Shakespeare's Social Life
April 17, 2003

by Joe Sobran

     Overlooked in the hubbub last week was the birthday 
of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was born on 
April 12, 1550. As you may know by now, Oxford wrote the 
plays and poems we read under the name of "William 
Shakespeare."

     There was a man named William Shakespeare, or 
Shakspere, of Stratford upon Avon. For most of my life I 
accepted the traditional belief that he was the author. I 
eagerly read every biography I could find, hoping for 
some insight into the connection between the man and his 
works. I was disappointed every time, but that didn't 
weaken my belief -- my blind faith, actually -- in his 
authorship.

     What about those who said the real author was 
someone else? I didn't even want to hear their arguments. 
I wrote them off as cranks and snobs, without knowing 
what they had to say. But as soon as I finally listened 
to them, my lifelong prejudice was smashed. I was 
overwhelmed by the case for Oxford. Soon, with a 
convert's zeal, I was writing my own book making the case 
for Oxford. It was published in 1997 under the title 
ALIAS SHAKESPEARE, and has since been translated into 
German and Japanese.

     Oxford's life and personal letters are echoed in the 
Shakespeare works in hundreds of ways. Everything I 
sought in the conventional biographies is there: the 
specific links between the man and the work.

     Everything we know about William of Stratford can be 
written on a single sheet of paper -- mostly records of 
his mundane business dealings, which have nothing to do 
with the plays and poems. Nothing in those records 
suggests a literary man, let alone a man of genius.

     In fact, the oddest thing about his life (if you 
assume he was the author) is his apparent social 
isolation. He spent some years in London, and yet -- 
though the city was teeming with brilliant writers -- he 
doesn't seem to have known any of them. Could the most 
brilliant writer of the Elizabethan age have escaped all 
contact with his literary contemporaries?

     The sole exception is Ben Jonson, who claimed to 
have known and loved "Shakespeare." But Jonson made this 
claim many years later, long after William was dead, and 
his testimony is suspicious on many counts.

     By contrast, Oxford personally knew many of the 
writers "Shakespeare" should have known. He was also a 
patron of the arts and the theater. The novelist-
playwright John Lyly and the sonneteer Thomas Watson were 
in his employ; both dedicated books to him, as did Robert 
Greene, the brilliant playwright and pamphleteer. Thomas 
Nashe, another playwright-poet-novelist-pamphleteer, was 
Oxford's pal. Edmund Spenser, the most esteemed poet of 
the time, was Oxford's warm friend and admirer; the 
admiration was mutual. Oxford was also a cousin of 
Francis Bacon, the philosopher and essayist.

     In short, Oxford was in the thick of Elizabethan 
London's vibrant literary life. Those who knew him and 
his work had only the highest praise for his literary 
genius. Spenser called him "most dear" to the Muses.

     Two of Oxford's uncles, Henry Howard (Earl of 
Surrey) and Arthur Golding, were poets and translators 
who are known to have been among the chief literary 
influences on Shakespeare. Golding dedicated two books to 
Oxford.

     The first two works published under the name of 
Shakespeare were dedicated to the third Earl of 
Southampton, who nearly married Oxford's daughter 
Elizabeth. The posthumous collected plays of Shakespeare 
were dedicated to the Herbert brothers, earls of Pembroke 
and Montgomery. Pembroke nearly married Oxford's daughter 
Bridget, and Montgomery did marry his daughter Susan. So 
Oxford could easily have become the father-in-law of all 
three of Shakespeare's known dedicatees!

     For good measure, the great Lord Burghley, the 
queen's powerful Lord Treasurer, is almost surely the 
model for Polonius in HAMLET. Like Polonius, he sent a 
spy to watch his playboy son in Paris. Only someone close 
to him, as Oxford was (and William wasn't), would be 
likely to know such things about his private life. He was 
Oxford's guardian and father-in-law; relations between 
the two men were often strained, which may explain why 
Polonius is drawn so unflatteringly.

     Oxford's social life doesn't in itself prove his 
authorship, but as Sherlock Holmes might say, "It is 
highly suggestive, Watson, is it not?"

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