THE BARD'S ORPHANS
by Joe Sobran
(From SOBRAN'S, April 2003, pages 3-6)
The Bard's Orphans
(pages 3-6)
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Maybe I'm crazy. I've long since learned not to rule
out that possibility when I think I have a bright idea.
When I began to suspect, back in 1986, that the great
Bard "William Shakespeare" was actually Edward de Vere,
Earl of Oxford, I tried not to accept the Oxfordian
theory too rashly.
Ten years later, when I was finishing my book ALIAS
SHAKESPEARE, I found an obscure sonnet cycle, EMARICDULFE
(see the January 1998 issue or the website articles "A
Note from the Editor" [www.sobran.com/emarintr.shtml] and
"The Mystery of EMARICDULFE" [www.sobran.com/emar.shtml],
which seemed to me to bear all the signs of the Bard's
authorship. It was published in 1595 under the initials
"E.C., Esquire." But if Oxford could write under one
alias, why not another? Still, I waited over a year
before committing myself. I wanted to be good and sure
before I took the radical step of proposing to expand the
Bard's canon.
Five more years have passed, and I think it's time
to advance what is either my brightest idea or my
craziest. I can only sketch the evidence here, but I
submit it as worthy of consideration.
I believe Oxford also wrote, under various
pseudonyms, much of the poetry for which the Elizabethan
Age is remembered.
This wasn't a conclusion I was predisposed to reach.
Just the opposite. I was quite content with a single
important discovery. I didn't want to discover too much,
for fear of sounding like those Baconians who
"discovered" that Francis Bacon wrote not only the
Shakespeare works, but also the King James Bible and the
works of Milton, Bunyan, and Robert Burton. The
Shakespeare authorship question doesn't need any more
absurd exaggerations.
{{ Then again, }} think of it this way: if the
Baconian theory *had* panned out, it *would* have been a
tremendous discovery, {{ what? }} We should give even
far-fetched ideas a fair chance. Anyway, here goes.
During the 1590s and beyond, about two dozen sonnet
cycles -- about a thousand sonnets in all -- were
published in England. This has led scholars to speak of
an "Elizabethan sonnet craze," whose stellar names
include Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Watson,
and Edmund Spenser, along with Richard Barnfield, Thomas
Lodge, Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, Henry
Constable, Barnabe Barnes, and others, lesser known or
only vaguely identified, if identified at all.
I studied these sonnets for a couple of years and
was struck by their similarities of style, as well as by
hundreds of recurrent images and turns of phrase. Some
were better than others, but that is also true of the
Bard's plays at different stages of his development. All
but a few of the sonnets showed technical proficiency.
Could most of them have been the work of a single
poet? The more I read, the more plausible this seemed.
Still, I resisted the idea, for the reasons I've
mentioned.
It was more than a matter of style. Many of the
supposed poets, whose identities scholars have seldom
doubted, were friends, relatives, acquaintances, and
employees of Oxford! In most cases, even less is known of
these men than of William of Stratford, whose meager
biographical record has frustrated scholars for
centuries. It's a striking point that among the few facts
we do know of these poets is their connection to Oxford.
One of the oddest things about "Shakespeare" is that we
have so little evidence that he had any literary friends
in London. Apart from Ben Jonson, no other writer seems
to have met him!
Many of the dedicatees also belonged to Oxford's
circle. One sonnet cycle, HECATOMPATHIA, was dedicated to
Oxford himself; it was ascribed to Thomas Watson, one of
Oxford's secretaries. Another, CYNTHIA, supposedly by
Richard Barnfield, was dedicated to Oxford's son-in-law,
the Earl of Derby, in 1595 -- the year Derby married
Oxford's daughter Elizabeth. WIT'S PILGRIMAGE, ascribed
to John Davies, was dedicated to the Earl of Montgomery a
few years later, around the time Montgomery married
Oxford's daughter Susan. Several works were also
dedicated to Montgomery's mother, the Countess of
Pembroke; others to "the gentlemen of the Inns of Court,"
especially Gray's Inn, where Oxford had studied law.
(These poems were published between 1582 and 1628; the
Bard's between 1593 and 1634. Two of the poets speak of
writing their sonnets in Italy, where Oxford spent a year
as a young man.)
These might all be coincidences, but there were
other things too, chiefly the wording of the dedications.
In several cases the poet refers to his sonnet cycle as
his first effort, usually in the metaphor of offspring:
as his "first fruit," "first-born," "child," "issue,"
"infants," "babe," "maiden verse," "orphans," even
"bastard orphan." Compare the Bard's reference to VENUS
AND ADONIS as "the first heir of my invention"; the poem
was dedicated in 1593 to the Earl of Southampton, who
nearly became Oxford's son-in-law. Usually the poet
disparages his verse as "rude" or "unpolished" (the Bard
calls his "unpolished" and "untutored"), though it's
anything but. Often the poet professes his gentlemanly
reluctance to publish his verses, but explains that his
friends (or some villainous publisher) have left him no
choice in the matter.
Your first impression, reading these dedications, is
of a sort of courtly monotony. They all sound alike. They
use hundreds of the same phrases. They belittle their
poetic "children." They apologize for their unworthiness.
They grovel to the dedicatees. Was all this just standard
Elizabethan practice? Or didn't these rhymesters have any
sense of dignity?
How odd, too, that so many able sonneteers, some of
them brilliant, should make their debuts in quick
succession -- and never reappear! Each makes his debut as
sonneteering Rookie of the Year, as it were, and then
never writes another sonnet! Contrast French sonneteers
like Pierre Ronsard, who poured out reams of sonnet
cycles. What's more, these English boys keep promising to
write something better in the future, just as the Bard
promises "some graver labor" to follow VENUS, but the
promise is never kept.
The casual reader may dismiss the whole issue with
the vague explanation that "they all wrote pretty much
alike in those days." But this will hardly do. Consider
some parallel passages from PHILLIS (1593), usually
ascribed to Thomas Lodge, and from CHLORIS (1596),
assigned to William Smith. No two poets in any age ever
wrote *this* much alike:
PHILLIS:
Long hath my sufferance labor'd to enforce
One pearl of pity from her pretty eyes,
Whilst I with restless rivers of remorse,
Have bath'd the banks where my fair Phillis
lies
CHLORIS:
Long hath my sufferance labor'd to enforce
One pearl of pity from her pretty eyes;
Whilst I, with restless oceans of remorse,
Bedew the banks where my fair Chloris lies
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
When as she spied the nymph whom I admire,
Combing her locks, of which the yellow gold
Made blush the beauties of her curled wire,
Which heaven itself with wonder might behold,
Then, red with shame, her reverend locks she
rent,
And weeping hid the beauty of her face
CHLORIS:
There did I see the nymph whom I admire,
Remembering her locks; of which the yellow
hue
Made blush the beauties of her curled wire,
Which Jove himself with wonder well might
view.
Then red with ire, her tresses she berent;
And weeping hid the beauty of her face
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
And as nor tyrant sun nor winter weather
May ever change sweet Amaranthus' hue,
So she though love and fortune join together,
Will never leave to be both fair and true
CHLORIS:
But as cold winter's storms and nipping
frosts
Can never change sweet Amaranthus' hue,
So, though my love and life by her are
cross'd,
My heart shall still be constant firm and
true
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
For you I live, and you I love, but none else.
O then, fair eyes, whose light I live to view,
Or poor forlorn despis'd to live alone else
CHLORIS:
For her I live, and her I love and none else.
O then, fair eyes, look mildly upon me:
Who poor, despis'd, forlorn, must live alone
else
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
Burst, burst, poor heart: thou hast no longer
hope ...
Let all my senses have no further scope
CHLORIS:
But burst, poor heart: thou hast no better
hope,
Since all thy senses have no further scope
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
And should I leave thee there, thou pretty
elf?
Nay, first let Damon quite forget himself
CHLORIS:
And I cannot forget her, pretty elf ...
Yet let me rather clean forget myself
~ ~ ~
PHILLIS:
Look, sweet, since from the pith of
contemplation
Love gathereth life, and living, breedeth
passion
CHLORIS:
To penetrate the pith of contemplation ...
Nor move her heart on me to take compassion
Is Smith simply plagiarizing Lodge? If so, he's
doing it awfully blatantly, and you'd expect Lodge to
have a thing or two to say about it. Yet there is no
record of any complaint by Lodge. In fact, as far as I
can tell, no scholar has ever noticed these parallels,
let alone surmised that "Lodge" and "Smith" were actually
the same poet. I think they were the same poet -- Oxford
-- and that the latter work was actually a revision of
the former.
Over several years, I found about 3,000 such
parallels among these poems. Many of them could hardly be
coincidental. A sonnet from THE TEARS OF FANCY, published
in 1592 by "T.W." (often assumed to be Thomas Watson), is
a near twin of the only sonnet published under Oxford's
name. Here is the last of T.W.'s 60 sonnets:
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, sweet
heart?
Who taught thy tongue to marshal words of
plaint?
Who filled thine eyes with tears of bitter
smart?
Who gave thee grief and made thy joys so
faint?
Who first did paint with colours pale thy
face?
Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest?
Who forc'd thee unto wanton love give place?
Who thrall'd thy thoughts in fancy so
distress'd?
Who made thee bide both constant firm and
sure?
Who made thee scorn the world and love thy
friend?
Who made thy mind with patience pains endure?
Who made thee settle steadfast to the end?
Then love thy choice though love be never
gain'd,
Still live in love, despair not though
disdain'd.
Compare this with Oxford's sonnet:
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my
heart?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of
plaint?
Who filled your eyes with tears of bitter
smart?
Who gave thee grief and made thy joys to
faint?
Who first did paint with colours pale thy
face?
Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest?
Above the rest in court who gave thee grace?
Who made thee strive in honour to be best?
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure,
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends?
With patient mind each passion to endure,
In one desire to settle to the end?
Love then thy choice wherein such choice
thou bind,
As naught but death may ever change thy
mind.
In various ways, the evidence kept pointing to Oxford.
I checked out all these poets in THE DICTIONARY OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY and other sources. Of some of them
nothing is known; "William Smith" could be anyone named
William Smith, or the name could be a blind. The poets
who gave only their initials are of course untraceable.
One, the author of the cycle ZEPHERIA, didn't even give
his initials.
Some were real men. There was a man named Richard
Barnfield, said to have been a friend of Watson and
Drayton, but though a few works were published under his
name in the mid 1590s he doesn't seem to have been a
writer. He published nothing else before his death in
1627.
Samuel Daniel wrote loads of poetry after the
exquisite sonnet cycle DELIA, but none of it was anything
like DELIA: his major work was a verse history, so
prosaic it's almost doggerel. Here I found an interesting
clue: Ben Jonson, who knew practically every writer in
London, said that Daniel was "an honest man ... but no
poet." He could hardly have said that if he thought
Daniel wrote DELIA.
Finally it hit me: What if all these rookie poets
were the *same* poet? What if all these dedications were
a running inside joke? What if it was Oxford, amusing his
friends? That would explain almost everything.
Another interesting detail is that most of these
sonnet cycles appeared in only one edition, and there is
very little contemporary comment on them. The genre seems
to have been less popular than the scholars have assumed.
This suggests that the sonnets were published at the
author's or authors' own expense, not by popular demand.
{{ (Could a large reading public be snared by titles like
PARTHENOPHIL AND PARTHENOPHE?) }}
Desperate for at least some scholarly support for my
outlandish theory, I found a little in an unexpected and
utterly respectable source: C.S. Lewis's magisterial
history of English literature in the sixteenth century.
Not that Lewis agrees with me. Not at all. The idea never
crosses his mind, and he would surely have found it
outre. But he does name seven poets who remind him of the
Bard in some respect -- and all seven are among my
suspected masks of Oxford! He finds Daniel's sonnets as
lovely as the Bard's; he thinks Barnfield imitates the
Bard; he thinks Watson's "conception of the sonnet" is
much like the Bard's; Barnabe Barnes sounds like "a
weaker Shakespeare"; and so on.
Sometimes, in the dedications, the verbal parallels
with the Bard are unmistakable: after apologizing for his
"rude and unpolished lines," Barnfield adds: "If my
ability were better, the signs should be greater; but
being as it is, your honor must take me as I am, not as I
should be. But howsoever it is, yours it is; and I myself
am yours; in all humble service...." Compare the Bard's
dedication to LUCRECE: "What I have to do is yours, being
part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater
my duty would show greater, meantime, as it is, it is
bound to your lordship." Again, Barnfield: "Small is the
gift, but great is my good will." The Bard, in PERICLES,
writes, "Yet my good will is great, though the gift
small." The dedication to DIELLA (by "R.L., Gentleman,"
1596) addresses "your ladyship ... to whom I ever wish
long life, lengthened with all honorable happiness. Your
ladyship's in all duty," et cetera. Again, compare
LUCRECE: "your lordship, to whom I wish long life still
lengthened with all happiness. Your lordship's in all
duty," et cetera.
The poems themselves afford hundreds of matches like
these: "O dear vexation of my troubled soul"
(PARTHENOPHIL AND PARTHENOPHE, Barnes, 1593); "The deep
vexation of his inward soul" (LUCRECE). And "Hunting he
lov'd, nor did he scorn to love" (DIELLA); "Hunting he
lov'd, but love he laugh'd to scorn" (VENUS).
Still, there are difficulties. Sidney and Spenser
are so renowned that it gives me pause to include them in
my list of Oxford's beards. The short (though
insufficient) answer is that Sidney's supposed writings
were published many years after his death; and Spenser's
supposed sonnets, the AMORETTI, are markedly different
from his other poems, whose authorship (in most cases) I
don't question. I mean to explore this more fully in
another book. (One important link here is the Countess of
Pembroke, to whom DELIA is dedicated. In addition to
being Montgomery's mother, she was also Sidney's sister.
Small world.)
All this calls for an explanation. How could this
have happened? I can only guess. But here is my guess:
Oxford grew up in a highly literate family. One of
his uncles was the great poet Henry Howard, Earl of
Surrey, who introduced the Petrarchan sonnet in English;
he was the first to use the "Shakespearean" sonnet form
{{ (never dreaming, of course, that one of his nephews
would actually become "Shakespeare"). }} Another uncle
was Arthur Golding, a great classical scholar and
translator of Ovid. Under these two influences, Oxford
aspired to become England's Petrarch (through the sonnet
cycle) and also its Ovid (through narrative poems).
For many years (I'm still guessing, but not, I
think, unreasonably) Oxford wrote sonnet cycles and
narrative poems, which he circulated among his friends,
but, like a good gentleman, refrained from publishing.
Print was still considered a vulgar medium; no gentleman
would write for money or popularity.
This is the part modern men find hard to understand.
When we write nowadays, it's usually for the very things
English gentlemen used to sniff at: money and popularity.
Otherwise, we feel, why bother writing? Very few of us
now write only for a small coterie. (For an illuminating
study of how the old attitude lingered but eventually
changed, see Alvin Kernan's SAMUEL JOHNSON AND THE IMPACT
OF PRINT.)
Maybe (still guessing here, but, I hope, plausibly)
Oxford came to realize that if he wanted literary
immortality -- and his poems were lavishly praised by
those who saw them -- he'd better get them into print.
Yet it wouldn't do to put his own name on them. So he
borrowed other men's names, invented fictitious names, or
just used initials. By the time he reached full maturity,
he had begun to use the name William Shakespeare.
When he pulled his old sonnet cycles and narrative
poems out of the drawer and prepared them for the
printer, Oxford added dedications, in which, for the
amusement of insiders, he played the humble novice poet,
using a different pseudonym each time. The fake humility
was part of the gag. His friends would get the joke; the
reading public (and later scholars) would be taken in.
But if you read the dedications in succession, you can
feel the phantom poet winking at you.
The hoax worked only too well. To this day, the
pseudonyms and dedications are taken at face value. It
took more than four centuries for someone (ahem!) to
crack the code, so to speak. Meanwhile, a poor country
bloke has reaped most of the glory due to Oxford's works.
This could explain a great paradox: the Bard says,
in his most famous sonnets, that he expects his poems to
be immortal while hoping his own name will be
"forgotten." As a rule your name is remembered as long as
your poems are. But if virtually *all* of Oxford's poems
were pseudonymous, the puzzle is resolved. And as I've
written elsewhere, Oxford had an additional motive for
concealing his authorship: his own scandalous personal
life.
My theory could solve another puzzle. In 1599 came
the small volume THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM, "by William
Shakespeare"; yet scholars have found that several of its
20 poems had already appeared under the names of
Barnfield, Griffin, and others, so its place in the
Bard's canon is now considered marginal. But if I'm
correct, Oxford may indeed have written the whole thing
under various names.
All this would mean that we possess hundreds of
priceless pages Oxford wrote in his poetic
apprenticeship, before he became "Shakespeare." It would
also mean that the entire history of Elizabethan
literature must be overhauled. The "Elizabethan sonnet
craze," it appears, was pretty much a one-man show.
If I'm right, Oxford would be surprised, and
probably disappointed, that his plays have lasted better
than his poems. But considering all the confusion he has
caused, he'd be in a poor position to complain.
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