Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
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Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (April 12, 1550 – June 24, 1604) was an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, poet, sportsman and patron of the arts. He was born at Castle Hedingham to John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford and Margery Golding.
De Vere is most famous today as one of the alleged authors of the works of William Shakespeare, a claim that most historians and literary scholars reject but which is supported by a growing number of researchers and theatre practitioners. For further information on this topic, see Oxfordian theory.
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[edit] Life
De Vere's father died suddenly in 1562, and the twelve-year-old de Vere became Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. His mother remarried several months later and much of the young earl's ancestral lands were claimed by Lord Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester). While still a minor, Oxford was made a royal ward and was placed in the household of Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer, a member of Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council, and her closest and most trusted advisor. Burghley is regarded by most Elizabethean scholars as the prototype for the character of Polonius in Hamlet. Under Burghley's stewardship, de Vere was trained in French, Latin, writing and drawing, cosmography, music and dance, horsemanship, combat, falconry, & hunting.[1]
His known tutors included the classical scholar and diplomat Sir Thomas Smith, and Laurence Nowell, one of the founding fathers of Anglo-Saxon studies. Nowell was hired to tutor the young earl in 1563, the same year that Nowell signed his name on the only known copy of the Beowulf manuscript (also known as the "Nowell Codex"). He was taught Latin by his maternal uncle, Arthur Golding, and there is speculation that Oxford may have assisted him in the first English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses[2].
In 1564, while both were living at Burghley House, Golding wrote of his young student:
| “ | "It is not unknown to others, and I have had experience thereof myself, how earnest a desire your honour hath naturally graffed in you to read, peruse and communicate with others as well the histories of ancient times and things done long ago, as also the present state of things in our days and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit, and ripeness of understanding" | ” |
Oxford entered the Royal Court in the late 1560s, upon which one contemporary wrote he would have surpassed all other courtiers in the Queen's favour, were it not for his "fickle head". Oxford nevertheless gained great favour and went on to become a tilting champion in several Elizabethan tournaments. He obtained a bachelor's degree from the University of Cambridge in 1564, a master's degree from the University of Oxford in 1566, and legal training at Gray's Inn circa 1567. John Brooke in his dedicatory epistle of The Staff of Christian Faith, published in 1577 said of Oxford:
| “ | "For if in the opinion of all men, there can be found no one more fitte, for patronage and defence of learning, then the skilfull: for that he is both wyse and able to iudge and discerne truly thereof. I vnderstanding righte well that your honor hathe continually, euen from your tender yeares, bestowed your time and trauayle towards the attayning of the same, as also the vniuersitie of Cambridge hath acknowledged in graunting and giuing vnto you such commendation and prayse thereof, as verily by righte was due vnto your excellent vertue and rare learning. Wherin verily Cambridge the mother of learning, and learned men, hath openly confessed: and in this hir confessing made knowen vnto al men, that your honor being learned and able to iudge as a safe harbor and defence of learning, and therefore one most fitte to whose honorable patronage I might safely commit this my poore and simple labours" | ” |
On 23 July 1567, the seventeen-year old Oxford killed an unarmed under-cook by the name of Thomas Brincknell while practicing fencing with Edward Baynam, a merchant tailor, in the backyard of Cecil's house in the Strand. In the ensuing trial it was alleged the victim had run upon the point of Oxford's sword and was thereby condemned as a suicide. (Interestingly, the English chronicler and Shakespeare source Raphael Holinshed was one of the jurors at this trial.)
On 19 December 1571, in an arranged wedding, Oxford married Lord Burghley's fifteen-year-old daughter, Anne Cecil — a surprising choice since Oxford was of the oldest nobility in the kingdom whereas Anne was not originally of noble birth, her father having only been raised to the peerage that year by Queen Elizabeth to enable the marriage of social inequals. At the age of twenty-one, Oxford regained control of some of his lands. His marriage produced five children, including three daughters who survived infancy. He toured France, Germany and Italy in 1575, and was thought to be of Roman Catholic sympathies, as were many of the old nobility.
On his return across the English Channel, Oxford's ship was hijacked by pirates, who stripped him naked, apparently with the intention of murdering him, until they were made aware of his noble status, upon which he was allowed to go free, albeit without most of his possessions. Further controversy ensued after he found that his wife had given birth to a daughter during his journey, and separated from her on grounds of adultery, complaining that she had become "the fable of the world". Francis Osborne (1593-1659) included a bed-trick anecdote about Oxford in his Historical Memoires on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James (1658). According to Osborne (who had been a servant to the Herberts), Philip Herbert, then earl of Montgomery (and later Pembroke), was struck in the face by a Scottish courtier named Ramsey at a horse race at Croydon. Herbert, who did not strike back, “was left nothing to testifie his Manhood but a Beard and Children, by that Daughter of the last great Earl of Oxford, whose Lady was brought to his Bed under the notion of his Mistress, and from such a vertuous deceit she [that is, Pembroke’s wife] is said to proceed.”
In 1580, Oxford accused several of his Catholic friends of treason, and denounced them to the Queen, asking mercy for his own Catholicism, which he repudiated. These same friends in turn denounced Oxford, accusing him of pederasty, bestiality, and of plotting to murder a host of courtiers, including Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Leicester. The charges were not taken seriously, although Oxford never completely recovered the Queen's favour and his reputation was thereafter tarnished.
He fathered an illegitimate child by Anne Vavasour, Sir Edward Vere, in 1581, and was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London. The illicit congress with Vavasour led to a prolonged quarrel with Sir Thomas Knyvett, her uncle, resulting in three deaths and several other injuries. Oxford himself was lamed in one of the duels. The imbroglio was put to an end when the Queen threatened to jail all those involved. By Christmas of 1581, Oxford had reconciled with Anne Cecil and once again cohabited with her.
In 1585 Lord Oxford was given a military command in the Netherlands, and served during the Battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588. His first wife Anne Cecil died in 1588 at the age of 32. In 1591, Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour. This marriage produced his heir, Henry, the 18th Earl of Oxford. The Earl's three daughters all married into the peerage: Elizabeth married William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby (|Lord Derby); Bridget married Francis Norris, 1st Earl of Berkshire (Lord Berkshire); Susan married Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke (Lord Montgomery), one of the “INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN” to whom William Shakespeare's First Folio would later be dedicated.
In 1586 he was granted an annual pension of £1,000 by the Queen, which continued to be paid by her successor, King James I.
In 1603, Oxford was granted his decades-long suit for the Stewardship of Waltham Forest and Havering-atte-Bower, but enjoyed the privilege for less than a year. He died in 1604 of unknown causes at King's Hold, Hackney Wick, Middlesex, England, and was apparently buried at Hackney, although his cousin, Percival Golding (son of Arthur Golding), reported a few years later that he was buried at Westminster Abbey.
[edit] Writing
Oxford was described as both a poet and a playwright in his own lifetime, but little of his poetry, and none of his plays, have survived, at least under his own name, bearing in mind the testament of the anonymously published Arte of English Poesie (1589), in which the author, possibly George Puttenham, observed: “So as I know very many notable gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably and suppressed it agayne, or els sufred it to be publisht without their own names to it, as it were a discredit for a gentleman, to seeme learned, and to show himselfe amorous of any good Art.” Further along in the book, the author continued: “And in her Majesties time that now is are sprong up an other crew of Courtly makers Noble men and Gentlemen of her Majesties owne servauntes, who have written excellently well as it would appeare if their doings could be found out and made publicke with the rest, of which number is first that noble Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford” (STC 20519). Oxford's status as a dramatist is also based on the testimony of Francis Meres, in whose Palladis Tamia (1598) Oxford is listed among "the best for comedy" (STC 17834).
Only a small corpus of Oxford’s poems and songs are extant under his own name, the dates of which (and, in some cases, the authorship) are uncertain; most of these are signed "Earle of Oxenforde" or "E.O." [1]. During his lifetime, Oxford was lauded by other English poets, though mostly in regard to his patronage (for example, see one of the epistolary sonnets to Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene). Oxford’s voluminous catalogue of letters are focused mainly on business affairs concerning such matters as the Cornish tin monopoly and his ongoing desire for several royal monopolies and stewardships [2]. These letters make no mention of a dramatic career, although Oxford maintained both adult and children's theatre companies and was a patron of several writers. Those who dedicated works to Oxford include the aforementioned Edmund Spenser, as well as Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, John Lyly, Anthony Munday, Thomas Churchyard, and Thomas Watson.
Two of Oxford’s “literary” letters were published in 1571 (1572 New Style) and 1573. The first of these was written in Latin as a dedicatory epistle to Bartholomew Clerke's Latin translation of Baldassare Castiglione’s Il Cortegiano (The Courtier), while the second, written in English with accompanying verses, was an epistle to Thomas Bedingfield's English translation of Cardanus' Comfort (from the Latin of De consolatione libri tres by the Italian mathematician and physician Girolamo Cardano). The latter book, published at Oxford’s command, has sometimes been cited by scholars as “Hamlet’s book” (possibly the same book where Hamlet found “words, words, words”) due to several close verbal parallels between it and Shakespeare’s play, particularly a passage on the unsavoriness of old men’s company, to which Hamlet seems to refer in his satirical banter with Polonius (re: plum-tree gum, plentiful lack of wit, most weak hams, etc), as well a passage with remarkable similarities to Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy.
[edit] Shakespeare controversy
In 1920, J. Thomas Looney advanced the hypothesis that Oxford was the actual author of Shakespeare's plays due to: Oxford's advanced education; knowledge of aristocratic life, the military and the law; background in the theatre; the praise accorded Oxford's works; and numerous similarities between Oxford's life and the plays. According to his hypothesis, Oxford had no choice but to publish under a pseudonym, since it would have been considered disgraceful for an aristocrat to be writing for the public theatre, a claim considered by some Renaissance scholars, including Steven W. May, to be incongruous with Elizabethan print histories[3], but which has been defended by both orthodox scholars and anti-Stratfordians, including Diana Price, who states, "Many members on the top rungs of the Tudor aristocracy had outstanding reputations as poets. But none of them published their creative work. The earl of Surrey's attributed poems were published in miscellanies after his death. So were Thomas, [Baron] Lord Vaux's. The earl of Oxford published nothing during his lifetime. Further down the social ladder were Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Edward Dyer, and Sir Fulke Greville, all of whom also earned reputations as writers. None of them published their work, either. Like those of their social betters, the relatively few poems that appeared in print turned up in miscellanies."[4]
Notable Oxfordians include Sigmund Freud, diplomat and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Paul Nitze, Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, former British judge Christmas Humphreys, biographer and historian David McCullough, columnist Joseph Sobran, as well as actors Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Michael York, Jeremy Irons, and Mark Rylance (former Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre) [5].
This hypothesis constitute the core of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, and the debate over it remains contentious. Evidentiary gaps within and problems with the Oxfordian hypothesis have prevented many academics from considering its viability. For example, Stratfordians argue that Oxford's 1604 death prevents him from witnessing certain events (for instance the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the wreck of the Sea Venture in Bermuda in 1609) thought to be alluded to in Shakespearean dramas such as Macbeth and The Tempest, respectively. Contemporary poetic tributes to Shakespeare from writers such as Ben Jonson and Leonard Digges (who refer to Shakespeare as "Sweet swan of Avon!" and mention his "Stratford Moniment" in the First Folio), and William Basse (who explicitly mentions Shakespeare dying in 1616), seem to provide some of the clearest evidence for the Stratford Shakespeare's status as a reputed poet. Oxfordians respond that modern research shows that not one of Shakespeare's plays has a "proven source published after 1604. Furthermore, Mark Anderson has provided research that implies shows that the regular publication of Shakespeare's plays stopped in 1604 and has cited several examples that imply that Shakespeare (the playwright) was deceased prior to 1609, when the Sonnet were published with the reference "ever-living poet".[3]
Other candidates who have been put forward as the actual author of the Shakespeare works include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, all of whom are predominantly rejected by the academic establishment. Further insights and debating points from the Stratfordian perspective may be viewed at The Shakespeare Authorship website [6] and from the Oxfordian perspective at The Shakespeare Fellowship website [7].
[edit] Notes and references
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Earl of Oxford |
Lord Great Chamberlain 1562–1604 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Oxford |
| Peerage of England | ||
| Preceded by John de Vere |
Earl of Oxford 1562–1604 |
Succeeded by Henry de Vere |
