriothesley (whose name seems to have been
pronounced “Rosely” at this time), dedicatee of Shakespeare’s poetic
publications, was the lovechild of the Earl of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth.
But there is also a Prince Tudor II theory, claiming the Earl of Oxford himself
as the lovechild of Queen Elizabeth by her stepfather Thomas Seymour. The
Virgin Queen clearly has some explaining to do.
* * *
Enter Henry Neville. We have to thank Brenda James for identifying our
candidate. His name was revealed by means of decipherment of the
dedication to the sonnets, long supposed to be a code, partly because of its
presentation, and partly because of the ambiguity of its text. The dedication
reads in full:
TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF.
THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.
Mr. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE.
AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR. EVER-LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTVRER. IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T. T.
T. T. is unproblematic. These are the initials of the printer, Thomas Thorpe.
There is also broad agreement on Mr W. H., a thinly disguised Henry
Wriothesley. But who is “our ever-living poet?” By using a contemporaneous
decryption method Brenda James arrived at “Henry Neville”, a name with
which she was unfamiliar. She therefore set about getting to know the owner
of this name, and one can only begin to imagine her excitement at each
subsequent discovery about the man: indeed the experience must have been
electrifying. In a nutshell, Neville’s dates, heritage, education, travel, career,
politics, philosophy, vicissitudes personal and professional, fit the
Shakespeare canon like a glove.
James decided to discuss her thesis with someone with an interest in the
authorship problem. She sought out William D. Rubinstein, then professor of
history at Aberystwyth University, who had long studied and written of the
problem. The outcome of their association is the book The Truth Will Out:
Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, published in 2005. James subsequently created
an online Journal of Neville Studies, which saw two issues in 2008, and has
published two further books, Henry Neville and the Shakespeare Code and
Understanding the Invisible Shakespeare. Rubinstein has published a further
work, Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays?, evaluating the strengths and
weaknesses of the main authorship contenders. As a matter of interest,
American-born Rubinstein is an Australian citizen, now living in Melbourne.
And when I met Bill a few weeks ago I had no trouble recognising him: thelikeness to a close relative, the great Artur Rubinstein, the hero of my boyhood years as a budding pianist, was unmistakable. The publication of The Truth Will Out may not have rocked the Stratford establishment, as it was surely intended to do — the arch-Stratfordian Stanley Wells, for one, immediately stated that he had no intention of reading it — but it certainly found instant adherents among those, including myself, who had refused to accept the orthodox position but had not found merit in the alternative candidate proposals — those, in short, for whom there was an authorship vacancy. One immediate convert was dramatherapist John Casson, whose subsequent contributions to the online journal were followed by two remarkable books, Enter Pursued by a Bear and Much Ado About Noting. A third book, written in collaboration with Australian Mark Bradbeer, will be published in 2015. Two further Australians who have made significant online contributions are James Goding and Bruce Leyland, who have done some fascinating research on the sonnet dedication in particular. And Brenda James quotes correspondence from Neal Platt, an Attorney and Professor of Law in New York, who has turned his keen analytical mind to Sonnet 121 and, as I have learnt in recent correspondence with him, the eighty-line poem of Ben Jonson printed among the prefatory material of the Shakespeare Folio. Let’s take a look at our candidate. Henry Neville was born in 1562 and died in 1615, dates very close to those of the Stratford man. He was a direct descendant of John of Gaunt and also related to the Plantagenets. His birth preceded his parents’ marriage, so he was legally a bastard. Shortly after the death of his mother he was admitted to Merton College, Oxford, at the age of eleven, where he excelled especially in astronomy, mathematics and Greek. In 1578 he and a few colleagues were taken by their tutor Henry Savile on a four-year tour of Europe, including travel to Poland, Vienna and Prague as well as some time in France and a couple of years in northern Italy. Savile is the man who was to be put in charge of the translation of the scriptures that we know as the King James Bible. Neville became a politician, for many years the member for Windsor. In time he was knighted and chosen to be the Ambassador to France, an appointment he tried desperately to avoid, but he simply had to obey Her Majesty’s pleasure. He was in France from April 1599 to July 1600, returning to England on leave at the end of that month, and intending to do all in his power to avoid resuming his position in Paris, though the Queen was just as determined that he should complete his expected two-year term. As it was, he was implicated in the Essex Rebellion of 8 February 1601, as a result of which he spent the remaining two years of Elizabeth’s reign incarcerated in the Tower of London. With James’ succession he was released from the Tower and returned to his political career. It was widely expected that he would become Secretary of State after Robert Cecil, but his espousal of a form of government that we’d recognise as a constitutional monarchy was on a collision course with James I’s belief in the Divine Right of Kings.
Neville was a linguist, with known fluency not only in Classical Greek and Latin, but also French, Italian and Spanish. As a young man Neville inherited from his uncle a foundry that manufactured cannon. Neville married Anne Killigrew, by whom he had twelve children, eleven of whom survived infancy. His son Henry was to follow him into politics, and his grandson Henry was to become both a politician and significant writer. Neville was a member of the Mitre Club, a group of cultured men who met regularly at London’s Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street. Other members of the club included poet and playwright Ben Jonson, poet John Donne and architect Inigo Jones. Neville was a director of the London Virginia Company, with interests in exploration and settlement in the New World. Those who know their Shakespeare will already be hearing resonances. Let’s pause to look at a portrait of the man, painted in 1599, probably by Marcus Gheerarts. The portrait names Neville as Ambassador to France, gives his age as 36, and features a personal motto, which, translated from the Greek, means “Everywhere without visible signs”. The words are usually said to have come from the ancient Greek writer Thucydides, but those actual words do not occur in the writings of this author. Nevertheless they effectively paraphrase a section of a speech by Pericles reported by Thucydides. If Neville is our author why should he wish to keep it secret? The answer comes in the politics of the time. The English monarchy had a succession problem — a serious succession problem, the country’s foremost political issue. Elizabeth was childless and, by the norms of the day, elderly; and attempts had already been made on her life. A contested succession could see England return to civil war or subjected to a Spanish-led Catholic invasion. And Elizabeth had had laws passed forbidding, as a treasonable offence, discussion of the topic of succession. Playwrights could get around this by presenting histories of past monarchs where succession issues just happen (purportedly incidentally) to be part of the story. (Those who accuse Shakespeare of having made historical errors miss the point: the plays are not re-enactments of history but subversive commentary on the present.) But even playwrights often found themselves imprisoned for their writing, as Ben Jonson would be on a number of occasions. In an act that one does not usually associate with Elizabethan England, another writer, John Stubbe, had his right hand publicly severed as punishment for publishing a book offering Her Majesty unsolicited advice. Neville was not taking any chances. In 1538 his grandfather Sir Edward Neville, formerly a close confidant of Henry VIII, had been beheaded for high treason. Anonymity — and, later, pseudonymity — were decided upon.
We know that Henry Neville was, in terms of the succession problem, a subversive. A manuscript copy of a book titled Leicester’s Commonwealth exists with extensive marginal notes in his hand. The book itself had been published abroad in 1584, imported into England, and immediately banned. But only printed copies were covered by the ban, so the handwritten copy annotated by Neville was officially legal. His marginalia, mentioned by James and Rubinstein, have been subjected to thorough analysis by Casson, and among them we find many issues — and often words and phrases — that are subsequently taken up in the history plays. There is another thing about these history plays that becomes glaringly obvious once one accepts Neville as their author: they feature Neville’s forebears, and invariably in a good light. The name Neville is spoken no fewer than seven times in Henry VI, Part 2, believed to be the first of the history plays to be performed, including the phrase “the Nevils’ noble race”, which would have been a rather strange familial tribute by someone named “Shakespeare”, but not by someone named “Neville”. Such characters as John of Gaunt, Richard Neville (Earl of Warwick), Cecily Neville (mother of Richard III), Anne Neville (wife of Richard III) are all part of the Neville family tree. Again, James and Rubinstein made an initial exploration of this aspect of Shakespeare, which is teased out in tantalising detail in Casson and Bradbeer’s forthcoming book. How do we know that the hand of the marginalia is Neville’s? Whereas the Stratford Shakespeare is known to have put pen to paper only with difficulty when a signature was required, Neville was a prolific writer of letters, both official and personal, and these are invaluable both for analysis of handwriting and, of course, for comparison of language with the Shakespeare canon. We’ll come to the language. Let’s stick to the handwriting for a moment. It would be ideal at this point, of course, to cite an autograph of a play, or even a single sonnet; but hundreds of years of Shakespeare research have not turned up such a document. Except Hand D. Hand D may mean nothing to the layman, but it’s well known to Shakespeare scholars. It refers to a fragment of the play Sir Thomas More, of which Shakespeare was a co-author. In the absence of other handwriting from Shakespeare of Stratford as author, it was never possible to verify the hand here — all but the most diehard of Stratfordians reluctant to confirm it on the basis of those shaky signatures — but it has nevertheless been received by Shakespeare scholars as most likely to be the author’s own working copy. Casson has convincingly demonstrated that the hand is indeed that of Henry Neville. This is not wishful thinking by a confirmed Nevillian. Among the scribal habits of Neville’s fast hand is the regular reversal of the letters “i” and “n”, so that the word “king”, for example, is spelt K–N–I–G. Hand D is without reasonable doubt the hand of Henry Neville. Let’s have a musical interlude.
[Perform on harpsichord the opening 24 bars of William Byrd, My Ladye Nevels Grownde] My telephone interrogator (referred to earlier in this talk) specifically asked about any relationship that may have existed between William Byrd, the greatest English composer of the day, and Shakespeare. What I have just played is the opening of a piece called My Ladye Nevels Grownde, the first work in a large volume of Byrd’s keyboard music known as My Ladye Nevells Booke, beautifully copied in 1591 for presentation to Elizabeth Nevell, step-mother of our Henry. We shall return to music, but first I’d like to talk about words, because the case for Neville will surely stand or fall on his use of words. Much fine work has already been presented in this area by James, Rubinstein and Casson. For my own part, I have read Neville’s complete official correspondence as Ambassador to France, preserved by his secretary and successor in the position, Ralph Winwood, and published a little over a century later by Edmund Sawyer in a three-volume set titled Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. At least one 18th-century reader of these volumes, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, recognised the superiority of Neville’s language in his diplomatic dispatches, praising his eloquence and, according to James and Rubinstein, “finding his balanced, expressive phrases a joy to read, in contrast with the staccato, often opaque style of his diplomatic peers”. During my repeated examination of these letters I’ve jotted down numerous passages that I’ve found a particular joy to read. One has to know that Neville’s principal task as Ambassador to France was to persuade the king, Henri IV, to repay a substantial loan to England. The king treated Neville with respect, even with cordiality and warmth, while employing every delaying tactic imaginable to avoid the repayment. The following excerpt is from a letter early in 1600, some nine months into Neville’s tiresome negotiations. Here he is reporting a meeting with the French Secretary of State, Monsieur de Villeroy, and we are already several hundred words into the report. …I prayed him to remember, that since we made so streight Alliance with France, the Profit and Benefit of it had bin wholly theirs, and the Charge and Burden ours. And it must be confessed that the Queene my Mistris had discharged the part of a true and perfect Friend and Confederate, and that her Succours had been a principall Cause of the Preservation of this Estate. That now they were in Peace and Rest, and we in Warre, her Majestie was to looke for some Recompence of her Kindnes, and some Fruit of the Alliance. That lesse could not be expected by her, nor offred by them, then that which she demaunded, which was but the Repaiement of some of that Money which she had so frankely lent to the King, and disbursed for him in his great Necessitie. Yf this were denied, she could little hope for any greater matter; and she should have just Cause given her to repent, that she had left a more ancient and constant Amitie to embrace this, wherein there was lesse Assurance. I have no particular reason in selecting this passage for this talk. There are dozens that carry comparable rational precision and verbal vitality. But it does show Neville, almost at the end of his wits after nine months of fruitless negotiation, still playing the role of ambassador, summoning up all his diplomatic skill to do so, and then reporting it with logic and balance. One
thing I do notice in the passage, nevertheless, is the writer’s fondness for the rhetorical figure hendiadys. What is hendiadys? It’s the expression of a single idea by two words (pairs of nouns, adjectives or adverbs) connected by “and”, when one of those words could be adapted to qualify or modify the other. The most common example in daily use is “nice and warm”, which could be expressed as “nicely warm”. In the quoted segment of Neville’s letter we have “peace and rest”, which could alternatively have been expressed as “peaceful rest” or “restful peace”. Similarly “profit and benefit”, “charge and burden”, “true and perfect”, “friend and confederate”. Hendiadys was a popular figure in ancient Greek writing, in which Neville had expertise, and I have been encountering it plentifully in Italian Renaissance poetry, much of which was undoubtedly known to the multi-lingual Neville. But in English it’s said that no one but Shakespeare uses hendiadys with any degree of regularity. No one, we can now say, but Henry Neville. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, containing sixty-six examples of hendiadys, is the highpoint of the Bard’s use of this rhetorical figure. A year before Hamlet Neville uses the figure five times within three sentences. James and Casson in their respective studies have noted many unusual or complex words that Neville and Shakespeare have in common. There is also a shared predilection for words commencing with the prefixes U-N or D-I-S. In a letter of 27 April 1600 Neville wrote of “displeasure and discontentment” and a sentence later of “distaste and diffidence”. Noting the alliteration and hendiadys in passing, “displeasure” is a common Shakespeare word, occurring forty-five times in the plays; and while “discontentment” does not occur, “discontent” is another favourite, with fifteen occurrences in the plays and six in the poems. “Distaste” was a new word at this time, the OED giving John Florio the honours for its first use in 1598. It’s only after Neville uses it in 1600 that it makes its way into the Shakespeare canon, twice in Troilus and Cressida, and once each in King Lear and Othello. “Diffidence”, admittedly not strictly a D-I-S word, but etymologically a D-I-S word, occurs twice, in Henry VI, Part 1 and King John. It’s also well known that the Bard enriched our language with neologisms, some 1,920 of them according to a recent count. But current studies are showing that some of these words occur in Neville’s letters prior to or almost exactly contemporary with their use in Shakespeare. To the superb work done by John Casson in this area I’ll add the word “honestest”, superlative of “honest”, used by Neville in a letter of 14 May 1600 and subsequently by Shakespeare in All’s well that ends well, usually dated 1604 or 1605. The word is not in the OED. Another feature of Neville’s writing is his use of theatrical language. His diplomatic letters see all the world as a stage, and those who make up the human drama are indeed merely players. Writing from Paris on 9 May 1600 about the king’s anticipated assaults on various French duchies he commented,
it is [’Tis] like to prove the first Act of the Tragedie which all men expect here within short time. which is, incidentally, a couplet of iambic pentameters. On 15 November 1600, writing to Winwood from London, Neville observed, The Earl of Essex is no Actor in our Triumphs, by which he was informing Winwood that Essex remained out of favour with the Queen and would not be participating in the jousting two days hence to mark the forty-second anniversary of her accession. What a wonderful line it is, and again it’s iambic, though this time a hexameter. Neville also knows how to tell a good story. His diplomatic report of 7 August 1599 contains the following: Upon Twesday Night last, after they had all accompanied the King from the place where he had supped to his Lodging at Zametz House, the Duke of Guise, Prince of Joynville, le Grand and his Brother, and Monsieur de Termes, went all out together; and the rest being allready entered into le Grand his Coche, Joynville pulled le Grand by the Cloke, and required to speake with him, who thereupon drawing himself asyde from the Company, Joynville told him, he had bin wronged to the King by a Report, that he should make Love to Madamoiselle d’Entragues, which made the King jealous of him, of which Report he thought him le Grand to be the Author, and therefore, saith he to him, thou shall dye, and withall pulled out his Sword and ranne him in, the other having no Weapon about him; but with haste, or som accident, his Thrust lighted lower than he intended, and ranne him into the Flank and through the Thigh, without Daunger; but hereupon som Company comming in on both sydes, the Vidame de Mans, and an Escuier of le Grands were very sore hurt, and the Vidame not like to escape as I hear. The King hearing of the matter lept out of his Bed, and ranne downe in his Shirt with a Sword in his Hand, but by that time the rest were gone, and le Grand was brought in wounded as he was. The King hath taken it exceedingly ill, and hath sent for his Court of Parlament, and willed them to do severe Justice upon the Fact. The Prince of Joynville is fled into Lorraine, the Dutchess of Guise and her Daughter have bin sundry tymes on their Knees before the King, but he seems very resolute, commanding le Grand not to seeke Revenge by any means, but to referr yt to him, for that he takes the Scorn as done to himselfe; yet for all this yt is thought the King will be wonne in the end to pass it over. Comparison of Shakespeare’s and Neville’s use of less significant words, such as prepositions, is also instructive. As linguists know, a person’s use of such words as “unto”, “withal” or “whereupon” can be as individual as fingerprints. A further outcome of the examination of Neville’s language is a significant enlargement of the Shakespeare canon. John Casson has demonstrated with conviction that the anonymous plays Mucedorus, Locrine, Arden of Faversham and Thomas of Woodstock should be recognised as early works by the writer who would subsequently become Shakespeare, while two later plays, A Yorkshire Tragedy and Cardenio, are also the work of our author, in collaboration with Fletcher in the latter, and very possibly in collaboration with others in the former. It’s time for more music.
[Perform, voice & harpsichord, Thomas Morley, It was a lover and his lass] You’ve just heard one of the few Shakespeare songs of which we have a contemporaneous musical setting. The song occurs in the play As you like it, traditionally dated 1599 or 1600, but not printed until its inclusion in the First Folio, 1623. How did Thomas Morley get access to the words to publish his setting in 1600? One can imagine a number of possible scenarios, but could it have anything to do with the fact that Morley was married to a maid of Neville’s step-mother? As you like it is set in the forest of Ardennes in France, and, if Neville is the author, the play was also written in France. In December 1599 Neville penned a letter to Thomas Windebank at Court in which he says, I should be glad to return, for the burden is too heavy for my purse, and is likely to increase, by the repair of English gentlemen to whom I cannot shut my gates, so that sometimes I have 12 or 16 of them at table. I will hold out as long as I can, and then my motto shall be, “fie upon honour that brings no profit;” and I will be a hermit in Ashridge or the forest, and do penance for the faults committed here. I am ashamed to see what idols we make of ambassadors there, when so little courtesy is shown them here. As James and Rubinstein have observed, this idea of a nobleman becoming a hermit in the forest brings to mind the character of the exiled Jacques in the play that was being written at this very time. Seven months after this letter, over two of which were spent as a commissioner in futile negotiations with the Spanish to draw up and sign the proposed Treaty of Boulogne, Neville did manage to return to England on leave, reaching London on 6 August 1600. Though this leave was supposed to last a month or so, he succeeded in stalling his return — perhaps having learnt delaying tactics from both roi Henri and the Spanish delegates — extending the period to six months, during which time he maintained contact with his good friend and secretary in France, the afore-mentioned Ralph Winwood, who in effect assumed Neville’s ambassadorial duties. Thus it was that Neville learned of a planned visit to England by Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano, in a letter from Winwood dated 20 November. On Christmas Day Neville received a further letter from Winwood confirming the timing of the visit, and it was he who passed news of the imminent visit to Elizabeth and her court. Twelve days later the Queen treated her visitor to a play in Whitehall. The time was indeed Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany. Did its author have time to write and the players have time to rehearse the play that features a Duke Orsino? The play that also features twins, girl and boy, such as Orsino and his wife had as their first-born? The play in which the male twin is called Sebastian, a name that Neville had mentioned to Winwood in a letter of 15 November 1600, referring to the possible identification of a Venetian prisoner as the long-lost King Sebastian of Portugal? The name Sebastian would be used in future Shakespeare plays, but it first shows up in Twelfth Night. We are not certain that Twelfth Night is the play to which Orsino was treated that night, but Leslie Hotson makes an impassioned and thoroughly researched case for it in his highly readable book The First Night of Twelfth
Night, published in 1952. With Neville as the author the scenario becomes more plausible. He knew of the forthcoming visit some weeks ahead of everyone else, and since the Chamberlain’s Men were contracted to play at Whitehall on St Stephen’s Day (26 December), the Epiphany (6 January) and Shrove Tuesday (24 February) the title could have been changed had the Duke’s confirmed dates not included Twelfth Night. After all, the observances of all three of these days involve both festivity and frivolity; and this is the only Shakespeare play that offers an alternative title, What you will. The next play chronologically is the work regarded by many as the greatest single literary contribution to the English language: Hamlet. Shakespeare’s commentators have always been at a loss to explain the enormous change that came over Shakespeare’s writing in 1601. The death of the Stratford Shakespeare’s father, John, on 7 September 1601 has been dredged up as a reason, but there is no evidence that the two men were close. William, after all, spent most of his working life in London, three days’ travel — each way — from all his family. For Henry Neville, on the other hand, 1601 was catastrophic. Both he and Wriothesley managed to distance themselves sufficiently from Essex and his principal conspirators to save their heads. But both were to spend the next two years in the Tower. Time constraints prevent further exploration of Hamlet here, but I am writing about it at greater length for another occasion. Instead I want to take a few minutes to look at Sonnet 121. Let’s see if I can recite it in passably Shakespearian English: Tis better to be vile then vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others seeing. For why should others false adulterat eyes Give salutation to my sportive blood? Or on my frailties why are frailer spies; Which in their wils count bad what I think good? Noe, I am that I am, and they that levell At my abuses reckon up their owne, I may be straight though they them-selves be bevel By their rancke thoughtes, my deedes must not be shown Unlesse this generall evill they maintaine, All men are bad and in their badnesse raigne. Brenda James has repeatedly returned to this sonnet in her writings, and in her most recent book she also quotes correspondence from Neal Platt, who points out that on linguistic evidence alone it would be difficult to argue that anyone other than a Neville could have written it. The Neville family motto was “ne vile velis”, which may be translated as “wishing nothing vile”. The writer clearly feels that he is thought by some to be vile, whereas he believes that he is not vile, that is, “ne vile”, Neville, for which he is being reproached. The sonnet includes three other words rhyming with Neville: “levell”, “bevel” and “evill” — yes, that’s why I wanted it heard in the pronunciation of Shakespeare’s day: our modern pronunciation of “evil” loses some of the point. A further reason for using contemporaneous pronunciation is that one discovers puns that are not otherwise audible. The fourth line sounds virtually the same as if it were written,
Not by our failing, but by others saying. It’s very unlikely that the poet was unaware of this: multiple meanings constituted a significant part of poetic art in this age. We must now jump to one of the last plays in the canon, The Tempest. It has long been accepted that the writer of this play had access to a letter to the London Virginia Company written by James Strachey, and a recent study by David Kathman puts it beyond doubt that the author of the play had detailed access to this source. But this is highly problematic, for before its publication in 1625 it was available only to the company’s council, all of whom were under oath not to make such materials known outside the company. Stratfordians have invented scenarios to get the 20,000-word document in front of their man but have not arrived at a plausible explanation. Neville, on the other hand, was not only a member of the company but one of its major actors. And here I must also squeeze in, in passing, mention of Charles Mills Gayley’s book Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America, published in 1917. The author recognised that Shakespeare’s ideas of good governance coincided in many ways with those of Neville, as evidenced in the latter’s contributions to the London Virginia Company. The only missing link in his research was evidence of any meeting between Neville and Shakespeare. James and Rubinstein provide a fascinating review of this work. When did Shakespeare the writer and Shakespeare of Stratford become one? James and Rubinstein conjecture that Neville had made a deal with the Stratford Shakespeare in the early 1590s to write under his name. This is not impossible, and the two men, though chalk and cheese, were distantly related through marriage. But I have my doubts about such an arrangement. If Neville was writing under a nom de plume to avoid possible legal ramifications he doesn’t seem to be the sort of person who would want his problems put onto a scapegoat. Returning to the scenario following the Essex Rebellion: what if the name on the play had been judged to belong to the Stratford man and he was consequently sentenced to death for treason? Further, given the uncertainty of life in general, what would have happened had the Stratford man died while Shakespeare the writer was in full flight? As it transpired, the two men did die within a year of one another, both living only into their early fifties. Only after this, I suggest, did the conspiracy begin, to preserve the writer’s anonymity, by erecting an enigmatic monument in the Stratford parish church and drawing attention to it in the prefatory material to the Folio. The publication of the Folio occurred in 1623 under the auspices of Gresham College, which had been established in 1597 under the will of Neville’s uncle Sir Thomas Gresham. Neville’s friend Ben Jonson was editor of the project and wrote two prefatory poems, the other three poems being contributed by Hugh Holland (who had had fellowship with Neville as a member both of the London Virginia Company and of the Mitre Club), Leonard Digges (a friend and relative of Neville’s, also an officer of the London Virginia Company), and I. M., thought to be James Mabbe (a close friend of Digges).
Ben Jonson had already written an epigram To Sir Henry Nevil: Who now calls on thee, NEVIL, is a Muse, That serves nor fame, nor titles; but doth chuse Where vertue makes them both, and that’s in thee: Where all is faire, beside thy pedigree. Thou art not one, seek’st miseries with hope, Wrestlest with dignities, or fain’st a scope Of service to the publique, when the end Is private gaine, which hath long guilt to friend. The rather striv’st the matter to possesse, And elements of honor, then the dresse; To make thy lent life, good against the Fates: And first to know thine owne state, then the States. To be the same in roote, thou art in height; And that thy soule should give thy flesh her weight. Goe on, and doubt not, what posterie, Now I have sung thee thus, shall judge of thee. Thy deedes, vnto thy name, will prove new wombes, Whil’st others toyle for titles to their tombes. Given Neville’s wish for invisibility this may not have pleased the great man. John Casson has, convincingly I think, identified another epigram, To one that desired me not to name him, as referring to Neville: Be safe, nor fear thy self so good a fame, That, any way, my book should speak thy name: For, if thou shame, rank’d with my friends, to go, I am more ashamed to have thee thought my foe. Casson draws attention especially to the throwaway words “any way”. But those who know Jonson know that he doesn’t throw words away: playing on words is, for him, the essence of poetic art. The words “any way” can be pronounced “any vay”, that is, the letters N-E-V. Interestingly, though Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in his private notes, “I loved the man, and doe honour his memory on this side idolatrie as much as any”, and though Jonson wrote epigrams to many of his friends, there is no epigram to Shakespeare of Stratford. Jonson knew Neville’s secret and wanted to trumpet it to the world, but he was not permitted to do so. His prefatory poems in the Folio are full of double-speak. The Bard’s picture has long been ridiculed as a work of art, the head too big for the body on which it sits, the face lacking humanity. It’s more like a mask. Jonson’s ten-line poem referring to the picture commends the engraver on having “hit” the author’s face so effectively. Given the spelling conventions of the time, “hit” is just as legitimately the past tense of “hide”: the engraver succeeded in hiding the face, which is why Jonson advises the reader to “look /Not on his Picture but his Booke”. The eighty-line commendatory poem that follows is analysed in James and Rubinstein, and, as mentioned, Neal Platt has also sent me his analysis of the poem. There is time here to mention just a few points. First, note the unusual wording of the first line: “To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name”. N-V is another reference to Ne-ville. And the word anvile, spelt A-N-V-I-L-E,
followed by the words “turn the same (and himself with it)”. If we turn
“anvile” we can get “Navile”, another spelling of “Neville”. Jonson also tells
us to “Look how the father’s face/Lives in his issue”. Shakespeare of Stratford
didn’t have a surviving son, and it is unlikely that Jonson ever set eyes on his
daughters. Neville, on the other hand, had five surviving sons, the oldest, his
heir, Henry, known to have his father’s distinctive red hair.
Another friend who was certainly in the know about Neville the writer was
Ralph Winwood. In February 1604 Neville wrote to Winwood,
But I am out of my proper Orb when I enter into State Matters; I will therefore leave these
Considerations to those to whom they appertain, and think of my husbandry in the Country, which
puts me often in the mind of that Beatitude which Horace so much commends.
This is an astounding confession from one whose political ambition was to be
Secretary of State. If a politician is out of his proper orb with state matters,
where indeed is his proper orb? The answer for this particular politician is
provided in the remainder of the sentence: the beatitude commended by
Horace is staying in the country and being inspired to write. From the Odes,
Book 1, number 17, fourth stanza, in translation:
The gods protect me: my devotion and my Muse are dear to the gods. Here the rich wealth
of the countryside’s beauties will flow to thee from the horn of plenty.
[Di me tuentur, dis pietas mea
et Musa cordi est. Hic tibi copia
manabit ad plenum benigno
ruris honorum opulenta cornu]
And finally, from George Carleton, a clergyman who had been at Oxford with
Neville and was also a close friend of Henry Savile. He would in time marry
Neville’s widow, and he would be consecrated Bishop. But in 1603 he was
simply an admirer of Neville, in whose honour he published a lengthy Latin
poem. I managed to get a copy of this poem only the week before last, and my
eyes immediately lit on its closing stanza. At such times it helps a mere
musician with a smattering of Latin to count Classics scholars among his
friends, and I am grateful to Roger Sworder for the following literal
translation:
Now because virtue has registered thee in that book, doubtless, O thou who wilt have
made leisure-time for our muses, the shadow of thy name will cover these small mosaics
of great heroes: receive these things also with your accustomed expression. Who indeed
denies that those things should be exalted by greater actors? Further still I acknowledge
the attempts of my feeble muse, nor in the least does glory attract me in this praise: nor
does the name of prophet laid as an accusation misrepresent me. Nay, against the
murmurs defend thy prophet with a shield. It will be enough that our muse has attempted
deeds sung around the world and most celebrated in and of themselves, without a
prophet.
[Iam quia te virtus albo signavit in isto,
Scilicet, ô nostris qui feceris otia musis,
Nominis umbra tui magnorum emblemata parva
Protegat Herôum: solito haec quoque suscipe vultu.
Illa quidem maioribus attollenda cothurnis
Quis negat? ultro etiam tenuis tentamina musae
Agnosco, nec in hac quicquam me gloria laude
Sollicitat: nec me vatis pro crimine nomenObiectum fallit. Quin contra murmura vatem
Tu clypeo defende tuum. Cantata per orbem
Et sine vate sibi per se celeberrima gesta
Herôum, sat erit nostram tentasse Camenam.]
Did Carleton believe that it was now safe to acknowledge Neville as a writer,
given that Elizabeth was dead and Neville was out of the Tower? Despite the
difficulties of rendering his Latin in English it is clear that he wants to
proclaim Neville’s art, so great that even the Muses can be given some time
off, so great that it overshadows the representations of the heroes themselves,
so great that it deserves to be performed by better actors, so great, indeed,
that the poet’s art will be celebrated around the world.
* * *
I’ve had various responses to my talking about Neville as Shakespeare. My
nine-year-old granddaughter got wind of it and said, “Who cares, they’re just
dead men.” A different kind of response came from a musical colleague in
Vienna: “Oh no, what are they going to do with all those mugs and T-shirts?”
Next year, on 10 July, a small number of people around the world, thanks to
Brenda James’ discovery and the subsequent work of Bill Rubinstein and John
Casson in particular, will commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of
one of the greatest thinkers and writers humanity has known.
The following year, on 23 April, millions around the world will commemorate
the 400th anniversary of the death of a businessman, money-lender and minor
actor — and the mugs and T-shirts will gross a fortune.
Given the current priorities of the human race this is perhaps as it must be.You can also read
