As Elizabeth wrote in her letter to the Lord protector Edward Seymour on 28 January 1549: "Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumors abroad which be greatly both against mine honor and honesty, which above all other things I esteem, which be these: that I am in the Tower and with child by my lord admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which, besides the great desire I have to see the king’s majesty, I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am."
she lied alot in her letter and was crafty and a master politician, she maybe had just given birth or whatever and wanted to prove her innocence. Based on history and her track record of lies in poltiical games I wouldn't trust anythign she says.
@@leslieangela9114I bet you have never read that letter in the first place. Start to think with your head and think about the implications of these words. If Elizabeth had given birth (and when would that be then? Where is the evidence that she was pregnant in the first place?) she wouldn't have raised this matter and asked to prove it when she easily could be examined by midwives. You can't dismiss her words as lies without proving that she was lying. Also, Elizabeth was only 15 years old year here and under severe stress.
Indigo I wasn’t arguing with your ability to quote the historical record. I was responding to your obnoxious, condescending response to @Leslie Angela. And I wish I could study Elizabethan History, but obviously you are the only one who holds all that knowledge, so...
@@annebrewer7882 Eyebrows, really? I guess you see what you want to see.Those features in different portraits can look differently. And even if there were some similarity in appearance so what? As I noted above even people who are not each other's relatives can look remarkably similar. Let's ascribe now every nobleman or every noblewoman whose portraits to us seem similar in that or other way to Elizabeth's to her children? Absurd. One must be deluded to the point of insanity to use such perceived similarity as an argument proving that he was Elizabeth's son.
My mum always told us her family the De Vere Hunt’s were related to the man who could have been Shakespeare. Our family home is named Curragh Chase in Bendigo, Australia after the house in Ireland where the De Vere Baron’s lived with links to the Earl’s of Oxford through marriage I think. We are just starting to learn about the family history to see what we discover. Thanks for the interesting knowledge.
I would imagine that every man, boy and child wanted to be the author of Shakespeare's works ... they were said to have been popular with the masses when performed. I have a favorite Shakespeare quote: He that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail (from Romeo and Juliet). Happy Easter, everyone!
Of course there’s also the story that Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton, is QE’s son by de Vere.... But it *is* a fact that Henry was briefly engaged to Oxford’s daughter, arranged, of course, by William Cecil, who arranged many people’s lives, whether they liked it or not.
@@sarosch Wriothsely ,earl of Southampton is also supposed to have been William Shakespeare's gay lover -the youth described in the sonnets and he is depicted as such in the movie "All is true' and played by Ian McKellen.
Elizabeth's enemies would have had spies in her household/palaces and there is no way she could have hidden a pregnancy for nine months, much less birth and recovery. How would her ladies have gotten rid of soiled linens, placenta, cloths without anyone noticing or wondering? She had too many eyes watching her every move constantly.
@@ingerabrams4569 Oxford almost completely dissipated his fortune with high living and chronic incompetence in running his own financial affairs. He was a broke Earl long before he died.
I’ve read so many works about the Tudors I forget where I read it but it was thought that Elizabeth I had several secret children who were placed by Cecil in noble households to be fostered. Knowing de Vere was the eldest of the queen’s bastard children he took charge of him specifically with the goal being to have his daughter marry him, reveal him as Elizabeth’s son and heir and have his bloodline eventually sit on the throne of England. He was also young and still considerably well of when they married.
Dear Claire, this is the first time I have commented on any of your many talks in this series, so let's start with a VERY big thankyou from me for your excellent videos (I plan on buying your book 'this day in Tudor history' very soon). I watched them all, day by day, until work intervened after about the first 4 months, but happily have just retired so have a LOT of catching up to do, including buying your book, perhaps books even? I find your talks and style very entertaining (btw I love the intervening cats, dogs, quizzes with hubby and, of course, those bells).More than this, as an academic myself (albeit a bioscientist with amateur history interests) I really value that you do your homework and find your research is generally excellent. If I could afford it I would love to come on one of your 'Anne Boleyn' tours next time you manage to do one including the Tower, Penshurst, Hever etc. Another book I need to purchase is Alan Nelson's 'Monstrous adversary' that you refer to here because everything I have read from/about it suggests it is the best-researched biography of Edward de Vere, bar none. HOWEVER it is very very clear that Alan Nelson has an axe to grind and loathes this man (his book is littered with derogatory and belittling language whenever he refers to de Vere). Perhaps because, like you, his colours are nailed so firmly to the mast of the man from Stratford upon Avon. Notwithstanding, a huge number of contemporary authors (1580's-90's) ALL describe de Vere as noble and accomplished, especially in poetry and the stage. Much of the 'bad press' comes from the denunciations of the three guys de Vere 'shopped' to the queen as catholics that you mention, even though one of these at least turned out to be a very bad guy who wrote against Leicester (Leicester's Commonwealth) and the Queen (Elizabeth) in league with the French where he fled and/or the Spanish. Interestingly, his incoherent denunciation of deVere is parodied not quite word for word (but close) in much ado about nothing. Two more Shakespeare links that may persuade you are that de Vere is credited with bringing to court (from Italy) the fashion for gifting and wearing perfumed gloves (hence gloves in the plays?) and on his return from Italy was waylaid by pirates and left naked on the shores of England (something identical happened to Hamlet in Shakespeare's version which experts still find a puzzling and weird inclusion in that play). There is a lot of evidence that de Vere was a 'bad boy' (kept company with actors, got outrageously drunk on numerous occasions and spent all his inheritance) but also that Burghley and Burghley junior (Robert Cecil - who if you want to label anyone as bad, was an evil scheming 'winner') did all they were able to in stripping de Vere of his inheritance. I do NOT believe de Vere was Elizabeth's son - the timing is all wrong. I do however, believe he knew Shakespeare and either wrote the plays himself or else was a major inspiration to whoever did because echoes of his life are in the plots of many Shakespeare plays and also the sonnets and long poems dedicated to Southampton. I know you are very busy, but if you have never watched it then PLEASE look at this talk from Tom Regnier who has just very sadly succumbed to COVID. He makes an argument in his talk that the HUGE number of circumstantial 'coincidences' between the life of Edward de Vere and the content of 'Shake-Speare's plays would in modern law (Regnier trained as a lawyer and the plays are riddled with legal knowledge) be accepted as evidence of authorship much stronger than any proposed or proposable for the man from Stratford. Here's the link : th-cam.com/video/EAprYZnjGX4/w-d-xo.html.
A great irony of the authorship movement is that Henry Clay Folger, founder of that bastion of Stratfordian tradition in Washington, D.C., the Folger Shakespeare Library, was an Oxfordian sympathizer. Folger took such keen interest in J. T. Looney’s 1920 identification of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford as “Shakespeare” that, five years later in 1925, he bought the Geneva Bible the earl had purchased in 1570 at age nineteen. It’s now kept locked in a vault and not many are allowed to see it & the handwritten notes and underlining made by de Vere to use in his plays.
Not true. Like so many things you believe, that's a folk tale Oxfordians have been telling each other for so long that the origins of the myth are lost.
At the age of 5, Edward de Vere was lodged with Thomas Smith, one of the most erudite scholars in England, and stayed under Smith's tutelage until he was 12 years old. It was at this point in time that William Cecil took over his education. Earlier, while Smith was abroad, de Vere was sent off to university. At the time he was all of seven years old. Apparently de Vere was an intellectual prodigy. It may well be that he was the cad described here, but that does not determine his creative intellect. Artists are notorious for being undisciplined. One must look at de Vere's books to get a picture of why Oxfordians have a theory. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, French and Italian. We could attribute this to his years with Thomas Smith as well as his years under Cecil's tutors, one of whom translated Ovid's Metamorphosis from Latin into English. This tutor, Arthur Golding, never wrote a single book that remotely looks like the translation attributed to him, whereas the rhyming scheme in this English translation shows up in de Vere's poetry. Of course, Ovid's poems were central to most of Shakespeare's works, notably the first work published with the name William Shakespeare in 1593, Venus and Adonis. Did the 16 year old Edward de Vere write the translation but demur on the credit? Was this typical of his public face, being a concealed poet? Gloves do appear in Shakespeare's canon, but did you know that Edward de Vere introduced Italian gloves into the Elizabethan Court? Gloves were one of his infamous affectations. In his case, they were not only magnificently embroidered. They were also perfumed. The courtiers took to the style, and Elizabeth was very fond of the gloves de Vere gave to her as a gift when he returned from Italy. Indeed, it is the degree to which the canon takes place in Italy and de Vere's comprehensive knowledge of Italy and the Italian Renaissance that made him a focus of study. Italy is far from Stratford on Avon, but Italy was very close to the heart of Edward de Vere. He knew much about it and details in the plays and poems are quite remarkable for their accuracy. But was he Elizabeth's "love child" by Thomas Seymour? The evidence is that Seymour made illicit advances on the Princess Elizabeth. She was removed to another wardship for her safety. However, once outside the court she was not seen for nine months, skipping weddings and funerals which she should have attended. This suggests she had something to hide. It could be she was pregnant and gave birth in secret. Even so, there is no way to know that such a "love child" was Edward de Vere. It could have been a girl or another boy, and it might not have lived to maturity either.
It was not uncommon for noble children to lodge at Oxbridge. What WAS uncommon was for them to stay such a short time and be sent home for repeatedly breaking windows. Please document your claim that Smith was one of the "most erudite scholars in England". When De Vere was 12, Smith said there was nothing more he could do for De Vere. Arthur Golding was never his tutor. He received two honorary M.A.s which were given to everyone in the Queen's entourage, but never the B.A. you had to actually earn. Far from being a prodigy, he was clearly a bit dim, as his poetry and his letters demonstrate. Gloves were worn by everyone long before De Vere made Italian gloves fashionable. And Shakespeare made so many boners about Italy (and other places De Vere had been) that it's pretty clear he'd never been there. And Elizabeth heard the rumors of her pregnancy and wrote to Edward Seymour, inviting him to find out for himself by meeting with her.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Claire Ridgway brings Tudor culture to life. The lodging of the children of nobility is a goodly topic, and I hope it comes around. Sir Thomas Smith's life is not a difficult biography to uncover. He left an indelible record which inspires our respect for British intellectual accomplishment coming out of Feudalism. That he housed the child Oxford for eight years is not disputed. What de Vere got out of the lodging is open to interpretation. We see a letter written from the child to William Cecil in perfect court French which reflects Smith's own command of the language as Ambassador to France from England. One could hear Smith's evaluation of that surviving example of de Vere's command of language as "I have nothing more to give him." During this period, while Smith was abroad, de Vere was lodged in college and not his ancestral home. The choice points to the child's preferences. It seems he liked school from an early age. Smith's home, while Smith was in England, provided a rich intellectual environment, including a large library and Smith's own pursuits in the classics. Yes, gloves were popular. Having a better glove gained attention. The Italians took this to new heights with embroidery and perfume. De Vere spent liberally to purchase quantities which he distributed in Court. Elizabeth R spoke highly of the gift. De Vere spent a year in Italy, visiting the locations that show up in the Shakespeare canon in startling faithful levels of detail. Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance, was a touchstone for the Tudor period. The influence of Golding on de Vere is a topic that merits scholarly study. This much we know. When Golding and de Vere were both lodged at Cecil House, Golding produced a translation from Latin to English of Ovid's Metamorphosis. It is indisputable that this poem is a bedrock of the Shakespearean Canon. Golding was de Vere's uncle. To say that they were living in the same house for two years while de Vere was a student of Latin and that they did not see each other, with an emphasis on Roman literature, defies logic. What students of literature can also tease out from this episode is that for some reason William Golding veered from his normal pursuits, the study of the writings of Calvin and other strict proto-Puritans, to delve into the raunchy world of one of Rome's most debauched poets. From Golding's pen then came lines of poetry that have stood for centuries as the most telling translation of Ovid. The meter and rhyme of this translation appear in poems published under de Vere's name as well as Shakespeare's. The tales told by Ovid appear in Shakespeare. Among the raciest and most sexually explicit were Venus and Adonis followed immediately by Lucrece, poems that launched the name Shakespeare in 1593 and 1594 with cannon shots that awakened the Tudor world to the name "Shakespeare." Pardon the pun. If moral bearing was a criterion used to identify a poet/playwright, Edward de Vere could be discounted, but of course, the personality of a poet/playwright is more likely socially offensive than not. For no less of a reason, gentlemen of the Tudor period did not make known their indulgences in these arts nor live out their lives in Bohemian style as de Vere was known to have done. The life of an artist is quite at odds with Court behaviors, and de Vere found himself in hot water again and again. Yet to discount that he was known as a poet and playwright from contemporary records is blinkered to the point of blindness. While not publishing poetry under his own name after reaching majority, it is indisputable that he kept producing. What is known of his life has a direct bearing on the Shakespearean canon. Hamlet is a play that draws directly from what we know of de Vere's life including references to unique events ascribable to no other person of record. The play is a tragedy which concludes with Hamlet begging to be remembered. It is a tragedy still to witness the derogatory invective being ladled out by an institutionalized campaign to discredit him.
@@tomditto3972 De Vere lived in the same house with his uncle while he was translating Ovid. He had a tutor for eight years who dropped him at age 12. He was fluent in French. A couple of plot points in a couple of plays resemble events in the life of De Vere, though none of them either closely or exclusively. Everything else you wrote you have imagined.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Thank you for granting that de Vere was fluent in French when he arrived from Smith's care to Cecil's. If you wind back to our debate four years ago, you argued that a letter in high Court French that he sent to William Cecil might have been prepared by a subordinate. The 13 year old Earl was in a position to make demands like that,. Being spoiled by birthright to such power he behaved like a privileged brat. At 18 he murdered a servant and got away with it when Cecil managed to represent the death as the victim's suicide. The legal inquiry recorded that the sous cook threw himself upon de Vere's sword. The plot point shows up in Hamlet. Yet deep personality flaws aside, it is clear that de Vere reveled in the magic of language, going so far as to write a preface in Latin to a translation he commissioned from Italian to English for what scholars have since identified as "Hamlet's book," a tome on chivalry from which was borrowed the thematic core of the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy. I am not making that up. Being polylingual in these languages no doubt endeared him to Elizabeth R, because she too had mastered Latin and Italian at an early age. I cannot resist imagining the banter at Court as these two parlayed above the heads of their inferiors in both rank and intellect, but admittedly, I am making that banter up. What is known by written record is that de Vere spent time away from his wife and with Elizabeth in the years 1572-73 while the Queen was in retreat at Nonsuch Palace, a relatively small and intimate setting constructed of wood and no longer standing, alas. Imagine what Claire Ridgway could do with such a locale if it was intact.
@@tomditto3972 If it were true that said plot point showed up in Hamlet, then Polonius would have been one of the lowest servants in the castle, not the highest, actually not a servant at all. Nobody represented the death of Polonius as a suicide. The only thing the two incidents have in common is death by steel. And De Vere COULD have had the letter written by a clerk, for all you know. You claim that he wrote V & A completely without evidence. Anything can happen in your world. De Vere probably wrote the letter, though. We have someone later praising his ability with Italian, so why not French? Unlike today, where speaking two languages is a rarity (among Americans, at least), it was common then. Shakespeare knew Latin (but less Greek). Richard Field left the Stratford grammar school ready for an apprenticeship with a polyglot printer in London. Riddle me this: if twelve year-old De Vere had nothing left to learn from one of the greatest scholars in history (or whatever you dubbed him), why did Beaumont say Shakespeare's works were "without scholarship"? Why did Ben Jonson say he "wanted art"? Why did John Ward say Shakespeare was a "natural wit, without any art at all?" Why do the works lack the high scholarship of Jonson or Drayton. If it was De Vere, his education was wasted.
@@helene4397 You would be surprised what Kings and Queens can hide. Elizabeth would 100% punish anything she regarded disobedience. Dresses were designed to hide pregnancy. It was expected of pregnant women to cover up. She was also accused of birthing illegitimate children by castle staff. Though that doesn't mean it is the truth, anything is possible. Do people really know what the current royals get up to? Not really, and there is much scandal in the royal family that has not been leaked to this day.
I saw a movie about Shakespeare had a ghost writer and at the end of this movie it revealed Queen Elizabeth had many lovers and children. Earl of Essex was one of them.
If Elizabeth was sent away, it would be for her own protection. I love William Shakespeare’s work. I will never accept that someone else wrote these plays and sonnets.
There are no documents that conclusively prove that Shaksper of Stratford was the poet, in actuality. He worked in one of the theatre companies owned by Lord Oxford, who, it is conjectured, hired him as a beard. The best reading about all this is “‘Shakespeare’ by Another Name,” by Mark Anderson.
@@sarosch He never worked in a theater owned by Oxford, who never owned a theater. He held a brief lease on a theater in Blackfriars, run by Lyly, but lost it in a court squabble. The Blackfriars theater later opened by The King's Men was in a different location, and years later.
@@sarosch That is wise of you, not only because one easily gets lost when one goes down rabbit holes, but also because what I just said is very well documented. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfriars_Theatre?wprov=sfla1 The lease of the former theater was actually held by Henry Evans, with John Lyly running the boy actors. De Vere was Lyly's patron. The lease was ceded back to the owner, Sir William More, after less than a year.
@@sarosch there is, indeed, conclusive evidence Shakespeare was Shakespeare. He wrote his parts with specific actors in mind with a deep knowledge of their talents and what roles suited them best, and he’s referenced by other contemporary playwrights in their plays.
Shakespeare was an artisan's son. How come he was able to pen so many great plays? So some people seem to think and they believe that only an educated aristocrat could have penned great works. And the icing on the cake was that he was actually royal as well. As for being Elizabeth' s child by Seymour - what nonsense. Some people have an unhealthy interest in Elizabeth's sex life. But that is the common fate of powerful women in public life. It:s as if the only interesting thing about them is sex, preferably delinquent sex. If Elizabeth had borne a child she would very quickly have been discovered by her maids or by a doctor.
@@miriamhavard7621 Elizabeth was different from her father. Not has Sociopathic for one thing. Secondly we know in detail about Henry's affairs and his various illegitimate children. All we have about Elizabeth is gossip at second and third hand. During the reign of Henry VIII we have detailed stories in their reports about Henry's sexual escapades about Elizabeth we have from the diplomats no details only gossip to the effect and frequent denials that such affairs were happening at all. Further the Queen's health was a topic of great interest to the court and diplomats in London. And with the fact that Elizabeth's ladies in waiting etc., were often paid to provide information to the foreign diplomats it is of interest that no such details were relayed to them. Finally just how was Elizabeth going to be able to conceal a pregnancy? A Mistress can be sent from Court. Elizabeth would not have dared to send herself away. I doubt Elizabeth had any love children or that she ever got pregnant.
@@miriamhavard7621 Excuse me what? Is being Henry's daughter now a diagnosis of having secret children? Would you argue that Mary I had a secret baby with Reginald Pole because she was Henry's daughter? And how being Henry's daughter was in that respect any way different from being a daughter of any other monarch of the time? Logic not found.
Another great talent at the time of Shakespeare was John Webster. He was a huge success. He was the son of an artisan - a carriage maker. The highly successful author of The Revengers' Tragedy was Thomas Middleton. He was the son of a bricklayer. Another great talent of the time was Christopher Marlowe, who was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe. I could go on. You see ... posh doen't mean talented. And 'common' doesn't mean stupid. Many of the most eminent politicians of the time - Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, for example, were of humble origin, so it was perfectly possible to base great success on an unpromising start. The pathetic idea that in order for a writer to be good he must be descended from a titled knob is very, very dumb. It is based on crashing snobbery and on the idea formed during the romantic period that good writing must be based entirely on personal experience. Almost all the Shakespeare canon is based on a source - a history, or an existing story. So your assertion is just plain wrong. Sorry. Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, Marlowe wrote Marlowe, and Webster wrote Webster.
@@MrMartibobs I completely agree! This same "reasoning" was why many supporters of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Russian princess Anastasia, refused to accept DNA evidence proving she was actually a Polish factory worker, Fransziska Schanzkowska (bad attempt at spelling). She seemed so "regal" & "cultured", & no "peasant" could possibly fake that! Posh or rich people don't have more talent, but they DO have more opportunity, so you end up with a circular argument (like "why aren't there more successful women, or black people, etc?") Also, if you're amused by the very idea of Kit Marlowe writing Shakespeare's work, & you haven't seen Upstart Crow, YOU MUST. It's written by Ben Elton, & David Mitchell is Shakespeare, which is reason enough to watch it imo!
Devere was also apparently fixated on gloves. He brought perfumed gloves back with him from Italy and gifted them to people at court including the queen. These scented gloves became an enduring fashion in the English Court. Stratford Shakspur's father was a city councilor and wool merchant. The monument to him attests to this, showing him with City mascot leopards and a bag o wool. Was he also a glovemaker?
Thanks Claire. I might need new glasses. I quickly glanced at my notification and thought it said " Fart of Oxford ". Wasn't far off though. Lol. Happy Easter.😁
No way is he Elizabeth s love child. She was brought up as a princess. She had a very strong personality and would not have been taken in so easily. No way.
@@l.plantagenet She was only 14 at the time. A child, not the wise woman she became. Also, Thomas Seymour, we know took advantage of her. Even Kat Ashley admitted he was inappropriate with Elizabeth. If he got her pregnant whose to say she was not forced? He could have raped her. In my mind he at least molested her(by today's standards) even if there was no penetration. One thing for sure, Thomas Seymour caused his own death not only by how he treated his nephew the young king, but what he did to Elizabeth, King Edward's half sister. If anything, after living through that, no wonder Elizabeth never wanted to marry. That had to be pretty traumatic for her. Not only Thomas Seymour's unwanted advances but Edward Seymour had her interrogated. She could have easily been executed too if it have been proved Seymour had seduced her. and she may would have married him. Because, even if she had been raped, they would have seen it as seduced, and her as guilty. So she would have not admitted that. Look at the example of Mary Queen of Scots. Her third husband raped her, and she married him after that, as he knew she would to salvage her reputation. As the woman was usually blamed in that time period and that was the only way to salvage her reputation. Don't forget too with Elizabeth, Cecil was already her champion by then, he had the foresight to see she may would be queen one day, so he would have done whatever he could to have helped her out.
Of course the evidence to me is he was grooming her to marry him in case Katherine Parr died in child birth. after all she was 36 years old and it was her first pregnancy. He had to know there was a considerable chance she could die as even women in their 20's died in childbirth. Besides, even if Elizabeth had a child by him (there were rumors at the time) there is no evidence Edward deVere was her child.
And that's exactly how she wanted to be seen. It's amazing how she's still succeeding. There are things we would never know, even who she really was. As a monarch she had to present a certain image of herself, even more as a woman on the throne. But who she was privately? Who knows. I think there always is a possibility she wasn't a virgin. I'd be even more inclined to believe that.
Correction, you're a fan of William Shaksper (not William Shakespeare), a man who never owned a book (in English or the untranslated foreign sources the play author uses) or wrote anything other than the plays, and left three illiterate daughters, and never traveled (to Italy or anywhere else), who would have had no access to the court (despite setting nearly all his plays there), etc. etc.--but the plays mention glovemaking, so it had to be him.
A: How do you know he never owned a book? B: What sources were untranslated? C: He had two daughters, one of which was provably literate. D: He got so many things about Europe wrong that it's no surprise he never traveled. E: The patron of his acting company was the Queen's cousin, who was her Lord Chamberlain. F: The plays also mention people and places from Shakespeare's home town, plus everyone said it was him, so it had to be him.
Another informative video, Claire -- thank you! Re: Edward de Vere as Elizabeth's love child -- the dates don't work. The only time when Elizabeth *might* have been impregnated by Thomas Seymour was *before* Jan. 16, 1549, when Seymour was arrested. So any spawn would have been born by October of 1549 -- not in April, 1550 (when Edward de Vere was born). Elizabeth was *not* an elephant, so a pregnancy lasting more than 9 months was impossible. After Seymour's death, Elizabeth was *watched* too closely for any sexual affaire to be possible, as she told Kat Ashley years later. As for de Vere as the Bard of Avon: I don't swallow that line either! Shakespeare had access to sources which provided him with foreign narratives, such as the tales of Romeo & Juliet as well as Hamlet. He did not need to travel abroad to incorporate continental plots.
Yes, all of this. Not to mention that Elizabeth was ready to show herself at the court to refute the pregnancy rumour when she heard about it in the time of interrogations.
Right! He had access to all that information at the local library! Or was it the magical tavern where tradesmen/lawyers/sailors/doctors all freely swapped stories detailing the intricacies of their professions while also giving specific geographical details about Italy and France? (I can never remember which it is. Embarrassing!)
his birthday date is actually shown to be between 1547 to 1550, Exact date is unknown. I think he was her son by Thomas seymour. too much evidence. Cecil marries his daughter to him, he is raised as a royal ward despite having a living mother. She did lose her virginity to Seymour and maybe begot a few more kids with dudley whom she was most definitely sexually active with.
The court was full of intrigue upon intrigue. The bastard children of kings and queens were often placed with noble families to hide their true lineage. This was a common practice. Often the true birthdate of a child would be changed in order to hide his/her true parentage. Also, the poacher and merchant from Stratford could not read nor write in English let alone read texts used in Shakespeare in their original Latin or Greek as the true author did. Whomever the true author of the plays and sonnets was, it was NOT the rube from Stratford.
my friend, her first child, she carried toward the end of her "10th" month before her near 15lb baby was born. Her and her husband were laid off their jobs. So they ended up on welfare. Back in those days for the state of Iowa, (1987ish), required babies born on the state had to go to Iowa City to have their babies. They had a policy to not do c-sections without a medical reason other than just a delayed labor. I believe they stopped that policy since. Barbaric practice! So she carried her son to 10mos, and was born 15lbs+, aspirated myconium (developed pneumonia), and a broken clavicle! (she also couldn't breast feed because of teeth; I know of another woman from the same area has the same story. I baby sat for this 2nd woman. 8m old, he was a tank to feed a bottle, we used big pillows to proper him up right, you couldn't hold that until feeding was done.) It IS possible for long gestation periods. And not rare.
Thank you Claire! April 12 I turn 42. I enjoyed this entry today!! I opened a gift from my mom and she gifted me a “ Henry with 6 wives mug”.!! She has one herself. All very fun. May not be my Pottery artist taste fully but fun w tudors
I love your top and cardigan Claire!! Nice to see more outside of your house. That’s the dodgiest account of suicide I’ve ever heard!! Running into a Sabre!!😱🤭😬🤣 Oxford sounds like not a very nice person at all. Not someone I would trust or like! I agree with you Claire. I don’t think Oxford wrote any of Shakespeare’s plays I don’t think he was Elizabeth I’s son, I’m not sure the timing fits.
One might as well say the loser of a duel ‘committed or attempted to commit suicide’ because he agreed to a duel with a man who was more skilled than he was. Weasel excuses designed to ruin the winner’s reputation or just get him in trouble when duels were illegal.
I love all your videos Claire! Learning so much of the infamous Anne Boleyn is so much fun, as I can't continue my studies in these interesting times as my local library has been shut down
Surely Elizabeth would never have lived down the epithet "the Virgin Queen" if she had actually given birth to a child witnessed by so many of her household and known to the nobility. Thanks for another intriguing presentation. :)
While I have read the books and watched the videos of the Anti-Oxfordians, I never believed that any of the candidates wrote the works credited to William Shakespeare. I looked up famous American and English authors, including award winning writers and there are many who, like Shakespeare, do not have university degrees. Recently, I read Shakespeare's Book by Chris Loutaris, who is the historian for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The book is about the printing of the First Folio. There were too many people involved in the publishing of the works of Will to rationalize that his identity was a cover up.
Judge only after you have seen Alexander Waugh’s presentations which go far beyond the evidence of gloves being written about. It’s evidence that is unlikely by anyone to be refuted. Once you’ve seen it there is no question.
I also grew up in this part of the world and have loved the works of William Shakespeare for many years I remember the de Vere family owned a hotel near a castle where we used to play🤗👍
W/respect to de Vere's mother being the queen, I have no opinion but you have to resolve two problems. (1) She let him sign all of his correspondence as Edward the 7th. He only stopped on her death. (2) She paid him a warrant every year of approx 1 million dollars. Why? There is historical record of this.
He only signed it that way on one document, and that's not how monarchs signed their names. Even if it were, the heir apparent does not become the monarch until one's predecessor is deceased. To style oneself thusly while one's predecessor is still alive is commonly known as "suicide". And De Vere's welfare check was £1,000, or about $300k. She gave it to him because it would look bad for a peer of the realm to be on the side of the road begging. James continued it after Elizabeth died and even after Edward died continued to give £500 to his son.
He was Edward, 7th Earl of Oxford, and the signature included an earl's coronet. I'm pretty sure the warrant was less than you say, but I've forgotten the source.
@@ericloscheider7433 DeVere DIDN'T teach his daughters to read. He had nothing whatever to do with them. They were raised and educated by their grandfather.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Sorry- you’re right and my apologies. I agree that Oxford did not in fact personally teach his daughters to read. I should explain- I was not being literal, but making a sarcastic joke, using irony. Speakers sometimes will exaggerate or bend the literal truth in order to make a larger point. Of course we know that education for the upper classes was a given, and not so for the rest of society. This is probably why Shakspere left such vast quantities of money to his alma mater, the Stratford grammar school, endowed scholars and artists, patronized places of learning, and left so much evidence of a person who valued intellect and creativity in his will.
@@ericloscheider7433 Just curious, but how much did ANYONE leave to the Edward VI school, which was fully funded by the Stratford Corporation? Did people even leave legacies to their alma mater back then? For that matter, did De Vere leave anything to Oxbridge? Or did he leave "... so much evidence of a person who valued intellect or creativity in his will"? How about his personal letters? Any evidence of his vast intellect anywhere in those? Nope. No will at all. His letters betray no hint of learning, of poetry, of knowledge about any of the subjects Shakespeare is supposed to have been master. Only a desperation for money and an obvious East Anglian accent (common among aristos) which is entirely at odds with the rhyming patters in Shakespeare's works.
The man who was killed or committed suicide by running into Oxford's sword is remarkably similar to the suicide of Brutus in Act V of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.
J Andrews any child of a monarch could be elevated to the throne if the Monarch chose to acknowledge and elevate said child. They would however not take presidence over a child of a legal marriage
Kings and queen s from inheritance .today also in law in very few countrieis there is no illegitimate and legimate gap.although he aknowleged by his or father In most countries child cannot inherit father ,s properties with out wil Some couutrirs it is half than legimate children . So thoe dayas To be king you must be legimate.in england fot be a monarach If a child later legimated by parent,s marraiae cannoy bs monarach It is also valid today.
Well anything was possible back then. Elizabeth I also was taking very good care of another young fellow about the same time..Richard Edwards... It was suggested he was the illigitimate child of Henry VIII and Agnes Blewett.
No, not everything was possible. The claims must be based on evidence. And there's no evidence that Elizabeth had any children. In De Vere's case you only have to look at his birth date to understand that he can't be passed for Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour's child, I'm not even talking about other things. Seriously how gullible people can be?
@@juanasmith1901 Lol I never heard anyone said twins but rumors were going around that Seymour had gotten her pregnant in 1549. Supposedly started by a midwife who claimed she was blindfolded and taken to some unknown place and there she delivered a baby from a young girl with red gold hair who was of obvious nobility and possibly even royalty. Many believed it, others said the rumors were started by Thomas Seymour's enemies. However, no one back then ever said deVere was the child that did not come until modern times. Plus records say he was born the year before in 1548.
Edward de Vere would sign documents with two Vs which looks like a W. If you take the W away from William you're left with Illiam which sounds like Ilium, where Achilles defeated Hector with his shaking spear, aided by Pallas Athene, or Minerva. Edward de Vere was referred to by his fellow poets as "our Minerva" because he was a patron of poets. Using pseudonyms was common in those days and there are countless proofs that the author was Edward de Vere.
I’m happy to learn you studied English Literature, as I myself am I present student of English Literature & French!:) still fond of Tudor history of course!;)
Perhaps the next video will be about direct evidence, from William Shakspers life, that HE wrote the plays and sonets? Because nobody seems to know where any direct evidence, from his life time, is. Thank you...
@@Jeffhowardmeade I have searched this website and have not found any direct evidence from William Shaksper's lifetime to indicate he was a writer. Not one scrap.
@@josephhewes3923 Good thing you're not a detective. If you missed all of his contemporaries saying he was a poet, identifying him by name, by social rank, and by his other profession as an actor, if you missed the documents establishing his close association with the works and with the patrons who supported them, if you missed three pages of a manuscript in his own handwriting, I don't know what to say. They're all right there, for anyone who knows how to read.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I think Mark Twain was a great writer. He was wonderful with words. He was wonderful with his narratives. He was a wonderful writer. He was also a fiction. He didn't exist. Mark Twain was a pen name. I think Hillary Clinton did a wonderful job on her book, It Takes a Village. What a wonderful book. Wonderfully written... But not by Hillary Clinton. It was written by a GHOST writer. If you you think all of the references to "William Shakespeare" as a poet or writer tell us anything about the "actual" writer, your education has surely let you down. The name "William Shakespeare" was a pen name.
@@josephhewes3923 Since you can't provide any evidence that William Shakespeare was anyone other than the guy all of his fellow said he was, and yet you believe it anyway, then common sense has let you down. When a well-placed contemporary referred to William Shakespeare by name, and called him a gentleman, and referred to him as an actor or a member of the Lord Chamberlain's or King's Men, he can only have been referring to one person. Everybody knows that Mark Twain was a pen name for Samuel Clemens, because he talked openly about it. The publisher announced that Barbara Feinman would be the actual author of It Takes a Village, even though Clinton, herself, was stingy with credit. No such evidence exists for any claimant to the Shakespeare canon...except Shakespeare himself. There's no evidence that it was a pen name, no matter how many wild stories you invent about the name's origin.
A rather convincing argument about de Vere writing at least some Shakespeare plays, for me at least, is the detail of plays set in Italy. Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, etc, are so precise its as if the writer was an eye witness to life in italy and Italian society. For a man like Shakespeare, who certainly didn't have a vast education and never left England, it just seems strange that he would have such intricate knowledge. And de Vere was a writer and poet who'd grown up around the nobility and had the good fortune of a fine education, and he was well traveled in Europe. The arguments can be somewhat convincing. Anyway, thank you Claire. Looks lovely there!
It's been shown that Shakespeare's accounts of foreign countries are riddled with geographical errors and all the facts he does get right were found in a couple of a popular travel accounts of the time. Why do you think Shakespeare was incapable of doing some background research?
Plus he had written other stuff under his name and he was highly educated and high IQ. Shakespeare was not well educated as the son of a glove maker, but does not mean he could not have self educated himself if he was able to learn to read. that's the biggest argument they have about Shakespeare was that the working class did not know how to read and write.
@@ThePeachygal Shakespeare did not come from the "working class." His father was a craftsman and tradesman and his mother was from a lesser branch of the Arden family, an ancient noble family. Stratford had a school with Oxford educated teachers for the children of members of the Guildhall. Lists of students from those days have not survived, but we know the teachers' names and that they were paid better than Oxford profs. Since his father was active in town politics as well as the Guildhall, its practically impossible that he didn't attend this school. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare makes fun of one of those teachers. It's the only play he wrote about the middle class, and gives us insight into his childhood life.
HI Claire. I think your series is very well done. I've enjoyed watching several of your videos on the Boleyns and learned a great deal from your expertise. You're so very thorough, reasonable and insightful regarding your take on the historic facts and colorful fictions. I have a question - I have ancestors who were involved in the Tudor courts in various capacities or lived in Britain during that era. I'd like to find and copy original documents mentioning them and gather more information about their roles in the royal households , court, government and communities or possibly any documents they signed or wrote etc. Is(are) there a main repository(ies) for these kinds of documents ? If so , do they offer research and copy services ? How do you go about your own research for the extensive work you do ? Online sources are somewhat limited and I understand that 80% of historic documents are not online yet. Thank you, Taylor
I have ancestors that were minor courtiers at that court, too. I'm a descendent of Kathryne Swynford through her first marriage and one of her children's line married into Drury family and then the Cecils. I know, ew lol. But you have to admire the Cecils to some degree. They were scrappy.
People who believe that a stingy little business man without literacy or learning or travel, is so naive and just perpetuates the ignorance which is the hallmark of the feckless Stratford scholars. Edward de Vere was brilliant, whatever one may think about his betrayal of his friends over their religious sympathies. His belittling of the queen was not a nice trait, but she and Cecil effectively made off with most of his family inheritance and fortune. Whatever he had he spent supporting writers and poets. He has a few good points. But then the tourist industry must not be disappointed, must it? Oxford was definitely not the son of Elizabeth. He was only a ward.
There are some strange things that the Earl did which he seemed to weather with little problems... he went to flanders without the queens permission, yet when arrested, instead of being convicted of treason, Elizabeth accepted an appology and then allowed him to leave the country again, this time with permission. He was arrogant and entitled, and he easily received permission to marry from Elizabeth, which is strange because he was very attractive, and got away with so much that Elizabeth usually frowned upon, and associated with people as if HE was a royal... I think he greatly resembles Elizabeth, and even his coloring... when did the rumor actually arise in whispers and to public notice? He was certainly a fan of Norfolk, probably supported Mary Queen of Scots' claim and would have happily supported a Catholic restoration, and was against James becoming king after Elizabeth, but who would he have supported instead of James? Were there any whispers at the time of the Earl himself seeking the throne? I havent heard of anything like that... and why did he hate Elizabeth enough to bad mouth her in the way he did, it seemed more personal than religious...
De Vere suggested to the Earl of Lincoln on the eve of Elizabeth's death that the peers of the realm should decide the succession, and suggested Lincoln's nephew, the Earl of Huntingdon. Lincoln suspected he was being set up, and reported De Vere to an official at The Tower. De Vere was broke and ill and therefore no threat to the succession, and so the official took no action.
I am always stunned that there seem to be no comparisons for example of the style of William Skakespeare's sonets and of Edvard de Vere' s ones. There might be special expressions you find in both poems. You should probably focus on the similarities to find out whether they are the same authors.
Compare Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 with Edward de Vere's "These Beauties Make Me Die." The poems do not share the same structure, but they do share imagery and sentiment. De Vere paints his love in glowing terms and complimentary sentiments. Shakespeare uses many of the the same terms and imagery, but it seems that he is looking at his subject with a more mature eye than the young de Vere. De Vere's youthful innocence pervades his poem, while Shakespeare is older and a bit jaded, but besides that the poems seem to spring from the same mind. Either Shakespeare read De Vere's poem, or they are the same person. “These Beauties Make Me Die” 1 What cunning can express 2 The favour of her face, 3 To whom in this distress 4 I do appeal for grace? 5 A thousand Cupids fly 6 About her gentle eye. 7 From whence each throws a dart, 8 That kindleth soft sweet fire, 9 Within my sighing heart, 10 Possessed by desire; 11 No sweeter life I try, 12 Than in her love to die. 13 The Lily in the field, 14 That glories in his white, 15 For pureness now must yield 16 And render up his right; 17 Heaven pictured in her face 18 Doth promise joy and grace. 19 Fair Cynthia’s silver light, 20 That beats on running streams, 21 Compares not with her white, 22 Whose hairs are all sunbeams; 23 Her virtues so do shine, 24 As day unto mine eyne. 25 With this there is a Red 26 Exceeds the Damask Rose, 27 Which in her cheeks is spread, 28 Whence every favour grows; 29 In sky there is no star 30 That she surmounts not far. 31 When Phoebus from the bed 32 Of Thetis doth arise, 33 The morning, blushing red, 34 In fair carnation wise, 35 He shows it in her face 36 As Queen of every grace. 37 This pleasant Lily white, 38 This taint of roseate red, 39 This Cynthia’s silver light, 40 This sweet fair Dea spread, 41 These sunbeams in mine eye, 42 These beauties make me die. Sonnet 130 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
For your entertainment may I recommend, Eight Ghosts. The book was edited by Sarah Perry, the author of the Essex Serpent. Sarah Perry and the 7 other ghost story writers spent time at their favorite haunted historic properties.
I’m just a yank who’s been more or less completely oblivious to the vitriolic heights this Oxfordian/Stratfordian debate has reached until I stumbled upon a video “the incalculable genius of John Dee” by Alexander Waugh. I must say that coming in cold with no dog in the fight, that that is the video to watch….then there was an interview with Waugh in the last year or so, something “RESET” something or other, both of witch are marvelously compelling. I’ve since gone down several other rabbit holes and still find the Oxfordian argument far and away almost plainly obvious, and fascinatingly so…so much so in, in fact that I’m surprised the literal Stratfordians have not capitalized on it by dedicating a center to it in Stratford! It is for more fascinating than the conventional narratives with far broader implications. By maintaining themselves as the global center for Shakespeare, they’d be at the tip of the spear for a new renaissance in the ensuing multi dimensional study of all the works and all the likely working contributors beneath de Vere. Like I said, I was just stumbling along looking for stuff on Dee and fell into hole that looks more like a gaping wound from my cousins across the pond. Btw….this was an informative video….albeit ironically critical of the creator or at least head of creators of the works to which she may hold dear, at least in the case the Oxfordians are correct…but at least it’s an honest criticism thereof where I can’t remember hearing anything negative of Shakespeare himself, which is curious enough for me….yes this hole or wound would seem like one of cognitive dissonance on a huge scale….I wish RAW was around to right about this. From an outsider looking in, it would seem there’s a very high likelihood for the Oxfordian case which should be accepted as just that….it need not be definitively proved, yet merged into all of the lore remaining centered in Stratford. Sacred cows indeed.
I know people need uplifting expressions at this time. Me normalcy means more. History buffs should know life HAS always been precarious. The people that have lived through things like this are very old. We are much stronger speices than how people are acting. My hero; my father loved "The Shakes" I said that just to bug him!!! Plus my mother has "The Kathleen Hepburn" shakes (?)" Like in Gloden Pond but has got worst as time goes on. So, I called him "Shakes" some of the most perious things I own are from my Dad and are either where he was born or from the GLOBE theatre. That you Willy nilly lived there is AWESOME!!! Take care and have fun more than ever!!! ♡♡♡ THANK YOU ♡♡♡
Thank you for a lovely video! I love the setting. It was a lovely place to speak at and I found it relaxing :). I am of very clear mind that de Vere is indeed the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare and that he, as a person of the royal court, was not allowed to publish comedy, in particular. Such as Hamlet, being a delicious and ridiculous comedy, along with Romeo and Juliet, which is a farce. I believe he asked Shakespeare to present them as his own, Shakespeare’s, works in exchange possibly for some remuneration. As to his character, the information presented here tells too little of the story to make an informed character judgement of why he would do those things, or what the outcomes were. I see in some comments there is more information to fill out the story. I just want to note that I began reading Shakespeare on my own when around 12 years old in a smallish town in Texas. Hamlet was on the bookshelf and I loved it. I was laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of it. I was laughing so hard my father came to my room and asked what I was reading. I told him Hamlet and he told me it was a tragedy and I told him, “No! It’s not.” But I had come to it before anyone was telling me about the work so I saw it more easily. I also read everything about Queen Elizabeth and England at that time, and thought often as a young person, there is no way Shakespeare wrote this. It was many years later that I 1st heard that others had the same thought. I have since put on Shakespeare’s plays with fifth graders ( I really don’t care who wrote them as much as I love the work) and find it’s the most amazing process. They get it! I never tell them anything. They must ask me a direct question. The question is usually, for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, “Can we change the word ass?” since they perform then in front of their parents and other students. They even have the inflection perfect with no coaching or previous knowledge. I forgot to say Thank you! For bringing up the possible children of Elizabeth I. He may not have been her son, but it seems some people were, who were they? So I find the information you gave fascinating!!
No one will ever know for sure, but the stories surrounding Elizabeth I's unusual girlhood and the strange circumstances of her forbidding anyone to perform a post-mortem exam when she died, have always convinced me that there was _something_ she desperately did not want known. Especially, one of her physicians wrote that "she hath a membrane in her" that prevented her having a normal sexual relationship... It could all have been just malicious gossip, but I always thought it would have been too strange if she had been a genetic male who suffered from _androgyn insensitivity syndrome_ and turned out to be the _son_ Henry so obsessively longed for... ironically appearing in the guise of _just another daughter._
Have you ever tried to read source material? If the young Elizabeth writes to the Lord Protector: "I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am" in order to refute the pregnancy rumour, do you think she has anything to hide? There's so much stupidity circulating about Elizabeth. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me - people were and are very uncomfortable with single and childless women.
Thankyou very much for the very interesting videos. I came across an interesting story about the death of Elizabeth the First. That her remains were not to be prepared for burial! Her Orders. She was to be interred as is. She was not to be washed and dressed. This was a Documentary I saw on TV. It was of English origin. I cannot remember the Production Company. Do you know anything about this?. Kind regards and greetings from Africa.
Very informative. You mentioned that a bell was tolled during your filming that it was for Mary Queen of Scotland. Can you elaborate? Or point me to a direction where I can find more information? I find Mary intriguing. Thank you for sharing.
The bells ringing in my videos are just my church bells and they chime every 15 minutes. But here's a link to my Mary, Queen of Scots playlist - th-cam.com/play/PLepqWJ7TpkrIIC1eB75JBP8xYcqnqTHt6.html
I read Charles Beauclaire's book about the de Vere claims. The writer was a master of logical fallacy. (He drew conclusions that really didn't follow from the facts and were pure speculation.) If Shakespeare was employed by the Countess of Southampton, who was a distant cousin of his mother, and later by her son the Earl, during the plague years of 1592 and 93, when he wrote his hugely popular narrative poems and the theatres were closed, he had plenty of access to the nobility and the rituals of noble life. He may have attended Gray's Inn, not as a student, but as the Earl's secretary and possibly note-taker, since the Earl was registered to study the law there after he left Cambridge. The Southampton's were sent the latest Italian literature in the original versions and Shakespeare may very well have written the Italian plays with help from translators in their households.My favourite theory is that Amelia Bassano, the harpsicordist and possibly the dark lady of the sonnets, collaborated with him as translator and maybe more. There is evidence in the Italian plays that someone was obsessed with her and they all feature strong intelligent female characters. He may have heard many of De Vere's stories' as the man dined out on those stories and was very involved in the theatrical community. We also really don't know where Shakespeare was after age 12 but given that his family were secret Catholics and his mother was an Arden, a noble family though a lesser branch, and his father was given to some secret business dealings, he could have been anywhere, including Italy. Shakespeare was uniquely capable of understanding human nature at all levels of society and able to write his plays so carefully that no one could accuse him of taking a particular side in any issue. He didn't live alone in an attic though, and "worked collaboratively all his life" as his 1911 biographer said.
David Shakespeare also makes a good case that EDWARD DEVERE actually wrote under the pen name William Shakespeare which also fathered a child with Elizabeth. I’m not saying either or but he’s really done his homework.
70 references to gloves and glove making? Compared to thousands of references to the law, military and medicine practices, geography and inside references to the elizabethan court? 70 seems like such a small number when considered against the full weight of the works. Why are not any of the plays set against the backdrop of a common man's life? But instead, they are set against the backdrop of a nobleman's life? The commoner, William Shaksper, did not write those plays. A nobleman did.
The plays which featured noblemen were mostly history plays. Let's look at all the rest: All's Well That Ends Well - The protagonist is low born. As You Like It - Male protagonist is the son of a mere knight. Female protagonists are the daughters of a duke. Comedy of Errors - Main characters are all wealthy businessmen. Hamlet - Mixture of nobles and commoners. Love's Labors Lost - Main characters are all nobility. One of the nobles attending Navarre is inexplicably a Catholic who was mortal enemy to the others in real life. Measure for Measure - Protagonist is a novice of common birth. Antagonist is a bureaucrat. Merchant of Venice - All main characters are wealthy commoners. Merry Wives of Windsor - All commoners save Falstaff, who is a knight. Midsummer Night's Dream - The only royals are faeries. Much Ado About Nothing - Main characters are a mixture of nobles and rich commoners. Othello - No nobles in the Republic of Venice, though Shakespeare accidentally gives the place a duke. Romeo and Juliet - Wealthy commoners. Taming of the Shrew - Wealthy commoners. Tempest - Most of the characters are royal or formerly royal. Twelfth Night - The duke is a minor character. There are a couple of knights but the primary characters are commoners. Two Gentlemen of Verona - Commoners. Winter's Tale - Female protagonist is a princess but doesn't know it. So when not forced to write about the nobility because he was writing history plays, he wrote mostly about wealthy commoners. In other words, people like himself.
There is an enormous amount of Law throughout the Shakespeare Plays and Sonnets. Shakespeare was a lawyer named Francis Bacon who was trained and practiced law and performed masques including the first performance of The Comedy of Errors while he attended Grays Inn. Bacon spent many years at Grays Inn and some of the plots regarding law such as seen in Merchant of Venice were based on equity law issues Bacon wrote about as a lawyer. DeVere on the other hand never practiced or studied law, was given an honorary degree from Grays Inn because his father-in-law had influence, so it was like a finishing school for DeVere because of his status he did not have to work for his degree. There is nothing Noble in this nobleman's life. More on the law and Shakespeare can be read about here sirbacon.org/FRANCIS%20BACON%20AND%20THE%20LAW.pdf and the accompanying video th-cam.com/video/tWu38OJXcdI/w-d-xo.html
While I loved the Anonymous movie, I find hard to give credit to any of the different theories regarding the Earl of Oxford and Shakespeare. They just seem so fantastical!
I agree Shakespeare wrote his own work , I do feel he was under pressure to write pro Tudor & anti Plantagenet ie creating Richard 111 into a hunch back monster
I've only recently discovered this channel and I enjoy it very much. There are so many of these stories around. I saw a documentary many years ago claiming that Elizabeth I was actually a man in drag. Personally, I've always been more interested in QE I than her mother but I do find Anne Boleyn interesting as well. I sometimes wonder if the reason she was accused of incest was to cast a shadow over Elizabeth. If she was the daughter of her uncle then she wouldn't be a threat to Jane Seymour's children the way Mary was. I'd also be interested to hear what you think of some of the QE I films that have been made as to their historical accuracy. For example, did Robert Dudley keep his marriage a secret from QE I?
I'm curious what (in your scholarly opinion) was Edward's reasoning for signing his name with a crown above it and 7 dashes underneath - indicating he would be Edward VII. It's always intrigued me why Elizabeth indulged him and would love to hear your thoughts. Cheers from Seattle!!
Do you seriously think that someone who wanted to keep his head would sign his name in a manner to suggest he was a royal heir? If that were truly why he signed his name that way, do you think his contemporaries wouldn't notice?
Many reasons I think de Vere may have written many of the Shakespeare plays and Royalty are 1. The content of so many of the plays dealt with scenes of Europe. Yet I've not seen any records showing The Bard traveling extensively on the Continent. 2. Many plot lines seemed to denote a classical education of the top order, like deVere's not Shakespeare, 3. I think the reason Cecil's daughter was married to Devere was because he was the Royal bastard, 4. I think, not certain, I read Elizabeth I made a large bequest to Devere in her will. 5. He really does have the same look as Elizabeth. quite haughty in bearing.
1. Shakespeare's works got all sorts of things wrong. He based the King of Navarre's noblemen on real people, but picked two Protestants and one Catholic. In real life they were mortal enemies. He gave both Venice and Vienna dukes, when neither had them, and he got all sorts of things wrong about Italy. 2. Shakespeare's contemporaries described him as uneducated. His plays were and are popular because you didn't and don't need a degree in the classics to understand them. His peers were always dropping references to Greek philosophy into their plays. Shakespeare didn't. 3. Anne, the daughter of a not-yet baron, got the chance to marry the (then) wealthy, and by all accounts dashing young heir of the oldest earldom in England. She didn't know he was a royal bastard, because that's batshit crazy nonsense. 4. After he had blown the largest fortune in England on high living, Elizabeth put him on the dole, it was unseemly for the preeminent earl of England to be a pauper. She did not leave anything to him in her will, as monarchs don't have wills. Everything they have is inherited by the next monarch. 5. All nobles look like that. They're arrogant by nature.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Venice had a doge which comes from the same word as "duke" -from the Latin "dux"It looks as if also that Shakespeare thought Vienna was a place in Italy probably because the name in English sounds Italian.Shakespeare may have got his knowledge of Italy from Italian literature of the Renaissance which was becoming very well known in England-a lot of his plots like Romeo and Juliet are from Italian sources and one of his plays (I forget which)is based on the great Italian Renaissance epic poet and dramatist Ariosto who was all the rage.
@@kaloarepo288 When The King's Men performed Merchant at court in 1604, they were called back to play it again the next day. My guess is that Robert Cecil said to James "Did you hear that? He said 'Duke', not 'Doge'." And James said "No way! Have them rewind it! Whadayaknow! They DID say 'Duke'!" Then Cecil said "Hey, they're actors. What do you expect? It's not like any of them have ever been to Venice."
Just shows, "fake news" was invented a long time ago! Meanwhile, I CANNOT BELIEVE the acrimony over de Vere as Shakespeare...or not. Last really bad migraine I had I let videos by 'Oxfordians' and 'Stratfordians' and others play all day. Figured it would be simple and mind-numbing. There are hours of these presentations! Unbelievable!
There's actually a lot of evidence to suggest DeVere wrote those plays. Shakspeare from Avon could barely sign his name and his will doesn't suggest he had any special facility for writing. Also, that bust at his grave has changed over the years. There are drawings of it from the 17tg century and his hands are on a bundle...like a wool merchant. If you take a dive there's lots of stuff like that that isnt common knowledge.
There's a lot of that stuff that's complete malarkey as well. An antiquarian visited Stratford a year or two after Shakespeare died, and copied down the inscription on the monument. It describes him as a great poet. Funny thing to write on a grain merchant's monument. As that whole style of monument is reserved for learned men, it's more likely that the 17th century drawing was simply badly done. His signatures are just fine, by the way. If one can read the archaic script he used, known as "secretary hand", they are quite legible.
@@Jeffhowardmeade You know...those drawings i referred to did not suffer from a lack of draftsmenship. I've seen 2, several decades apart, both from the 1600's. Both arms are down on a pillowy thing. A bundle. That's a very odd thing to explain away. Outside of like 6 signatures on mundane documents, there's no contemporaneous evidence to suggest this guy existed...as far as i know. No school records or reference. DeVer's background and life experiences kind of mirror the plays in multiple instances. I was an English major in college. If someone suggested this to me in my 20's I'd think they were cuckoo for cocoa puffs. It's a surprising rabbit hole and the people supporting the notion don't seem insane and bring worthwhile observations. In my recent opinion.
@@stevenedwards4470 The engraving you saw wwas done by competent hands (Wenceslaus Hollar), but it was based on faulty drawings. Here's the sketch he was given to work from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ADugdale_sketch_1634_Detail.jpg As you can see, the guy who made the original sketch (William Dugdale) couldn't draw water up through a straw. Yet he was careful enough to identify the monument as being "... for William Shakespeare the famous poet." Several subsequent editions of the book simply copied Hollar's engraving. It wasn't until 1725 that an engraving was made based on a competent rendering, and that one looked just like it does today. Despite this, subsequent editions of Dugdale's book CONTINUED to base their engravings on the flawed earlier engraving. Aside from the six signatures, Shakespeare's handwriting can be seen on three pages of the manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More. There are many more documents referring to Shakespeare as a poet. Some mention only his name, leading Anti-Stratfordians to claim (without evidence) that it was a pen name. Too bad for them that Shakespeare was also mentioned as holding the social rank of gentleman, and that he was also an actor. This makes it clear that they were speaking about William Shakespeare of Stratford, who was the only William Shakespeate in England who was either of those things. In their desperation, Anti-Strats them pile more caveats on the evidence. There is no proof that all those people knew Shakespeare personally, they claim, though they and Shakespeare were literary insiders in what was a very small circle, and many of them definitely DID know Shakespeare, and were his fellow actors. But those people didn't mention that he was THE William Shakespeare whose plays they had been performing for two decades until after he died. Because that matters, somehow. After piling all of these absurd requirements into what it a thorough documentary record, Anti-Stratfordians then claim NONE OF IT EXISTS. In other words, the lied to you. Oh, and while De Vere's life does resemble a few plot points from Shakespeare's plays, it's not nearly as close as Oxfordians claim. They have tarted up his biography and in some cases outright invented it in order to try to make it fit. Even if the plays were a mirror of his life, that would not be a good reason to conclude he wrote it. A more likely conclusion would be that the author was flattering--or more likely lampooning--a dissolute earl who nobody liked.
I agree that he was not Elizabeth's child, and in my view she really was the Virgin Queen of renown. Now I seem to recall that there was some evidence that De Vere was the writer of Shakespeare in the form of some documents that were found in a secret drawer in a desk. I know you will be aware, although maybe not some readers of the reason that a noblemen could not be seen to be involved in anything connected with entertainment.
Since Oxford died before a third of Shakespeare's plays ever saw light of day, his followers hand supposed that he must have written them and stashed them away somewhere, to be found by others and slowly trotted out. This is just an invention to explain a massive hole in their hypothesis. There is no documentary evidence. This explanation also fails to account for the startling changes that overcame Shakespeare's works when the monarch he served changed.
He was a lord. All the nobels lived off the money the commoners made from working his lad through taxes and such. None "made a living" but rather lived off their people. Yes, there was some land management and settling of problems but the commoners paid to rent the land, and taxes, to use the land for their crops and such.
So why no documentation that Shakspeare could even read or write? I'm glad you admitted you are biased, but really without proof he could even sign his own name properly or left any books in his will?
If 80 references to glove-making are a slam dunk for Shakespeare's authorship, what are we to make of the over 200 legal concepts expertly employed throughout the works? Was Shakespeare's dad a lawyer too?
Funny you should ask. Shakespeare's father was a justice of the peace for the borough of Stratford. And the legal terms are not expertly used. They were common terms that anyone might know.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I think it likely that Shakespeare did get a little legal education. not as an official student but while acting as the Earl of Southampton's secretary. The earl was enrolled at Grey's inn after he graduated from Cambridge at 17. Will's father was an alderman and the equivalent of mayor in Stratford, but I have never read that he was a justice of the peace. He had his own nasty brush with the law though, when his secret wool buying business was discovered and he paid heavy fines and withdrew from public life. If that had not happened when Will was 12, he might possibly have received an Oxford education. I'm sure he learned something about courts though.
@@cathybaggott2873 The role of Justice of the Peace came along with being mayor (or as they called it, High Bailiff) during his term of office. William Camden, in defending John Shakespeare's right to a coat of arms, mentioned that he was a justice. Common Law in the 16th Century was a much briefer thing than our statutory laws are today. Law students basically learned by doing. The great philosophers of the law, like Locke and Hobbes upon whom we base our modern legal theory, were not yet born. But aside from things Shakespeare might have learned organically, he was a writer, and writers seek out the tools they need. When I was a young journalist back in the day, I had an editorial cartoon stuck on the wall of my cubicle. A bunch of reporters were closing their eyes and throwing darts at a wall, upon which was written "Today I am an expert in..." above a bunch of cards listing such disciplines as politics, cooking, law enforcement, and gardening. News reporters needed to quickly research and synthesize and then get it all down on paper before deadline. Playwrights, as it turns out, were very different. Shakespeare, needing legal knowledge for a courtroom scene near the end of his upcoming play about this merchant who gives his heart as collateral, probably DIDN'T ask anyone about the law involved, because he gets it all hilariously wrong. I'll bet this failure stung him, because he never wrote another courtroom scene. That's right, the guy Anti-Stratfordians are always touting for his legal knowledge had just one courtroom scene, and it's a bloody farce.
I do find the theories about the Shakespeare interesting . I saw the movie” Anonymous,” years ago and it made a compelling case for Edward. I have not researched him at all, but now I will ! Love your videos !
Can you discount the so called pregnancy portrait as being inaccurately linked to Elizabeth? Also, was Shakespeare’s education equal to the task of creating the wealth literature attributed to him?
The woman in the portrait isn't Elizabeth, and she's not pregnant. Portraits of that era which depicted pregnant women went out of their way to emphasize the pregnancy, usually with a hand resting on the belly to draw attention to the fact.
I would like to know about Tudors(not Edmunds descendants) but others. I know there was a Frederic Tudor of America, and I always wondered if he is was related. Owain Tudor had brothers and cousins, are there Tudors , now? (Frederic Tudor had-to my knowledge, no issue)
As Elizabeth wrote in her letter to the Lord protector Edward Seymour on 28 January 1549: "Master Tyrwhit and others have told me that there goeth rumors abroad which be greatly both against mine honor and honesty, which above all other things I esteem, which be these: that I am in the Tower and with child by my lord admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders, for the which, besides the great desire I have to see the king’s majesty, I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am."
she lied alot in her letter and was crafty and a master politician, she maybe had just given birth or whatever and wanted to prove her innocence. Based on history and her track record of lies in poltiical games I wouldn't trust anythign she says.
@@leslieangela9114I bet you have never read that letter in the first place. Start to think with your head and think about the implications of these words. If Elizabeth had given birth (and when would that be then? Where is the evidence that she was pregnant in the first place?) she wouldn't have raised this matter and asked to prove it when she easily could be examined by midwives. You can't dismiss her words as lies without proving that she was lying. Also, Elizabeth was only 15 years old year here and under severe stress.
Indigo wow you seem cool
@@ericloscheider7433 I simply study Elizabethan history which you obviously don't.
Indigo I wasn’t arguing with your ability to quote the historical record. I was responding to your obnoxious, condescending response to @Leslie Angela. And I wish I could study Elizabethan History, but obviously you are the only one who holds all that knowledge, so...
He certainly looks like Elizabeth.... but they seemed to all be kin to each other.
Certainly? Where do you see it? I for my part don't see it. And people can look similar even without being each other's relatives.
@ Indigo
His face
Indigo the face shape, lips and nose and even eyebrows and eyes
@ Anne Brewer
Thank you!
@@annebrewer7882 Eyebrows, really? I guess you see what you want to see.Those features in different portraits can look differently. And even if there were some similarity in appearance so what? As I noted above even people who are not each other's relatives can look remarkably similar. Let's ascribe now every nobleman or every noblewoman whose portraits to us seem similar in that or other way to Elizabeth's to her children? Absurd. One must be deluded to the point of insanity to use such perceived similarity as an argument proving that he was Elizabeth's son.
My mum always told us her family the De Vere Hunt’s were related to the man who could have been Shakespeare. Our family home is named Curragh Chase in Bendigo, Australia after the house in Ireland where the De Vere Baron’s lived with links to the Earl’s of Oxford through marriage I think. We are just starting to learn about the family history to see what we discover. Thanks for the interesting knowledge.
“Francis bacon “ also rewrote the kjb you read today
I would imagine that every man, boy and child wanted to be the author of Shakespeare's works ... they were said to have been popular with the masses when performed. I have a favorite Shakespeare quote: He that hath the steerage of my course, direct my sail (from Romeo and Juliet). Happy Easter, everyone!
Of course there’s also the story that Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton, is QE’s son by de Vere.... But it *is* a fact that Henry was briefly engaged to Oxford’s daughter, arranged, of course, by William Cecil, who arranged many people’s lives, whether they liked it or not.
@@sarosch Wriothsely ,earl of Southampton is also supposed to have been William Shakespeare's gay lover -the youth described in the sonnets and he is depicted as such in the movie "All is true' and played by Ian McKellen.
If Elizabeth had a child by Seymour, it was no love child, it was rape.
Elizabeth's enemies would have had spies in her household/palaces and there is no way she could have hidden a pregnancy for nine months, much less birth and recovery. How would her ladies have gotten rid of soiled linens, placenta, cloths without anyone noticing or wondering? She had too many eyes watching her every move constantly.
The question "Elizabeth I's love child?" is addressed from 8.15min- 9.32min. Thank you for the links in the description.
Thank you so much!
Cecil must have known what de Vere was like having been in charge of him and I can't imagine why he had his daughter marry this putz.
Putz. 😂 That’s a word I wish got used more! Also, I totally agree.
He had money so it was a 'good' marriage for her.
@@ingerabrams4569 Oxford almost completely dissipated his fortune with high living and chronic incompetence in running his own financial affairs. He was a broke Earl long before he died.
Maria Hunter Money and position !
I’ve read so many works about the Tudors I forget where I read it but it was thought that Elizabeth I had several secret children who were placed by Cecil in noble households to be fostered. Knowing de Vere was the eldest of the queen’s bastard children he took charge of him specifically with the goal being to have his daughter marry him, reveal him as Elizabeth’s son and heir and have his bloodline eventually sit on the throne of England. He was also young and still considerably well of when they married.
Happy Easter, Claire to you and your family. Wishing you well and every blessing. ❤
I love your videos, so informative and fascinating! Also, love the outfit 🙂 Cheers! Happy holidays
Dear Claire, this is the first time I have commented on any of your many talks in this series, so let's start with a VERY big thankyou from me for your excellent videos (I plan on buying your book 'this day in Tudor history' very soon). I watched them all, day by day, until work intervened after about the first 4 months, but happily have just retired so have a LOT of catching up to do, including buying your book, perhaps books even? I find your talks and style very entertaining (btw I love the intervening cats, dogs, quizzes with hubby and, of course, those bells).More than this, as an academic myself (albeit a bioscientist with amateur history interests) I really value that you do your homework and find your research is generally excellent. If I could afford it I would love to come on one of your 'Anne Boleyn' tours next time you manage to do one including the Tower, Penshurst, Hever etc.
Another book I need to purchase is Alan Nelson's 'Monstrous adversary' that you refer to here because everything I have read from/about it suggests it is the best-researched biography of Edward de Vere, bar none.
HOWEVER it is very very clear that Alan Nelson has an axe to grind and loathes this man (his book is littered with derogatory and belittling language whenever he refers to de Vere). Perhaps because, like you, his colours are nailed so firmly to the mast of the man from Stratford upon Avon.
Notwithstanding, a huge number of contemporary authors (1580's-90's) ALL describe de Vere as noble and accomplished, especially in poetry and the stage. Much of the 'bad press' comes from the denunciations of the three guys de Vere 'shopped' to the queen as catholics that you mention, even though one of these at least turned out to be a very bad guy who wrote against Leicester (Leicester's Commonwealth) and the Queen (Elizabeth) in league with the French where he fled and/or the Spanish. Interestingly, his incoherent denunciation of deVere is parodied not quite word for word (but close) in much ado about nothing. Two more Shakespeare links that may persuade you are that de Vere is credited with bringing to court (from Italy) the fashion for gifting and wearing perfumed gloves (hence gloves in the plays?) and on his return from Italy was waylaid by pirates and left naked on the shores of England (something identical happened to Hamlet in Shakespeare's version which experts still find a puzzling and weird inclusion in that play). There is a lot of evidence that de Vere was a 'bad boy' (kept company with actors, got outrageously drunk on numerous occasions and spent all his inheritance) but also that Burghley and Burghley junior (Robert Cecil - who if you want to label anyone as bad, was an evil scheming 'winner') did all they were able to in stripping de Vere of his inheritance.
I do NOT believe de Vere was Elizabeth's son - the timing is all wrong. I do however, believe he knew Shakespeare and either wrote the plays himself or else was a major inspiration to whoever did because echoes of his life are in the plots of many Shakespeare plays and also the sonnets and long poems dedicated to Southampton.
I know you are very busy, but if you have never watched it then PLEASE look at this talk from Tom Regnier who has just very sadly succumbed to COVID. He makes an argument in his talk that the HUGE number of circumstantial 'coincidences' between the life of Edward de Vere and the content of 'Shake-Speare's plays would in modern law (Regnier trained as a lawyer and the plays are riddled with legal knowledge) be accepted as evidence of authorship much stronger than any proposed or proposable for the man from Stratford. Here's the link : th-cam.com/video/EAprYZnjGX4/w-d-xo.html.
A great irony of the authorship movement is that Henry Clay Folger, founder of that bastion of Stratfordian tradition in Washington, D.C., the Folger Shakespeare Library, was an Oxfordian sympathizer. Folger took such keen interest in J. T. Looney’s 1920 identification of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford as “Shakespeare” that, five years later in 1925, he bought the Geneva Bible the earl had purchased in 1570 at age nineteen. It’s now kept locked in a vault and not many are allowed to see it & the handwritten notes and underlining made by de Vere to use in his plays.
Not true. Like so many things you believe, that's a folk tale Oxfordians have been telling each other for so long that the origins of the myth are lost.
At the age of 5, Edward de Vere was lodged with Thomas Smith, one of the most erudite scholars in England, and stayed under Smith's tutelage until he was 12 years old. It was at this point in time that William Cecil took over his education. Earlier, while Smith was abroad, de Vere was sent off to university. At the time he was all of seven years old. Apparently de Vere was an intellectual prodigy.
It may well be that he was the cad described here, but that does not determine his creative intellect. Artists are notorious for being undisciplined. One must look at de Vere's books to get a picture of why Oxfordians have a theory. He was fluent in Latin, Greek, French and Italian. We could attribute this to his years with Thomas Smith as well as his years under Cecil's tutors, one of whom translated Ovid's Metamorphosis from Latin into English. This tutor, Arthur Golding, never wrote a single book that remotely looks like the translation attributed to him, whereas the rhyming scheme in this English translation shows up in de Vere's poetry. Of course, Ovid's poems were central to most of Shakespeare's works, notably the first work published with the name William Shakespeare in 1593, Venus and Adonis. Did the 16 year old Edward de Vere write the translation but demur on the credit? Was this typical of his public face, being a concealed poet?
Gloves do appear in Shakespeare's canon, but did you know that Edward de Vere introduced Italian gloves into the Elizabethan Court? Gloves were one of his infamous affectations. In his case, they were not only magnificently embroidered. They were also perfumed. The courtiers took to the style, and Elizabeth was very fond of the gloves de Vere gave to her as a gift when he returned from Italy.
Indeed, it is the degree to which the canon takes place in Italy and de Vere's comprehensive knowledge of Italy and the Italian Renaissance that made him a focus of study. Italy is far from Stratford on Avon, but Italy was very close to the heart of Edward de Vere. He knew much about it and details in the plays and poems are quite remarkable for their accuracy.
But was he Elizabeth's "love child" by Thomas Seymour? The evidence is that Seymour made illicit advances on the Princess Elizabeth. She was removed to another wardship for her safety. However, once outside the court she was not seen for nine months, skipping weddings and funerals which she should have attended. This suggests she had something to hide. It could be she was pregnant and gave birth in secret. Even so, there is no way to know that such a "love child" was Edward de Vere. It could have been a girl or another boy, and it might not have lived to maturity either.
It was not uncommon for noble children to lodge at Oxbridge. What WAS uncommon was for them to stay such a short time and be sent home for repeatedly breaking windows. Please document your claim that Smith was one of the "most erudite scholars in England". When De Vere was 12, Smith said there was nothing more he could do for De Vere. Arthur Golding was never his tutor. He received two honorary M.A.s which were given to everyone in the Queen's entourage, but never the B.A. you had to actually earn. Far from being a prodigy, he was clearly a bit dim, as his poetry and his letters demonstrate.
Gloves were worn by everyone long before De Vere made Italian gloves fashionable.
And Shakespeare made so many boners about Italy (and other places De Vere had been) that it's pretty clear he'd never been there.
And Elizabeth heard the rumors of her pregnancy and wrote to Edward Seymour, inviting him to find out for himself by meeting with her.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Claire Ridgway brings Tudor culture to life. The lodging of the children of nobility is a goodly topic, and I hope it comes around.
Sir Thomas Smith's life is not a difficult biography to uncover. He left an indelible record which inspires our respect for British intellectual accomplishment coming out of Feudalism. That he housed the child Oxford for eight years is not disputed. What de Vere got out of the lodging is open to interpretation. We see a letter written from the child to William Cecil in perfect court French which reflects Smith's own command of the language as Ambassador to France from England. One could hear Smith's evaluation of that surviving example of de Vere's command of language as "I have nothing more to give him." During this period, while Smith was abroad, de Vere was lodged in college and not his ancestral home. The choice points to the child's preferences. It seems he liked school from an early age. Smith's home, while Smith was in England, provided a rich intellectual environment, including a large library and Smith's own pursuits in the classics.
Yes, gloves were popular. Having a better glove gained attention. The Italians took this to new heights with embroidery and perfume. De Vere spent liberally to purchase quantities which he distributed in Court. Elizabeth R spoke highly of the gift. De Vere spent a year in Italy, visiting the locations that show up in the Shakespeare canon in startling faithful levels of detail. Italy, the birthplace of the Renaissance, was a touchstone for the Tudor period.
The influence of Golding on de Vere is a topic that merits scholarly study. This much we know. When Golding and de Vere were both lodged at Cecil House, Golding produced a translation from Latin to English of Ovid's Metamorphosis. It is indisputable that this poem is a bedrock of the Shakespearean Canon. Golding was de Vere's uncle. To say that they were living in the same house for two years while de Vere was a student of Latin and that they did not see each other, with an emphasis on Roman literature, defies logic. What students of literature can also tease out from this episode is that for some reason William Golding veered from his normal pursuits, the study of the writings of Calvin and other strict proto-Puritans, to delve into the raunchy world of one of Rome's most debauched poets. From Golding's pen then came lines of poetry that have stood for centuries as the most telling translation of Ovid. The meter and rhyme of this translation appear in poems published under de Vere's name as well as Shakespeare's. The tales told by Ovid appear in Shakespeare. Among the raciest and most sexually explicit were Venus and Adonis followed immediately by Lucrece, poems that launched the name Shakespeare in 1593 and 1594 with cannon shots that awakened the Tudor world to the name "Shakespeare." Pardon the pun.
If moral bearing was a criterion used to identify a poet/playwright, Edward de Vere could be discounted, but of course, the personality of a poet/playwright is more likely socially offensive than not. For no less of a reason, gentlemen of the Tudor period did not make known their indulgences in these arts nor live out their lives in Bohemian style as de Vere was known to have done. The life of an artist is quite at odds with Court behaviors, and de Vere found himself in hot water again and again. Yet to discount that he was known as a poet and playwright from contemporary records is blinkered to the point of blindness. While not publishing poetry under his own name after reaching majority, it is indisputable that he kept producing. What is known of his life has a direct bearing on the Shakespearean canon. Hamlet is a play that draws directly from what we know of de Vere's life including references to unique events ascribable to no other person of record. The play is a tragedy which concludes with Hamlet begging to be remembered. It is a tragedy still to witness the derogatory invective being ladled out by an institutionalized campaign to discredit him.
@@tomditto3972 De Vere lived in the same house with his uncle while he was translating Ovid. He had a tutor for eight years who dropped him at age 12. He was fluent in French. A couple of plot points in a couple of plays resemble events in the life of De Vere, though none of them either closely or exclusively.
Everything else you wrote you have imagined.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Thank you for granting that de Vere was fluent in French when he arrived from Smith's care to Cecil's. If you wind back to our debate four years ago, you argued that a letter in high Court French that he sent to William Cecil might have been prepared by a subordinate. The 13 year old Earl was in a position to make demands like that,. Being spoiled by birthright to such power he behaved like a privileged brat. At 18 he murdered a servant and got away with it when Cecil managed to represent the death as the victim's suicide. The legal inquiry recorded that the sous cook threw himself upon de Vere's sword. The plot point shows up in Hamlet. Yet deep personality flaws aside, it is clear that de Vere reveled in the magic of language, going so far as to write a preface in Latin to a translation he commissioned from Italian to English for what scholars have since identified as "Hamlet's book," a tome on chivalry from which was borrowed the thematic core of the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy. I am not making that up. Being polylingual in these languages no doubt endeared him to Elizabeth R, because she too had mastered Latin and Italian at an early age. I cannot resist imagining the banter at Court as these two parlayed above the heads of their inferiors in both rank and intellect, but admittedly, I am making that banter up. What is known by written record is that de Vere spent time away from his wife and with Elizabeth in the years 1572-73 while the Queen was in retreat at Nonsuch Palace, a relatively small and intimate setting constructed of wood and no longer standing, alas. Imagine what Claire Ridgway could do with such a locale if it was intact.
@@tomditto3972 If it were true that said plot point showed up in Hamlet, then Polonius would have been one of the lowest servants in the castle, not the highest, actually not a servant at all. Nobody represented the death of Polonius as a suicide. The only thing the two incidents have in common is death by steel.
And De Vere COULD have had the letter written by a clerk, for all you know. You claim that he wrote V & A completely without evidence. Anything can happen in your world. De Vere probably wrote the letter, though. We have someone later praising his ability with Italian, so why not French? Unlike today, where speaking two languages is a rarity (among Americans, at least), it was common then. Shakespeare knew Latin (but less Greek). Richard Field left the Stratford grammar school ready for an apprenticeship with a polyglot printer in London.
Riddle me this: if twelve year-old De Vere had nothing left to learn from one of the greatest scholars in history (or whatever you dubbed him), why did Beaumont say Shakespeare's works were "without scholarship"? Why did Ben Jonson say he "wanted art"? Why did John Ward say Shakespeare was a "natural wit, without any art at all?" Why do the works lack the high scholarship of Jonson or Drayton. If it was De Vere, his education was wasted.
I like how no matter where you are there are always bells ringing
While I doubt Elizabeth was truly a virgin Queen, I doubt she had any love children/child.
In those times kings and queens didn't have much of a privacy. So if Elizabeth would have been pregnant, it would have been nearly impossible to hide.
@@helene4397 You would be surprised what Kings and Queens can hide. Elizabeth would 100% punish anything she regarded disobedience. Dresses were designed to hide pregnancy. It was expected of pregnant women to cover up. She was also accused of birthing illegitimate children by castle staff. Though that doesn't mean it is the truth, anything is possible. Do people really know what the current royals get up to? Not really, and there is much scandal in the royal family that has not been leaked to this day.
If she is virgin how he has kids.
Virjin is a lady who did not do any sex
I saw a movie about Shakespeare had a ghost writer and at the end of this movie it revealed Queen Elizabeth had many lovers and children. Earl of Essex was one of them.
I fully believe she was indeed celibate. The risk to her status as Queen would be to great to gamble on a night of fun
I love every one of your videos and this one’s just as wonderful ..thank you for all your hard work …
If Elizabeth was sent away, it would be for her own protection. I love William Shakespeare’s work. I will never accept that someone else wrote these plays and sonnets.
Gary Allen mystery solved!
Read Shakespeare identified...youll become a believer .
I am here after watching the movie the Shakespeare Conspiracy, more physical documents there supporting the possibility that he was the poet.
There are no documents that conclusively prove that Shaksper of Stratford was the poet, in actuality. He worked in one of the theatre companies owned by Lord Oxford, who, it is conjectured, hired him as a beard. The best reading about all this is “‘Shakespeare’ by Another Name,” by Mark Anderson.
@@sarosch He never worked in a theater owned by Oxford, who never owned a theater. He held a brief lease on a theater in Blackfriars, run by Lyly, but lost it in a court squabble. The Blackfriars theater later opened by The King's Men was in a different location, and years later.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I will not take the bait, tho I dearly would love to. ;}
@@sarosch That is wise of you, not only because one easily gets lost when one goes down rabbit holes, but also because what I just said is very well documented.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfriars_Theatre?wprov=sfla1
The lease of the former theater was actually held by Henry Evans, with John Lyly running the boy actors. De Vere was Lyly's patron. The lease was ceded back to the owner, Sir William More, after less than a year.
@@sarosch there is, indeed, conclusive evidence Shakespeare was Shakespeare. He wrote his parts with specific actors in mind with a deep knowledge of their talents and what roles suited them best, and he’s referenced by other contemporary playwrights in their plays.
I love that there is a photo accompanying this video. Your other videos do not have visuals!
Shakespeare was an artisan's son. How come he was able to pen so many great plays? So some people seem to think and they believe that only an educated aristocrat could have penned great works. And the icing on the cake was that he was actually royal as well.
As for being Elizabeth' s child by Seymour - what nonsense. Some people have an unhealthy interest in Elizabeth's sex life. But that is the common fate of powerful women in public life. It:s as if the only interesting thing about them is sex, preferably delinquent sex. If Elizabeth had borne a child she would very quickly have been discovered by her maids or by a doctor.
Marion Arnott she WAS Henry's daughter. Sometimes the 🍎 doesn't fall far from the 🌳.
@@miriamhavard7621 Elizabeth was different from her father. Not has Sociopathic for one thing. Secondly we know in detail about Henry's affairs and his various illegitimate children. All we have about Elizabeth is gossip at second and third hand. During the reign of Henry VIII we have detailed stories in their reports about Henry's sexual escapades about Elizabeth we have from the diplomats no details only gossip to the effect and frequent denials that such affairs were happening at all. Further the Queen's health was a topic of great interest to the court and diplomats in London. And with the fact that Elizabeth's ladies in waiting etc., were often paid to provide information to the foreign diplomats it is of interest that no such details were relayed to them. Finally just how was Elizabeth going to be able to conceal a pregnancy? A Mistress can be sent from Court. Elizabeth would not have dared to send herself away. I doubt Elizabeth had any love children or that she ever got pregnant.
@@miriamhavard7621 Excuse me what? Is being Henry's daughter now a diagnosis of having secret children? Would you argue that Mary I had a secret baby with Reginald Pole because she was Henry's daughter? And how being Henry's daughter was in that respect any way different from being a daughter of any other monarch of the time? Logic not found.
Another great talent at the time of Shakespeare was John Webster. He was a huge success. He was the son of an artisan - a carriage maker. The highly successful author of The Revengers' Tragedy was Thomas Middleton. He was the son of a bricklayer. Another great talent of the time was Christopher Marlowe, who was born to Canterbury shoemaker John Marlowe. I could go on. You see ... posh doen't mean talented. And 'common' doesn't mean stupid.
Many of the most eminent politicians of the time - Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, for example, were of humble origin, so it was perfectly possible to base great success on an unpromising start.
The pathetic idea that in order for a writer to be good he must be descended from a titled knob is very, very dumb. It is based on crashing snobbery and on the idea formed during the romantic period that good writing must be based entirely on personal experience.
Almost all the Shakespeare canon is based on a source - a history, or an existing story. So your assertion is just plain wrong. Sorry.
Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, Marlowe wrote Marlowe, and Webster wrote Webster.
@@MrMartibobs I completely agree! This same "reasoning" was why many supporters of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Russian princess Anastasia, refused to accept DNA evidence proving she was actually a Polish factory worker, Fransziska Schanzkowska (bad attempt at spelling). She seemed so "regal" & "cultured", & no "peasant" could possibly fake that!
Posh or rich people don't have more talent, but they DO have more opportunity, so you end up with a circular argument (like "why aren't there more successful women, or black people, etc?")
Also, if you're amused by the very idea of Kit Marlowe writing Shakespeare's work, & you haven't seen Upstart Crow, YOU MUST. It's written by Ben Elton, & David Mitchell is Shakespeare, which is reason enough to watch it imo!
Devere was also apparently fixated on gloves. He brought perfumed gloves back with him from Italy and gifted them to people at court including the queen. These scented gloves became an enduring fashion in the English Court. Stratford Shakspur's father was a city councilor and wool merchant. The monument to him attests to this, showing him with City mascot leopards and a bag o wool. Was he also a glovemaker?
Love those bells!!!!! Such perfect background music for topic.
The voice of sanity Thank you Claire
Beautiful surroundings ❤❤❤do this more often please!!!
Thanks Claire. I might need new glasses. I quickly glanced at my notification and thought it said " Fart of Oxford ". Wasn't far off though. Lol. Happy Easter.😁
I live in Oxford and there are a lot of old farts!!!
No way is he Elizabeth s love child. She was brought up as a princess. She had a very strong personality and would not have been taken in so easily. No way.
I agree. I think she was a true virgin because she was too smart to take a chance on ending her Queen ship with a bastard child.
*refraining from making a Six reference*
@@l.plantagenet She was only 14 at the time. A child, not the wise woman she became. Also, Thomas Seymour, we know took advantage of her. Even Kat Ashley admitted he was inappropriate with Elizabeth. If he got her pregnant whose to say she was not forced? He could have raped her. In my mind he at least molested her(by today's standards) even if there was no penetration. One thing for sure, Thomas Seymour caused his own death not only by how he treated his nephew the young king, but what he did to Elizabeth, King Edward's half sister. If anything, after living through that, no wonder Elizabeth never wanted to marry. That had to be pretty traumatic for her. Not only Thomas Seymour's unwanted advances but Edward Seymour had her interrogated. She could have easily been executed too if it have been proved Seymour had seduced her. and she may would have married him. Because, even if she had been raped, they would have seen it as seduced, and her as guilty. So she would have not admitted that. Look at the example of Mary Queen of Scots. Her third husband raped her, and she married him after that, as he knew she would to salvage her reputation. As the woman was usually blamed in that time period and that was the only way to salvage her reputation. Don't forget too with Elizabeth, Cecil was already her champion by then, he had the foresight to see she may would be queen one day, so he would have done whatever he could to have helped her out.
Of course the evidence to me is he was grooming her to marry him in case Katherine Parr died in child birth. after all she was 36 years old and it was her first pregnancy. He had to know there was a considerable chance she could die as even women in their 20's died in childbirth. Besides, even if Elizabeth had a child by him (there were rumors at the time) there is no evidence Edward deVere was her child.
And that's exactly how she wanted to be seen. It's amazing how she's still succeeding. There are things we would never know, even who she really was. As a monarch she had to present a certain image of herself, even more as a woman on the throne. But who she was privately? Who knows. I think there always is a possibility she wasn't a virgin. I'd be even more inclined to believe that.
Correction, you're a fan of William Shaksper (not William Shakespeare), a man who never owned a book (in English or the untranslated foreign sources the play author uses) or wrote anything other than the plays, and left three illiterate daughters, and never traveled (to Italy or anywhere else), who would have had no access to the court (despite setting nearly all his plays there), etc. etc.--but the plays mention glovemaking, so it had to be him.
A: How do you know he never owned a book?
B: What sources were untranslated?
C: He had two daughters, one of which was provably literate.
D: He got so many things about Europe wrong that it's no surprise he never traveled.
E: The patron of his acting company was the Queen's cousin, who was her Lord Chamberlain.
F: The plays also mention people and places from Shakespeare's home town, plus everyone said it was him, so it had to be him.
Another informative video, Claire -- thank you! Re: Edward de Vere as Elizabeth's love child -- the dates don't work. The only time when Elizabeth *might* have been impregnated by Thomas Seymour was *before* Jan. 16, 1549, when Seymour was arrested. So any spawn would have been born by October of 1549 -- not in April, 1550 (when Edward de Vere was born). Elizabeth was *not* an elephant, so a pregnancy lasting more than 9 months was impossible. After Seymour's death, Elizabeth was *watched* too closely for any sexual affaire to be possible, as she told Kat Ashley years later. As for de Vere as the Bard of Avon: I don't swallow that line either! Shakespeare had access to sources which provided him with foreign narratives, such as the tales of Romeo & Juliet as well as Hamlet. He did not need to travel abroad to incorporate continental plots.
Yes, all of this. Not to mention that Elizabeth was ready to show herself at the court to refute the pregnancy rumour when she heard about it in the time of interrogations.
Right! He had access to all that information at the local library! Or was it the magical tavern where tradesmen/lawyers/sailors/doctors all freely swapped stories detailing the intricacies of their professions while also giving specific geographical details about Italy and France? (I can never remember which it is. Embarrassing!)
his birthday date is actually shown to be between 1547 to 1550, Exact date is unknown. I think he was her son by Thomas seymour. too much evidence. Cecil marries his daughter to him, he is raised as a royal ward despite having a living mother. She did lose her virginity to Seymour and maybe begot a few more kids with dudley whom she was most definitely sexually active with.
The court was full of intrigue upon intrigue. The bastard children of kings and queens were often placed with noble families to hide their true lineage. This was a common practice. Often the true birthdate of a child would be changed in order to hide his/her true parentage.
Also, the poacher and merchant from Stratford could not read nor write in English let alone read texts used in Shakespeare in their original Latin or Greek as the true author did. Whomever the true author of the plays and sonnets was, it was NOT the rube from Stratford.
my friend, her first child, she carried toward the end of her "10th" month before her near 15lb baby was born. Her and her husband were laid off their jobs. So they ended up on welfare. Back in those days for the state of Iowa, (1987ish), required babies born on the state had to go to Iowa City to have their babies. They had a policy to not do c-sections without a medical reason other than just a delayed labor. I believe they stopped that policy since. Barbaric practice! So she carried her son to 10mos, and was born 15lbs+, aspirated myconium (developed pneumonia), and a broken clavicle! (she also couldn't breast feed because of teeth; I know of another woman from the same area has the same story. I baby sat for this 2nd woman. 8m old, he was a tank to feed a bottle, we used big pillows to proper him up right, you couldn't hold that until feeding was done.) It IS possible for long gestation periods. And not rare.
Thank you Claire! April 12 I turn 42. I enjoyed this entry today!! I opened a gift from my mom and she gifted me a “ Henry with 6 wives mug”.!! She has one herself. All very fun. May not be my Pottery artist taste fully but fun w tudors
Thanks for more family information Claire with this posting. I agree with you about Shakespeare.
I love your top and cardigan Claire!!
Nice to see more outside of your house.
That’s the dodgiest account of suicide I’ve ever heard!! Running into a Sabre!!😱🤭😬🤣
Oxford sounds like not a very nice person at all. Not someone I would trust or like!
I agree with you Claire. I don’t think Oxford wrote any of Shakespeare’s plays
I don’t think he was Elizabeth I’s son, I’m not sure the timing fits.
One might as well say the loser of a duel ‘committed or attempted to commit suicide’ because he agreed to a duel with a man who was more skilled than he was. Weasel excuses designed to ruin the winner’s reputation or just get him in trouble when duels were illegal.
Not a sabre, a rapier.
I love all your videos Claire! Learning so much of the infamous Anne Boleyn is so much fun, as I can't continue my studies in these interesting times as my local library has been shut down
Surely Elizabeth would never have lived down the epithet "the Virgin Queen" if she had actually given birth to a child witnessed by so many of her household and known to the nobility. Thanks for another intriguing presentation. :)
she's a master manipulator, politician, and liar. She certainly would have done antyhign for her reputaiton and throne.
even if it wasn't the truth.
While I have read the books and watched the videos of the Anti-Oxfordians, I never believed that any of the candidates wrote the works credited to William Shakespeare. I looked up famous American and English authors, including award winning writers and there are many who, like Shakespeare, do not have university degrees.
Recently, I read Shakespeare's Book by Chris Loutaris, who is the historian for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The book is about the printing of the First Folio. There were too many people involved in the publishing of the works of Will to rationalize that his identity was a cover up.
Judge only after you have seen Alexander Waugh’s presentations which go far beyond the evidence of gloves being written about.
It’s evidence that is unlikely by anyone to be refuted. Once you’ve seen it there is no question.
Unless you're not a gullible idiot. Have you never seen a stage magician before?
I also grew up in this part of the world and have loved the works of William Shakespeare for many years I remember the de Vere family owned a hotel near a castle where we used to play🤗👍
Clare I love these vids.
I wonder if u could cover the school of night?
W/respect to de Vere's mother being the queen, I have no opinion but you have to resolve two problems. (1) She let him sign all of his correspondence as Edward the 7th. He only stopped on her death. (2) She paid him a warrant every year of approx 1 million dollars. Why? There is historical record of this.
He only signed it that way on one document, and that's not how monarchs signed their names. Even if it were, the heir apparent does not become the monarch until one's predecessor is deceased. To style oneself thusly while one's predecessor is still alive is commonly known as "suicide".
And De Vere's welfare check was £1,000, or about $300k. She gave it to him because it would look bad for a peer of the realm to be on the side of the road begging. James continued it after Elizabeth died and even after Edward died continued to give £500 to his son.
He was Edward, 7th Earl of Oxford, and the signature included an earl's coronet. I'm pretty sure the warrant was less than you say, but I've forgotten the source.
Could you look into the life of Elizabeth Trentham, EdV's 2nd wife...?
He sounds too undisciplined to have penned a body of work like that of Shakespeare.
Kerry Hughes I’m sure you’re right. Please don’t do any actual research behind this video.
Gary Allen remember that one time he hoarded grain during a famine? Or didn’t teach his daughters to read? LoL- classic De Vere
@@ericloscheider7433 DeVere DIDN'T teach his daughters to read. He had nothing whatever to do with them. They were raised and educated by their grandfather.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Sorry- you’re right and my apologies. I agree that Oxford did not in fact personally teach his daughters to read.
I should explain- I was not being literal, but making a sarcastic joke, using irony. Speakers sometimes will exaggerate or bend the literal truth in order to make a larger point.
Of course we know that education for the upper classes was a given, and not so for the rest of society. This is probably why Shakspere left such vast quantities of money to his alma mater, the Stratford grammar school, endowed scholars and artists, patronized places of learning, and left so much evidence of a person who valued intellect and creativity in his will.
@@ericloscheider7433 Just curious, but how much did ANYONE leave to the Edward VI school, which was fully funded by the Stratford Corporation? Did people even leave legacies to their alma mater back then?
For that matter, did De Vere leave anything to Oxbridge? Or did he leave "... so much evidence of a person who valued intellect or creativity in his will"? How about his personal letters? Any evidence of his vast intellect anywhere in those?
Nope. No will at all. His letters betray no hint of learning, of poetry, of knowledge about any of the subjects Shakespeare is supposed to have been master. Only a desperation for money and an obvious East Anglian accent (common among aristos) which is entirely at odds with the rhyming patters in Shakespeare's works.
Shakespeare's works are his works, I totally agree!
And even that is of much debate
The man who was killed or committed suicide by running into Oxford's sword is remarkably similar to the suicide of Brutus in Act V of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.
@@kareno7848 that man claims they are his works.
But even if he was the child of Elizabeth I, he would have been illegitimate, so of no particular account in thenaccession
J Andrews any child of a monarch could be elevated to the throne if the Monarch chose to acknowledge and elevate said child. They would however not take presidence over a child of a legal marriage
Both Mary and Elizabeth were declared illegitimate by Henry. Legitimacy is a function of political expedience sometimes.
Kings and queen s from inheritance .today also in law in very few countrieis there is no illegitimate and legimate gap.although he aknowleged by his or father
In most countries child cannot inherit father ,s properties with out wil
Some couutrirs it is half than legimate children .
So thoe dayas
To be king you must be legimate.in england fot be a monarach
If a child later legimated by parent,s marraiae cannoy bs monarach
It is also valid today.
Well anything was possible back then. Elizabeth I also was taking very good care of another young fellow about the same time..Richard Edwards... It was suggested he was the illigitimate child of Henry VIII and Agnes Blewett.
No, not everything was possible. The claims must be based on evidence. And there's no evidence that Elizabeth had any children. In De Vere's case you only have to look at his birth date to understand that he can't be passed for Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour's child, I'm not even talking about other things. Seriously how gullible people can be?
Indigo you would be surprised
Excellent video! I don’t believe he was Elizabeth’s son....after all, she was busy with the imaginary twins she had given birth to.
What imaginary twins...?
What new nonsense is this?
@@carleennicholson7537 I'm curious about that, too.
Imaginary twins? Do tell.
@@juanasmith1901 Lol I never heard anyone said twins but rumors were going around that Seymour had gotten her pregnant in 1549. Supposedly started by a midwife who claimed she was blindfolded and taken to some unknown place and there she delivered a baby from a young girl with red gold hair who was of obvious nobility and possibly even royalty. Many believed it, others said the rumors were started by Thomas Seymour's enemies. However, no one back then ever said deVere was the child that did not come until modern times. Plus records say he was born the year before in 1548.
Edward de Vere would sign documents with two Vs which looks like a W. If you take the W away from William you're left with Illiam which sounds like Ilium, where Achilles defeated Hector with his shaking spear, aided by Pallas Athene, or Minerva.
Edward de Vere was referred to by his fellow poets as "our Minerva" because he was a patron of poets.
Using pseudonyms was common in those days and there are countless proofs that the author was Edward de Vere.
I’m happy to learn you studied English Literature, as I myself am I present student of English Literature & French!:) still fond of Tudor history of course!;)
Perhaps the next video will be about direct evidence, from William Shakspers life, that HE wrote the plays and sonets? Because nobody seems to know where any direct evidence, from his life time, is. Thank you...
It's all right here:
Shakespearedocumented.org
You're welcome.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I have searched this website and have not found any direct evidence from William Shaksper's lifetime to indicate he was a writer. Not one scrap.
@@josephhewes3923 Good thing you're not a detective. If you missed all of his contemporaries saying he was a poet, identifying him by name, by social rank, and by his other profession as an actor, if you missed the documents establishing his close association with the works and with the patrons who supported them, if you missed three pages of a manuscript in his own handwriting, I don't know what to say. They're all right there, for anyone who knows how to read.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I think Mark Twain was a great writer. He was wonderful with words. He was wonderful with his narratives. He was a wonderful writer. He was also a fiction. He didn't exist. Mark Twain was a pen name.
I think Hillary Clinton did a wonderful job on her book, It Takes a Village. What a wonderful book. Wonderfully written... But not by Hillary Clinton. It was written by a GHOST writer.
If you you think all of the references to "William Shakespeare" as a poet or writer tell us anything about the "actual" writer, your education has surely let you down.
The name "William Shakespeare" was a pen name.
@@josephhewes3923 Since you can't provide any evidence that William Shakespeare was anyone other than the guy all of his fellow said he was, and yet you believe it anyway, then common sense has let you down. When a well-placed contemporary referred to William Shakespeare by name, and called him a gentleman, and referred to him as an actor or a member of the Lord Chamberlain's or King's Men, he can only have been referring to one person.
Everybody knows that Mark Twain was a pen name for Samuel Clemens, because he talked openly about it. The publisher announced that Barbara Feinman would be the actual author of It Takes a Village, even though Clinton, herself, was stingy with credit. No such evidence exists for any claimant to the Shakespeare canon...except Shakespeare himself. There's no evidence that it was a pen name, no matter how many wild stories you invent about the name's origin.
A rather convincing argument about de Vere writing at least some Shakespeare plays, for me at least, is the detail of plays set in Italy. Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, etc, are so precise its as if the writer was an eye witness to life in italy and Italian society. For a man like Shakespeare, who certainly didn't have a vast education and never left England, it just seems strange that he would have such intricate knowledge. And de Vere was a writer and poet who'd grown up around the nobility and had the good fortune of a fine education, and he was well traveled in Europe. The arguments can be somewhat convincing. Anyway, thank you Claire. Looks lovely there!
It's been shown that Shakespeare's accounts of foreign countries are riddled with geographical errors and all the facts he does get right were found in a couple of a popular travel accounts of the time. Why do you think Shakespeare was incapable of doing some background research?
Plus he had written other stuff under his name and he was highly educated and high IQ. Shakespeare was not well educated as the son of a glove maker, but does not mean he could not have self educated himself if he was able to learn to read. that's the biggest argument they have about Shakespeare was that the working class did not know how to read and write.
@@ThePeachygal Shakespeare did not come from the "working class." His father was a craftsman and tradesman and his mother was from a lesser branch of the Arden family, an ancient noble family. Stratford had a school with Oxford educated teachers for the children of members of the Guildhall. Lists of students from those days have not survived, but we know the teachers' names and that they were paid better than Oxford profs. Since his father was active in town politics as well as the Guildhall, its practically impossible that he didn't attend this school. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare makes fun of one of those teachers. It's the only play he wrote about the middle class, and gives us insight into his childhood life.
I really LOVED today's talk.
Thanks Claire.
Fascinating!
He sounds like a creep!
🏵️🏵️🏵️
HI Claire. I think your series is very well done. I've enjoyed watching several of your videos on the Boleyns and learned a great deal from your expertise. You're so very thorough, reasonable and insightful regarding your take on the historic facts and colorful fictions. I have a question - I have ancestors who were involved in the Tudor courts in various capacities or lived in Britain during that era. I'd like to find and copy original documents mentioning them and gather more information about their roles in the royal households , court, government and communities or possibly any documents they signed or wrote etc. Is(are) there a main repository(ies) for these kinds of documents ? If so , do they offer research and copy services ? How do you go about your own research for the extensive work you do ? Online sources are somewhat limited and I understand that 80% of historic documents are not online yet. Thank you, Taylor
I have ancestors that were minor courtiers at that court, too. I'm a descendent of Kathryne Swynford through her first marriage and one of her children's line married into Drury family and then the Cecils. I know, ew lol. But you have to admire the Cecils to some degree. They were scrappy.
Doesn't sound like he had the depths of humanity to have written Shakespeare's plays.
People who believe that a stingy little business man without literacy or learning or travel, is so naive and just perpetuates the ignorance which is the hallmark of the feckless Stratford scholars. Edward de Vere was brilliant, whatever one may think about his betrayal of his friends over their religious sympathies. His belittling of the queen was not a nice trait, but she and Cecil effectively made off with most of his family inheritance and fortune. Whatever he had he spent supporting writers and poets. He has a few good points. But then the tourist industry must not be disappointed, must it? Oxford was definitely not the son of Elizabeth. He was only a ward.
There are some strange things that the Earl did which he seemed to weather with little problems... he went to flanders without the queens permission, yet when arrested, instead of being convicted of treason, Elizabeth accepted an appology and then allowed him to leave the country again, this time with permission. He was arrogant and entitled, and he easily received permission to marry from Elizabeth, which is strange because he was very attractive, and got away with so much that Elizabeth usually frowned upon, and associated with people as if HE was a royal... I think he greatly resembles Elizabeth, and even his coloring... when did the rumor actually arise in whispers and to public notice? He was certainly a fan of Norfolk, probably supported Mary Queen of Scots' claim and would have happily supported a Catholic restoration, and was against James becoming king after Elizabeth, but who would he have supported instead of James? Were there any whispers at the time of the Earl himself seeking the throne? I havent heard of anything like that... and why did he hate Elizabeth enough to bad mouth her in the way he did, it seemed more personal than religious...
De Vere suggested to the Earl of Lincoln on the eve of Elizabeth's death that the peers of the realm should decide the succession, and suggested Lincoln's nephew, the Earl of Huntingdon. Lincoln suspected he was being set up, and reported De Vere to an official at The Tower. De Vere was broke and ill and therefore no threat to the succession, and so the official took no action.
As one king in a C-drama said "It's the Royal Court, everyone tries to kill everyone sooner or later!"
Amazing Video claire
I am always stunned that there seem to be no comparisons for example of the style of William Skakespeare's sonets and of Edvard de Vere' s ones. There might be special expressions you find in both poems. You should probably focus on the similarities to find out whether they are the same authors.
Compare Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 with Edward de Vere's "These Beauties Make Me Die." The poems do not share the same structure, but they do share imagery and sentiment. De Vere paints his love in glowing terms and complimentary sentiments. Shakespeare uses many of the the same terms and imagery, but it seems that he is looking at his subject with a more mature eye than the young de Vere. De Vere's youthful innocence pervades his poem, while Shakespeare is older and a bit jaded, but besides that the poems seem to spring from the same mind. Either Shakespeare read De Vere's poem, or they are the same person.
“These Beauties Make Me Die”
1 What cunning can express
2 The favour of her face,
3 To whom in this distress
4 I do appeal for grace?
5 A thousand Cupids fly
6 About her gentle eye.
7 From whence each throws a dart,
8 That kindleth soft sweet fire,
9 Within my sighing heart,
10 Possessed by desire;
11 No sweeter life I try,
12 Than in her love to die.
13 The Lily in the field,
14 That glories in his white,
15 For pureness now must yield
16 And render up his right;
17 Heaven pictured in her face
18 Doth promise joy and grace.
19 Fair Cynthia’s silver light,
20 That beats on running streams,
21 Compares not with her white,
22 Whose hairs are all sunbeams;
23 Her virtues so do shine,
24 As day unto mine eyne.
25 With this there is a Red
26 Exceeds the Damask Rose,
27 Which in her cheeks is spread,
28 Whence every favour grows;
29 In sky there is no star
30 That she surmounts not far.
31 When Phoebus from the bed
32 Of Thetis doth arise,
33 The morning, blushing red,
34 In fair carnation wise,
35 He shows it in her face
36 As Queen of every grace.
37 This pleasant Lily white,
38 This taint of roseate red,
39 This Cynthia’s silver light,
40 This sweet fair Dea spread,
41 These sunbeams in mine eye,
42 These beauties make me die.
Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Hello Miss Claire once again a wonderful piece of history. I Realy wonder if he could be Elizabeth's son as he looks just like her. Thank-you.
For your entertainment may I recommend, Eight Ghosts. The book was edited by Sarah Perry, the author of the Essex Serpent. Sarah Perry and the 7 other ghost story writers spent time at their favorite haunted historic properties.
Sounds a bit dodgy to me too. Another informative video. Thanks Claire. Be careful out there! ❤
I’m just a yank who’s been more or less completely oblivious to the vitriolic heights this Oxfordian/Stratfordian debate has reached until I stumbled upon a video “the incalculable genius of John Dee” by Alexander Waugh. I must say that coming in cold with no dog in the fight, that that is the video to watch….then there was an interview with Waugh in the last year or so, something “RESET” something or other, both of witch are marvelously compelling. I’ve since gone down several other rabbit holes and still find the Oxfordian argument far and away almost plainly obvious, and fascinatingly so…so much so in, in fact that I’m surprised the literal Stratfordians have not capitalized on it by dedicating a center to it in Stratford! It is for more fascinating than the conventional narratives with far broader implications. By maintaining themselves as the global center for Shakespeare, they’d be at the tip of the spear for a new renaissance in the ensuing multi dimensional study of all the works and all the likely working contributors beneath de Vere. Like I said, I was just stumbling along looking for stuff on Dee and fell into hole that looks more like a gaping wound from my cousins across the pond.
Btw….this was an informative video….albeit ironically critical of the creator or at least head of creators of the works to which she may hold dear, at least in the case the Oxfordians are correct…but at least it’s an honest criticism thereof where I can’t remember hearing anything negative of Shakespeare himself, which is curious enough for me….yes this hole or wound would seem like one of cognitive dissonance on a huge scale….I wish RAW was around to right about this.
From an outsider looking in, it would seem there’s a very high likelihood for the Oxfordian case which should be accepted as just that….it need not be definitively proved, yet merged into all of the lore remaining centered in Stratford. Sacred cows indeed.
I know people need uplifting expressions at this time. Me normalcy means more. History buffs should know life HAS always been precarious. The people that have lived through things like this are very old. We are much stronger speices than how people are acting. My hero; my father loved "The Shakes" I said that just to bug him!!! Plus my mother has "The Kathleen Hepburn" shakes (?)" Like in Gloden Pond but has got worst as time goes on. So, I called him "Shakes" some of the most perious things I own are from my Dad and are either where he was born or from the GLOBE theatre. That you Willy nilly lived there is AWESOME!!! Take care and have fun more than ever!!! ♡♡♡ THANK YOU ♡♡♡
Thank you for a lovely video! I love the setting. It was a lovely place to speak at and I found it relaxing :). I am of very clear mind that de Vere is indeed the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare and that he, as a person of the royal court, was not allowed to publish comedy, in particular. Such as Hamlet, being a delicious and ridiculous comedy, along with Romeo and Juliet, which is a farce. I believe he asked Shakespeare to present them as his own, Shakespeare’s, works in exchange possibly for some remuneration.
As to his character, the information presented here tells too little of the story to make an informed character judgement of why he would do those things, or what the outcomes were. I see in some comments there is more information to fill out the story.
I just want to note that I began reading Shakespeare on my own when around 12 years old in a smallish town in Texas. Hamlet was on the bookshelf and I loved it. I was laughing so hard at the ridiculousness of it. I was laughing so hard my father came to my room and asked what I was reading. I told him Hamlet and he told me it was a tragedy and I told him, “No! It’s not.” But I had come to it before anyone was telling me about the work so I saw it more easily. I also read everything about Queen Elizabeth and England at that time, and thought often as a young person, there is no way Shakespeare wrote this. It was many years later that I 1st heard that others had the same thought.
I have since put on Shakespeare’s plays with fifth graders ( I really don’t care who wrote them as much as I love the work) and find it’s the most amazing process. They get it! I never tell them anything. They must ask me a direct question. The question is usually, for ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’, “Can we change the word ass?” since they perform then in front of their parents and other students. They even have the inflection perfect with no coaching or previous knowledge.
I forgot to say Thank you! For bringing up the possible children of Elizabeth I. He may not have been her son, but it seems some people were, who were they? So I find the information you gave fascinating!!
Now I’ve heard it all...”gloves” was behind the genius. Daffy
No one will ever know for sure, but the stories surrounding Elizabeth I's unusual girlhood and the strange circumstances of her forbidding anyone to perform a post-mortem exam when she died, have always convinced me that there was _something_ she desperately did not want known. Especially, one of her physicians wrote that "she hath a membrane in her" that prevented her having a normal sexual relationship... It could all have been just malicious gossip, but I always thought it would have been too strange if she had been a genetic male who suffered from _androgyn insensitivity syndrome_ and turned out to be the _son_ Henry so obsessively longed for... ironically appearing in the guise of _just another daughter._
Have you ever tried to read source material? If the young Elizabeth writes to the Lord Protector: "I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am" in order to refute the pregnancy rumour, do you think she has anything to hide? There's so much stupidity circulating about Elizabeth. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me - people were and are very uncomfortable with single and childless women.
Thankyou very much for the very interesting videos.
I came across an interesting story about the death of Elizabeth the First. That her remains were not to be prepared for burial! Her Orders.
She was to be interred as is. She was not to be washed and dressed. This was a Documentary I saw on TV. It was of English origin. I cannot remember the Production Company. Do you know anything about this?. Kind regards and greetings from Africa.
Very informative. You mentioned that a bell was tolled during your filming that it was for Mary Queen of Scotland. Can you elaborate? Or point me to a direction where I can find more information? I find Mary intriguing. Thank you for sharing.
The bells ringing in my videos are just my church bells and they chime every 15 minutes. But here's a link to my Mary, Queen of Scots playlist - th-cam.com/play/PLepqWJ7TpkrIIC1eB75JBP8xYcqnqTHt6.html
I read Charles Beauclaire's book about the de Vere claims. The writer was a master of logical fallacy. (He drew conclusions that really didn't follow from the facts and were pure speculation.) If Shakespeare was employed by the Countess of Southampton, who was a distant cousin of his mother, and later by her son the Earl, during the plague years of 1592 and 93, when he wrote his hugely popular narrative poems and the theatres were closed, he had plenty of access to the nobility and the rituals of noble life. He may have attended Gray's Inn, not as a student, but as the Earl's secretary and possibly note-taker, since the Earl was registered to study the law there after he left Cambridge. The Southampton's were sent the latest Italian literature in the original versions and Shakespeare may very well have written the Italian plays with help from translators in their households.My favourite theory is that Amelia Bassano, the harpsicordist and possibly the dark lady of the sonnets, collaborated with him as translator and maybe more. There is evidence in the Italian plays that someone was obsessed with her and they all feature strong intelligent female characters. He may have heard many of De Vere's stories' as the man dined out on those stories and was very involved in the theatrical community. We also really don't know where Shakespeare was after age 12 but given that his family were secret Catholics and his mother was an Arden, a noble family though a lesser branch, and his father was given to some secret business dealings, he could have been anywhere, including Italy. Shakespeare was uniquely capable of understanding human nature at all levels of society and able to write his plays so carefully that no one could accuse him of taking a particular side in any issue. He didn't live alone in an attic though, and "worked collaboratively all his life" as his 1911 biographer said.
Alexander Waugh will prove Oxford was Shakespeare
David Shakespeare also makes a good case that EDWARD DEVERE actually wrote under the pen name William Shakespeare which also fathered a child with Elizabeth. I’m not saying either or but he’s really done his homework.
70 references to gloves and glove making? Compared to thousands of references to the law, military and medicine practices, geography and inside references to the elizabethan court? 70 seems like such a small number when considered against the full weight of the works.
Why are not any of the plays set against the backdrop of a common man's life? But instead, they are set against the backdrop of a nobleman's life?
The commoner, William Shaksper, did not write those plays. A nobleman did.
The plays which featured noblemen were mostly history plays. Let's look at all the rest:
All's Well That Ends Well - The protagonist is low born.
As You Like It - Male protagonist is the son of a mere knight. Female protagonists are the daughters of a duke.
Comedy of Errors - Main characters are all wealthy businessmen.
Hamlet - Mixture of nobles and commoners.
Love's Labors Lost - Main characters are all nobility. One of the nobles attending Navarre is inexplicably a Catholic who was mortal enemy to the others in real life.
Measure for Measure - Protagonist is a novice of common birth. Antagonist is a bureaucrat.
Merchant of Venice - All main characters are wealthy commoners.
Merry Wives of Windsor - All commoners save Falstaff, who is a knight.
Midsummer Night's Dream - The only royals are faeries.
Much Ado About Nothing - Main characters are a mixture of nobles and rich commoners.
Othello - No nobles in the Republic of Venice, though Shakespeare accidentally gives the place a duke.
Romeo and Juliet - Wealthy commoners.
Taming of the Shrew - Wealthy commoners.
Tempest - Most of the characters are royal or formerly royal.
Twelfth Night - The duke is a minor character. There are a couple of knights but the primary characters are commoners.
Two Gentlemen of Verona - Commoners.
Winter's Tale - Female protagonist is a princess but doesn't know it.
So when not forced to write about the nobility because he was writing history plays, he wrote mostly about wealthy commoners. In other words, people like himself.
There is an enormous amount of Law throughout the Shakespeare Plays and Sonnets. Shakespeare was a lawyer named Francis Bacon who was trained and practiced law and performed masques including the first performance of The Comedy of Errors while he attended Grays Inn. Bacon spent many years at Grays Inn and some of the plots regarding law such as seen in Merchant of Venice were based on equity law issues Bacon wrote about as a lawyer.
DeVere on the other hand never practiced or studied law, was given an honorary degree from Grays Inn because his father-in-law had influence, so it was like a finishing school for DeVere because of his status he did not have to work for his degree. There is nothing Noble in this nobleman's life.
More on the law and Shakespeare can be read about here
sirbacon.org/FRANCIS%20BACON%20AND%20THE%20LAW.pdf
and the accompanying video
th-cam.com/video/tWu38OJXcdI/w-d-xo.html
Again.... Love the view behind you
Thank you
While I loved the Anonymous movie, I find hard to give credit to any of the different theories regarding the Earl of Oxford and Shakespeare. They just seem so fantastical!
Well, it's possible. You know what they say, "fact is stranger than fiction." 🤷
I agree Shakespeare wrote his own work , I do feel he was under pressure to write pro Tudor & anti Plantagenet ie creating Richard 111 into a hunch back monster
I've only recently discovered this channel and I enjoy it very much. There are so many of these stories around. I saw a documentary many years ago claiming that Elizabeth I was actually a man in drag. Personally, I've always been more interested in QE I than her mother but I do find Anne Boleyn interesting as well. I sometimes wonder if the reason she was accused of incest was to cast a shadow over Elizabeth. If she was the daughter of her uncle then she wouldn't be a threat to Jane Seymour's children the way Mary was. I'd also be interested to hear what you think of some of the QE I films that have been made as to their historical accuracy. For example, did Robert Dudley keep his marriage a secret from QE I?
I'm curious what (in your scholarly opinion) was Edward's reasoning for signing his name with a crown above it and 7 dashes underneath - indicating he would be Edward VII. It's always intrigued me why Elizabeth indulged him and would love to hear your thoughts. Cheers from Seattle!!
Do you seriously think that someone who wanted to keep his head would sign his name in a manner to suggest he was a royal heir? If that were truly why he signed his name that way, do you think his contemporaries wouldn't notice?
And the "crown" was an earl's coronet.
It's an 'm' for multiply - 'x' was an 'm' before about 1610
@@eddiedevereoxford4995 Thank you! Super kind of you to reply.
So happy I agree with you about Shakespeare
Here we have living proof that a little learning is a dangerous thing.
Your Spanish village in the background looks so charming!
Many reasons I think de Vere may have written many of the Shakespeare plays and Royalty are
1. The content of so many of the plays dealt with scenes of Europe. Yet I've not seen any records showing The Bard traveling extensively on the Continent.
2. Many plot lines seemed to denote a classical education of the top order, like deVere's not Shakespeare,
3. I think the reason Cecil's daughter was married to Devere was because he was the Royal bastard,
4. I think, not certain, I read Elizabeth I made a large bequest to Devere in her will.
5. He really does have the same look as Elizabeth. quite haughty in bearing.
1. Shakespeare's works got all sorts of things wrong. He based the King of Navarre's noblemen on real people, but picked two Protestants and one Catholic. In real life they were mortal enemies. He gave both Venice and Vienna dukes, when neither had them, and he got all sorts of things wrong about Italy.
2. Shakespeare's contemporaries described him as uneducated. His plays were and are popular because you didn't and don't need a degree in the classics to understand them. His peers were always dropping references to Greek philosophy into their plays. Shakespeare didn't.
3. Anne, the daughter of a not-yet baron, got the chance to marry the (then) wealthy, and by all accounts dashing young heir of the oldest earldom in England. She didn't know he was a royal bastard, because that's batshit crazy nonsense.
4. After he had blown the largest fortune in England on high living, Elizabeth put him on the dole, it was unseemly for the preeminent earl of England to be a pauper. She did not leave anything to him in her will, as monarchs don't have wills. Everything they have is inherited by the next monarch.
5. All nobles look like that. They're arrogant by nature.
@@Jeffhowardmeade Venice had a doge which comes from the same word as "duke" -from the Latin "dux"It looks as if also that Shakespeare thought Vienna was a place in Italy probably because the name in English sounds Italian.Shakespeare may have got his knowledge of Italy from Italian literature of the Renaissance which was becoming very well known in England-a lot of his plots like Romeo and Juliet are from Italian sources and one of his plays (I forget which)is based on the great Italian Renaissance epic poet and dramatist Ariosto who was all the rage.
@@kaloarepo288 When The King's Men performed Merchant at court in 1604, they were called back to
play it again the next day. My guess is that Robert Cecil said to James "Did you hear that? He said 'Duke', not 'Doge'." And James said "No way! Have them rewind it! Whadayaknow! They DID say 'Duke'!" Then Cecil said "Hey, they're actors. What do you expect? It's not like any of them have ever been to Venice."
Omg that mic scared me so much
Also, a fantastic movie about DeVeer being Shakespeare is called Anonymous. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Just shows, "fake news" was invented a long time ago!
Meanwhile, I CANNOT BELIEVE the acrimony over de Vere as Shakespeare...or not. Last really bad migraine I had I let videos by 'Oxfordians' and 'Stratfordians' and others play all day. Figured it would be simple and mind-numbing. There are hours of these presentations! Unbelievable!
There's actually a lot of evidence to suggest DeVere wrote those plays. Shakspeare from Avon could barely sign his name and his will doesn't suggest he had any special facility for writing. Also, that bust at his grave has changed over the years. There are drawings of it from the 17tg century and his hands are on a bundle...like a wool merchant. If you take a dive there's lots of stuff like that that isnt common knowledge.
There's a lot of that stuff that's complete malarkey as well. An antiquarian visited Stratford a year or two after Shakespeare died, and copied down the inscription on the monument. It describes him as a great poet. Funny thing to write on a grain merchant's monument. As that whole style of monument is reserved for learned men, it's more likely that the 17th century drawing was simply badly done.
His signatures are just fine, by the way. If one can read the archaic script he used, known as "secretary hand", they are quite legible.
@@Jeffhowardmeade You know...those drawings i referred to did not suffer from a lack of draftsmenship. I've seen 2, several decades apart, both from the 1600's. Both arms are down on a pillowy thing. A bundle. That's a very odd thing to explain away. Outside of like 6 signatures on mundane documents, there's no contemporaneous evidence to suggest this guy existed...as far as i know. No school records or reference. DeVer's background and life experiences kind of mirror the plays in multiple instances. I was an English major in college. If someone suggested this to me in my 20's I'd think they were cuckoo for cocoa puffs. It's a surprising rabbit hole and the people supporting the notion don't seem insane and bring worthwhile observations. In my recent opinion.
@@stevenedwards4470 The engraving you saw wwas done by competent hands (Wenceslaus Hollar), but it was based on faulty drawings.
Here's the sketch he was given to work from:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3ADugdale_sketch_1634_Detail.jpg
As you can see, the guy who made the original sketch (William Dugdale) couldn't draw water up through a straw. Yet he was careful enough to identify the monument as being "... for William Shakespeare the famous poet." Several subsequent editions of the book simply copied Hollar's engraving. It wasn't until 1725 that an engraving was made based on a competent rendering, and that one looked just like it does today. Despite this, subsequent editions of Dugdale's book CONTINUED to base their engravings on the flawed earlier engraving.
Aside from the six signatures, Shakespeare's handwriting can be seen on three pages of the manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More. There are many more documents referring to Shakespeare as a poet. Some mention only his name, leading Anti-Stratfordians to claim (without evidence) that it was a pen name. Too bad for them that Shakespeare was also mentioned as holding the social rank of gentleman, and that he was also an actor. This makes it clear that they were speaking about William Shakespeare of Stratford, who was the only William Shakespeate in England who was either of those things. In their desperation, Anti-Strats them pile more caveats on the evidence. There is no proof that all those people knew Shakespeare personally, they claim, though they and Shakespeare were literary insiders in what was a very small circle, and many of them definitely DID know Shakespeare, and were his fellow actors. But those people didn't mention that he was THE William Shakespeare whose plays they had been performing for two decades until after he died. Because that matters, somehow.
After piling all of these absurd requirements into what it a thorough documentary record, Anti-Stratfordians then claim NONE OF IT EXISTS.
In other words, the lied to you.
Oh, and while De Vere's life does resemble a few plot points from Shakespeare's plays, it's not nearly as close as Oxfordians claim. They have tarted up his biography and in some cases outright invented it in order to try to make it fit. Even if the plays were a mirror of his life, that would not be a good reason to conclude he wrote it. A more likely conclusion would be that the author was flattering--or more likely lampooning--a dissolute earl who nobody liked.
I agree that he was not Elizabeth's child, and in my view she really was the Virgin Queen of renown. Now I seem to recall that there was some evidence that De Vere was the writer of Shakespeare in the form of some documents that were found in a secret drawer in a desk. I know you will be aware, although maybe not some readers of the reason that a noblemen could not be seen to be involved in anything connected with entertainment.
Since Oxford died before a third of Shakespeare's plays ever saw light of day, his followers hand supposed that he must have written them and stashed them away somewhere, to be found by others and slowly trotted out. This is just an invention to explain a massive hole in their hypothesis. There is no documentary evidence. This explanation also fails to account for the startling changes that overcame Shakespeare's works when the monarch he served changed.
I’m with you, with the ideas some have about William Shakespeare.
The video doesnt adequately go into the matter described in the title. Its mostly about other things.
The speaker's background landscape doesn't seem English architecture...it reminds me of Spain.
It is Spain, Andalucía.
What did he "do for a living",,?
Having mistresses, wives, fencing, love of music must have a cost,,??
He was a lord. All the nobels lived off the money the commoners made from working his lad through taxes and such. None "made a living" but rather lived off their people. Yes, there was some land management and settling of problems but the commoners paid to rent the land, and taxes, to use the land for their crops and such.
Elizabeth was a popular name.
shell matheis so was Mary and Anne.
So why no documentation that Shakspeare could even read or write? I'm glad you admitted you are biased, but really without proof he could even sign his own name properly or left any books in his will?
Why the CGI background?
It's not CGI, it's where I live.
If 80 references to glove-making are a slam dunk for Shakespeare's authorship, what are we to make of the over 200 legal concepts expertly employed throughout the works? Was Shakespeare's dad a lawyer too?
Funny you should ask. Shakespeare's father was a justice of the peace for the borough of Stratford. And the legal terms are not expertly used. They were common terms that anyone might know.
@@Jeffhowardmeade I think it likely that Shakespeare did get a little legal education. not as an official student but while acting as the Earl of Southampton's secretary. The earl was enrolled at Grey's inn after he graduated from Cambridge at 17. Will's father was an alderman and the equivalent of mayor in Stratford, but I have never read that he was a justice of the peace. He had his own nasty brush with the law though, when his secret wool buying business was discovered and he paid heavy fines and withdrew from public life. If that had not happened when Will was 12, he might possibly have received an Oxford education. I'm sure he learned something about courts though.
@@cathybaggott2873 The role of Justice of the Peace came along with being mayor (or as they called it, High Bailiff) during his term of office. William Camden, in defending John Shakespeare's right to a coat of arms, mentioned that he was a justice.
Common Law in the 16th Century was a much briefer thing than our statutory laws are today. Law students basically learned by doing. The great philosophers of the law, like Locke and Hobbes upon whom we base our modern legal theory, were not yet born.
But aside from things Shakespeare might have learned organically, he was a writer, and writers seek out the tools they need. When I was a young journalist back in the day, I had an editorial cartoon stuck on the wall of my cubicle. A bunch of reporters were closing their eyes and throwing darts at a wall, upon which was written "Today I am an expert in..." above a bunch of cards listing such disciplines as politics, cooking, law enforcement, and gardening. News reporters needed to quickly research and synthesize and then get it all down on paper before deadline.
Playwrights, as it turns out, were very different. Shakespeare, needing legal knowledge for a courtroom scene near the end of his upcoming play about this merchant who gives his heart as collateral, probably DIDN'T ask anyone about the law involved, because he gets it all hilariously wrong. I'll bet this failure stung him, because he never wrote another courtroom scene.
That's right, the guy Anti-Stratfordians are always touting for his legal knowledge had just one courtroom scene, and it's a bloody farce.
I do find the theories about the Shakespeare interesting . I saw the movie” Anonymous,” years ago and it made a compelling case for Edward. I have not researched him at all, but now I will ! Love your videos !
If true that would be repulsive as supposedly by that movie him and Elizabeth were lovers too.
I agree.... Hollywood ....
LOVE that movie ! British actors are the best !
I'm twelve october 1990, i have same date with this Edward. Awesome ! How could be, right ? 🌐🇬🇧♥️
Is it not possible to study original manuscripts of Shakespeare to determine who had written them _ assuming there are preserved original examples.
There are no original copies of Shakespeare's plays existing. There are more printed copies of his plays than of any other Elizabethan playwright.
@@cathybaggott2873 That's rather odd. I wouldn't be surprised if some are sitting on a shelf in a library in some great house.
The manuscript of a play called Sir Thomas More survives. Shakespeare wrote three pages of it. It's in his handwriting, and it's in his writing style.
Lovely background. Sounds like he was a real bastard. 🤭. Happy easter to you & your family. 🐣
Can you discount the so called pregnancy portrait as being inaccurately linked to Elizabeth? Also, was Shakespeare’s education equal to the task of creating the wealth literature attributed to him?
The woman in the portrait isn't Elizabeth, and she's not pregnant. Portraits of that era which depicted pregnant women went out of their way to emphasize the pregnancy, usually with a hand resting on the belly to draw attention to the fact.
I would like to know about Tudors(not Edmunds descendants) but others. I know there was a Frederic Tudor of America, and I always wondered if he is was related. Owain Tudor had brothers and cousins, are there Tudors , now? (Frederic Tudor had-to my knowledge, no issue)
They do say write about what you know!