Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
IV
FATHER OF EDWARD DE VERE
EDWARD DE VERE, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was born at Earl's Colne in Essex, in the year 1550, being the only son of John de Vere, Sixteenth Earl of Oxford. His mother was Margaret, daughter of John Golding and sister of Arthur Golding, the translator of Ovid. His father [191] died at Earl's Colne in the year 1562 and was buried at Castle Hedingham, in Essex, and the future poet became a royal ward at the age of twelve. As this fact of his being a royal ward furnished the starting point of an argument with a remarkable culmination, we ask for the reader's special attention to it now. Earl's Colne and Castle Hedingham in Essex we may suppose are probably destined to attain an unexpected notoriety when the purpose of this work has been achieved.
As we have every reason to believe that the influence and memory of De Vere's father were important factors in the poet's life, and add an element to our evidences of identification, it is necessary to point out certain facts concerning him. The article in the Dictionary of National Biography dealing with John de Vere, Sixteenth Earl of Oxford, mentions him as a man greatly honoured in his county and highly respected, especially by his tenantry; from which we may infer a habit of direct personal intercourse with them and a kindly attention to their interests. He was also a keen sportsman, being evidently noted as such. To a lad of twelve a father of this kind is an ideal. His qualities appeal much more powerfully to the lad's admiration than more distinguished or exceptional powers would do; and, especially in the case of an intensely affectionate nature like that of Edward de Vere's, to which his poetry bears unquestionable testimony, one can easily conceive of them forming the basis of a genuine comradeship between the two. When, therefore, we find that the father, who left large estates, nominated the boy in his will as one of his executors, it is impossible to doubt that the relationship between them was warm and intimate. The loss of such a father, with the complete upsetting of his young life that it immediately involved, must have been a great grief to one so sensitively constituted. We may naturally suppose, then, that the figure of a hero-father would live in his imagination; and the reader of "Shakespeare" who has missed this note of father-worship [192] in the great dramas has been found wanting in serious attention to their finer contents.
The greatest play of Shakespeare's, "Hamlet," has father-worship as its prime motive:
"He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again."Or, what could be more striking than the opening passages of "All's Well that Ends Well":
Countess: In delivering my son from me I bury a second husband.
Bertram: And I in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death anew; but I must attend his majesty's command, to whom I am now in ward evermore in subjection.Countess: Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed thy father
In manners as in shape! Thy blood and virtue
Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness
Share with thy birthright.Then in the second scene when Bertram is brought before the king, he is addressed thus:
King: Thy father . . . . did look far
Into the service of the time and was
Discipled of the bravest.
It much repairs me
To talk of your good father.So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride, or, if they were,
His equal had awaked them: who were below him
He used as creatures of another place,
And bowed his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility.
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times."In addition to the special point we are now emphasizing, and the startling correspondence in so many details, to the actual circumstances of Edward de Vere, especially that of the royal wardship, is it possible to conceive of these lines being penned by any one but an aristocrat, in close [193] connection with royalty, and dominated by the feudal ideals of noblesse oblige? The latter part of the quotation, so suggestive of the reputation borne by Edward de Vere's father, following upon a passage descriptive of the actual position of the son, affords a strong presumption that if the writer was not Edward de Vere he, at any rate, had that nobleman in his mind as the prototype of Bertram. The last sentence bespeaks not only the aristocrat but also a man who felt out of touch with the new and less chivalrous order then emerging from the protestant middle classes, where individualism and personal ambition were less under the discipline of social principles than in the best manifestations of the departing feudal ideals.
As in dealing with the early life of Oxford we shall have to notice throughout the remarkable parallelism between him and Bertram in "All's Well," it is important to bear in mind that very many of the personal details are original to "Shakespeare's" play, and do not form part of Boccacio's story upon which the central episode is based. "All's Well" might indeed be compendiously described as Boccacio's story plus the early life of Edward de Vere.