Comprehensive information and links about Edward de Vere

Edward de Vere "The Earl of Oxford, from the 1914 publication English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard" (April 12, 1550 – June 24, 1604), Elizbethan literary figure, was born at Castle Hedingham to the 16th Earl of Oxford. He is most famous today as the alleged author of the works of William Shakespeare, a claim which nearly every academic Shakespeare scholar rejects but which is supported by such figures as Sigmund Freud, diplomat and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Paul Nitze, Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, biographer and historian David McCullough, as well as actors Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Michael York, Jeremy Irons, and Mark Rylance (former Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre). Amateur historians J. Thomas Looney and Charlton Ogburn authored two of the most seminal Oxford-as-Shakespeare studies.

During his lifetime de Vere was lauded by other English poets, mostly in regard to his patronage; see especially one of the introductory sonnets to Edmund Spenser's . As a poet himself, he wrote a small corpus of poems and songs, whose dates (and, in some cases, authorship) are uncertain; he signed nearly all of these "Earle of Oxenforde" or "E of O" [1]. His voluminous catalogue of letters are all similarly signed in his own name; none of them mention a dramatic career or literary matters, but focus on business affairs concerning such matters as the Cornish tin monopoly and his ongoing desire for several royal stewardships [2]. His status as a dramatist is indeed uncertain, as not a single play or line written under his name survives. Nevertheless, Francis Meres, in his discussion of dramatists in his lists Oxford among "the best for comedy," albeit as an entirely separate person from Shakespeare himself, who appears further down the list due to his middle-class rank (Shakespeare held the title of "gent."):

, Doctor Gager of Oxforde, Maister Rowley once a rare Scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, Maister Edwardes one of her Majesty's Chapel, eloquent and witty John Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, , Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Munday our best plotter, Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle.

Believers in the Oxford-as-Shakespeare hypothesis, or Oxfordians, maintain that a set of "missing" poems and plays from de Vere's adulthood were eventually published under the pseudonym William Shakespeare, both because of what they perceive as a great literary reputation and due to alleged political reasons that would necessitate such a pseudonym.

De Vere's father died in 1562, when de Vere was twelve years old, making him Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain of England. As a minor, Oxford was made a royal ward and was placed in the household of Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer, a member of Queen Elizabeth I's Privy Council, and her closest and most trusted advisor. There Oxford was trained in such aristocratic pursuits as horse riding, combat, hunting, music, and dance, as well as French and Latin. His known tutors included the classical scholar and diplomat Sir Thomas Smith, and Laurence Nowell, one of the founding fathers of Anglo-Saxon studies. Nowell was hired to tutor the young earl in 1563, the same year that Nowell signed his name on the only known copy of the "Beowulf" manu (a.k.a. the "Nowell Codex"). There is also speculation that Oxford was taught Latin by his maternal uncle, Arthur Golding, who published the first English translation of Ovid's while living at Burghley House.

On 23 July 1567, de Vere killed an unarmed under-cook by the name of Thomas Brincknell while practicing fencing with Edward Baynam, a merchant tailor, in the backyard of Cecil's house in the Strand. In the ensuing trial it was decided the victim had "committed suicide" and his widow and child were consequently stripped of their possessions. (Interestingly, the English chronicler Raphael Holinshed was one of the jurors at this trial.) Oxford is said to have obtained a bachelor's degree from Queens College, Cambridge, a master's degree from the University of Oxford, and legal training at Gray's Inn. However, he matriculated at Queen's College at the age of 8 12, but remained less than a year, and no evidence exists that he ever returned to a university as an active student; his degrees may have been honorary [3]. He entered the Royal Court in the late 1560s, and went on to become a tilting champion in several Elizabethan tournaments.

On 19 December 1571 de Vere married Lord Burghley's fifteen-year-old daughter, Anne Cecil — a controversial choice, not so much because they had grown up together, but because Oxford was of the oldest nobility in the kingdom, whereas Anne was parvenu, her father having only been raised to the peerage that year. At the age of twenty-one, Oxford regained control of most of his lands. His marriage produced five children, including three daughters who survived infancy. He toured France, Germany and Italy in 1575, and was briefly Catholic.

(It is of this period that John Aubrey wrote, in his , that Edward "broke wind" "while making low obeisance" to Queen Elizabeth and went into voluntary exile. On his return seven years later, it is alleged that the Queen's first words to him were "My Lord, I had quite forgotten the fart." The apocryphal story must be taken with a grain of salt, however, as Oxford was only on the Continent for fourteen months.)

On his return across the English Channel, Oxford's ship was hijacked by pirates, who planned to hold him for ransom until he informed them of his royal connections. Furthermore, he found that his wife had given birth to a daughter during his journey, and separated from her on grounds of adultery, complaining that she had become "the fable of the world". Confusing the eldest daughter (Elizabeth) with the youngest (Susan), Francis Osborne (1593-1659) included a bed-trick anecdote about her birth, or, as he termed it, “Pembrok’s (1658). According to Osborne (who had been a servant to the Herberts), Philip Herbert, then earl of Montgomery (and later Pembroke), was struck in the face by a Scottish courtier named Ramsey at a horse race at Croydon. Herbert, who did not strike back, “was left nothing to testifie his Manhood but a Beard and Children, by that , and from such a vertuous deceit she [i.e., Pembroke’s wife] is said to proceed.”

In 1580, Oxford accused several of his Catholic friends of treason, and denounced them to the Queen, asking mercy for his own Catholicism, which he repudiated.

He fathered an illegitimate child by Anne Vavasour, Sir Edward Vere, in 1581, and was briefly imprisoned in the Tower of London. The illicit congress with Vavasour led to a prolonged quarrel with Sir Thomas Knyvett, her uncle, which resulted in three deaths and several other injuries. Oxford himself was lamed in the encounter. The feud was put to an end when the Queen threatened to jail all those involved. By Christmas of 1581, Oxford had reconciled with Anne Cecil and once again cohabitated with her.

In 1585 Lord Oxford was given a military command in the Netherlands, and served during the Battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588. His first wife Anne Cecil died in 1588 at the age of 32. In 1591, Oxford married Elizabeth Trentham, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour. This marriage produced his heir, Henry, the 18th Earl of Oxford. The Earl's three daughters, with whom it seems he was never close, all married into the peerage: Elizabeth married Lord Derby; Bridget married Lord Berkshire; Susan married Lord Montgomery, one of the “INCOMPARABLE PAIRE OF BRETHREN” to whom William Shakespeare's First Folio would later be dedicated. (Oxford had died six months prior to this marriage, however; and a couplet regarding Susan recorded in John Manningham's diary circa 1602-03 has been interpreted by some to imply that Oxford was a "deadbeat Dad"[4], yet by others to be "an echo of King Lear."[5])

Oxford maintained both adult and children's theater companies, and was a patron of several writers; those who dedicated works to him include Edmund Spenser, Arthur Golding, Robert Greene, John Hester, John Brooke, John Lyly, Anthony Munday, and Thomas Churchyard. His patronage (and mismanaged estates) reduced him to penury, and he was granted an annual pension of £1,000 by the Queen, which continued to be paid by her successor, King James I.

In 1603, Lord Oxford was granted his decades-long suit for the Stewardship of Waltham Forest and Havering-atte-Bower, but enjoyed the privilege for less than a year. He died in 1604 of unknown causes at King's Hold, Hackney, Middlesex, England, and was apparently buried at Hackney, although his cousin, Percival Golding (son of Arthur Golding), reported a few years later that he was buried at Westminster Abbey.

Shakespeare controversy

In 1920, J. Thomas Looney advanced the hypothesis that Oxford was the actual author of Shakespeare's plays, due to what Looney perceived as an advanced education, a knowledge of aristocratic life, an interest in the theatre, the praise accorded Oxford's works, and various similarities between Oxford's life and the plays. According to his hypothesis, Oxford had no choice but to publish under a pseudonym, since it would have been considered disgraceful for an aristocrat to be writing for the public theater, a claim generally considered by Renaissance scholars, including Steven W. May, to be incongruous with Elizabethan print histories. [6] Author Diana Price has presented a counter-point to May’s thesis. [7]

Looney's beliefs constitute the core of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship, and the debate over it remains contentious. Evidentiary gaps within and problems with the Oxfordian hypothesis have prevented many academics from considering its viability. For example, Oxford's 1604 death prevents him from witnessing certain events (e.g., the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 and the wreck of the Sea Venture in Bermuda in 1609) thought to be alluded to in Shakespearean dramas such as , respectively. Contemporary poetic tributes to Shakespeare from writers such as Ben Jonson and Leonard Digges (who refer to Shakespeare as "" in the First Folio), and William Basse (who explicitly mentions Shakespeare dying in 1616), seem to provide some of the clearest evidence for the Stratford Shakespeare's status as a reputed poet.

On the other hand, the publication of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS in 1609, with its dedicatory expression "OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET.", would seem to imply the author was dead by that time. Although some scholars (such as Donald Foster) have disputed the meaning of this phrase, when applied to a person rather than a deity, "ever-living" was usually understood to mean that person was deceased. Nevertheless, it remains debatable whether the phrase, in this context, refers to Shakespeare, the dedicatee, or to God or a muse; the "Mr. W.H." in the dedication is indeed a controversial point.

Other candidates who have been put forward as the actual author of the Shakespeare works include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby, among others, all of whom are universally rejected by the academic establishment. Further insights and debating points from the Stratfordian perspective may be viewed at The Shakespeare Authorship website [8] and from the Oxfordian perspective at The Shakespeare Fellowship website [9].