Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
V
A ROYAL WARD
Owing to his being in his minority at the time of his father's death, the latter's. nomination of him as one of the executors of his will was inoperative, and he became, as we have seen, a royal ward just at this point the records are not so precise as we could wish. We learn that, as royal ward, he was brought from his home to the court, and as Cecil (not yet Lord Burleigh) was master of the court of royal wards, he became an inmate of Cecil's house in the Strand.
His mother, we also learn, remarried. We have tried [194] in vain to discover the exact dates at which he was brought to court, and when his mother remarried, not as matters of mere curiosity, but because we believe these points may have their bearing both on our problem and upon questions of Shakespearean interpretation. The date of his mother's second marriage might prove of especial interest. It is to be regretted, therefore, that although references to the event appear in histories of Essex, no date is given; thus strengthening our suspicion that not much prominence was given to the marriage at the time: the date especially being kept in the background. It is a curious fact, too, that with the exception of her once interesting herself in his financial affairs, of which mention is made in the State Papers, we have not been able to discover a single reference to his mother in connection with any act in his life.
In this connection his circumstances contrast in a marked way with those of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, to whom "Shakespeare" dedicated his great poems and probably addressed many of his sonnets. He, too, just a generation later, became a royal ward at an early age and passed under the guardianship of Burleigh. In his case, however, his mother remained near him, looking after his interests and not remarrying until he had reached his majority: when she married Sir Thomas Henneage, Treasurer of the Chamber, and was herself responsible, as we have seen, for the single "official" mention of "Shakespeare" in the records of her husband's department. We thus get glimpses of her in everything relating to her son, either directly or indirectly, in those early years. We may remark here that as Oxford's own mother was dead at the time of his later domestic troubles, in dealing with the domestic troubles of Bertram in "All's Well" he may have taken the Dowager Countess of Southampton as the prototype of Bertram's mother: and certainly the representation seems to fit.
In Oxford's own case everything is different from [195] Southampton's. His mother does not appear, and one gets a sense of there being a complete severance between his early childhood with its home associations and father's influence, and the remainder of his boyhood and youth. Henceforth it is "by public means which public manners breeds," that his bringing-up is provided for. From the age of twelve true domestic influences were lost to him; he becomes a prominent figure about Elizabeth's court, subjected to corrupting influences, in which it must be admitted the Queen herself was a potent factor. At the same time it is quite evident that he was only uncomfortably domiciled in Cecil's house. Between the Earl of Oxford and the Earl of Southampton there was therefore a striking parallel with an important difference.
The only family connection of which there are any traces is that of his uncle, Arthur Golding, the translator of Ovid, who entered Cecil's house as Oxford's tutor and as receiver of his property. The vital significance of the relationship of Arthur Golding to the man we are putting forward as the author of Shakespeare' s plays will be fully appreciated by those Shakespearean students who are also students of the Latin classics, and who are able to trace in Shakespeare passages borrowed from Ovid, which follow the original more closely than do the standard translations.
We shall again quote from Sir Sidney Lee's "Life of Shakespeare" on this point: "Although Ovid's Latin text was certainly familiar to him (Shakespeare) his closest adaptations of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' often reflect the phraseology of the popular English version by Arthur Golding of which some seven editions were issued between 1565 and 1597." That is to say, these editions of Ovid were being issued by Arthur Golding in the very years in which he was Latin tutor to the Earl of Oxford, so that special point is given by the theory we are now putting forward to the biographer's later remark that "Golding's rendering [196] of Ovid had been one of Shakespeare's best-loved books in youth."
To this we may add the testimony of Professor Sir Walter Raleigh that: "He certainly knew Ovid, for he quotes him in the original more than once, and chooses a motto for 'Venus and Adonis' from the Elegies. But his more elaborate borrowings from Ovid came, for the most part, by way of Arthur Golding's translations."
To find "Shakespeare" more exact in some instances than the translator raises an acknowledged difficulty in connection with the Stratfordian view. It has for a long while been one of the vexed questions of Shakespearean authorship, and is discussed at some length in Sir George Greenwood's work on the "Shakespearean Problem." What is a difficulty with the accepted authorship becomes transformed into a substantial corroboration of the theory of authorship we are now advancing; and all mystery immediately vanishes when we assume that Arthur Golding, the Ovid enthusiast and translator, was himself a relative as well as a private tutor and Latin teacher to "Shakespeare," engaged in the latter capacity in the very years in which he was translating and publishing the works of this particular poet.
The importance of this little piece of evidence can hardly be overestimated. By itself it proves nothing, but in view of the prominent position which the Ovid controversy has taken in the question of Shakespearean authorship, and in conjunction with the other lines of evidence we are now offering, its value is unquestionable. Ovid is the one Latin poet who has been specially singled out as having directly left deep traces in Shakespeare's work, at the same time that the dramatist shows an equal intimacy with the translation. This is precisely the result we should expect from the Earl of Oxford's relationship to Arthur Golding. An intimate acquaintance with one particular translation of a classic, and also such an acquaintance with the original as to make his own rendering more complete and exact in [197] some respects is not a usual combination in a student of the classics, and needs some such relationship as existed between Edward de Vere and Arthur Golding to explain it. The connection of Edward de Vere, Arthur Golding, and "Shakespeare" with Ovid thus constitutes an important link in our chain of evidence.
In this connection we would, in conclusion, offer a suggestion. Arthur Golding was the author of other works besides the translation of Ovid. From references to these we gather that all are quite inferior to the Ovid work: itself only of second rate order. If, then, the translation of Ovid formed part of Oxford's Latin studies - as it most assuredly would do under the circumstances - it may be that what is taken to be the influence of Golding's work in "Shakespeare" is in reality due to the influence of the young Earl of Oxford upon the work of Arthur Golding.
Considering the place occupied by the translator of Ovid in the early life and education of the Earl of Oxford, we would draw particular attention to the fact that, in the Inner Temple Records, there appears an entry indicating that after finishing his work as tutor to his nephew, Arthur Golding was admitted to the Bar. Evidently then, pari passu with the work of translating classics and instructing the Earl of Oxford, there had been proceeding the study of law. Oxford's course of reading had been mapped out for him by Cecil, and it goes without saying that a plan of studies drawn up by Cecil would most certainly embrace legal procedure. Oxford's letters of a much later date, preserved in the Hatfield Manuscripts, certainly appeal to a layman as the work of a man conversant with legal forms and terminology, and one passage of special interest we shall presently submit. The question of whether his legal knowledge was on the same plane with that of "Shakespeare" the experts must decide: meanwhile we shall give one or two examples:
[198] Earl of Oxford to Sir Robert Cecil:
"It is now a year since Her Majesty granted her interest in Danver's escheat. I find that the lands will be carried without deed. I have twice moved Her Majesty to grant me that ordinary course, whereof there are more than one hundred examples. Mine answer was that 1 should receive her pleasure from you. But I understand by Cauley that she hath never spoken thereof. The matter hath been heard twice before the judges but their report hath never been made. I challenge that something be done whereby I may, upon ground, seek and try Her Majesty's right, which cannot be done without this deed aforesaid. I desire to know Her Majesty's pleasure touching her patent (de bene esse) whether she will perform it or no."
Hackney, 22nd March, 1601. (Hatfield MSS., Vol. XII.)"If Her Majesty's affections be forfeits of men's estates we must endure it." (Hatfield MSS., Vol V.)
What the lawyers tell us of Shakespeare's use of the word "forfeit," coupled with the reference to endurance, makes this sentence eminently Shakespearean.
More than once we get evidence of his chafing under "the law's delays," and of royal promises unsupported by performance.
"I was promised favour that I should have assistance of Her Majesty's counsel in law, that I should have expedition. Her Majesty's counsel hath been against me. Her Majesty used me very graciously . . . I have written Her Majesty and received a most gracious answer to do me good in all that she can."
December,1601.
(Hatfield MSS., XI.)Her Majesty's promises and gracious answers, however, came to nothing in these cases.
[199] The significance of the following passage (in one of Oxford's letters) either from the legal or Shakespearean point of view we do not profess to understand. Its chief interest lies in the two names it introduces together. We shall therefore preface it with two passages from Mrs. Stopes's "Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage":
"On 13th November, 1590, Mr. Sergeant Harrys for Burbage prayed consideration of a former order made in his behalf in the suit of Burbage v. Braynes" (p. 50). Sergeant Harris was evidently then engaged in legal business connected with Burbage's theatre. On 17th June, '44, Eliz. (1602) "The Court referred (another legal case involving theatrical connections) to the consideration of the right worshipful Francis Bacon, Esq . . . . . . Here at last I have found a real association of Francis Bacon with the Theatre. . . . in his legal capacity, not a poetic one at all. . . . This case was running concurrently with (another theatrical legal case brought in 1601)."
The Earl of Oxford to Sir Robert Cecil (1601):
"I am advised that I may pass my book from Her Majesty to my cousin Bacon and to Sergeant Harris to perfect it." From Hackney.Bacon was a cousin of Robert Cecil's and therefore a cousin of Oxford's by marriage; and the evidence here presented of the co-operation of the two men in legal matters may go far to explain the many interesting similarities of expression brought together by the Baconians. These matters take us far beyond the period of his history with which we are immediately concerned: the object of introducing them now is to show that both in the education of Oxford, and in his subsequent career, there is much to account for the prominence of legal terms in any writing which might be attributed to him.
[200] Resuming now the account of his education generally, we are told that Cecil had drawn up some scheme of instruction; that he was "thoroughly grounded in French and Latin" that he "learnt to dance, ride and shoot"; and that he manifested a natural taste for music and a marked interest in literature. On the other hand, every word of the records we have of him, taken along with what he has himself written, represents him as one combining with his interest in books a more intense interest in life itself. Or, rather, we should say he was one in whom life and literature, especially classic poetry, seem to have worked themselves into some kind of unity: one who interpreted life in terms of classic poetry, carrying into life the conceptions of classic poetry, and reading classic poetry as but the reflection of ordinary practical life. To say that all this, is characteristic of Shakespeare is as banal a remark as could well be made; and the words which the dramatist puts into the mouth of Berowne in "Love's Labour's Lost" might quite easily be taken as Edward de Vere's expression of personal opinions:
"Learning is but an adjunct to ourself."
And this:
Berowne: "That (delight is) most vain
Which with pain purchased doth inherit pain:
As painfully to pore upon a book,
To seek the light of truth; while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his, look:
Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books.
These earthly godfathers of heaven's light
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Too much to know is to know nought but fame,
And every godfather can give a name.King: How well he's read to reason against reading."
[201] The Shakespeare revealed in the dramas was no mere book-worm "falsely blinding the eyesight" of his mind in close plodding at academic studies. On the other hand it is almost impossible to conceive of a man in the position of the Stratford Shakspere rising to such a literary level otherwise than by the most assiduous and constant application of his mind to books. The man "self-educated" in this way has invariably to pay a penalty in those sides of his nature which relate him to practical life: a penalty which "Shakespeare" had not paid, and need not be paid by a man living in contact with educated people to whom "book-learning" is an "adjunct" to life rather than its chief concern.
It is interesting to notice, however, that the outstanding subjects of De Vere's book-learning are French and Latin; and in this connection we are again able to adduce the testimony of Shakespeare's leading modern biographer as to the dramatist's linguistic attainments:
"With the Latin and French languages indeed, and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his acquaintance. In 'Henry V' the dialogue in many scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically accurate if not idiomatic" (Sir Sidney Lee, "Life of Shakespeare").
In other words, Shakespeare's French was not mere school-book French, but the living speech of a man acquainted with the language in direct relationship with thought processes: and this nearly three hundred years before the oral method of teaching languages was introduced into school curricula. Similarly Edward de Vere's facility in the use of French was such that one of the few duties with which he was officially entrusted was to meet and conduct an important emissary from France. Again, by itself, the point might seem unimportant. The reason, however, why we dwell upon it, and why we quote Shakespearean authorities in the matter, is to show that there is probably not a single outstanding fact recorded of Edward de Vere, [202] but we have some Shakespearean scholar who has asserted it to be also true of the writer of the plays.
In addition to the advantages of the best private tuition he had also a university education; first at Queens' College, Cambridge, then at St. John's College. Subsequently he received degrees from both universities. The references to this matter are, however, peculiarly slight, and leave the impression of his having been one who had merely trifled for a short time with university life, and to whom it did not count for much. Even the dates of his residence are not given, and the degrees we judge to have been honorary degrees in both cases, given in after years. It is claimed by some writers that Shakespeare shows a knowledge of the universities. Such contact as Edward de Vere had with them would be sufficient to account for that knowledge, whilst the apparently small part it played in his life would quite agree with the almost negligible part that college and university matters occupy in the plays. There are only two occasions on which Shakespeare mentions the word "university." Hamlet, in poking fun at Polonius, draws him out by exciting his vanity about what he had done "at the university." The other occasion is when another old man, with a slight suggestion of Polonius about him, Vincentio, in the "Taming of the Shrew," bewails "I am undone! While I play the good husband at home my son and my servant spend all at the university." It may be that the dramatist had the same personality in his mind's eye in both cases.
Oxford's life in the Cecil household seems to have been far from happy. For it was during these years, between the death of his father and his coming of age, that he first of all sought relief from it by begging for some military occupation. There was probably in him, too, some idea of winning military glory quite in keeping with the family traditions and the later achievements of his cousins the "Fighting Veres!" It is clear, however, that his [203] relationships with the Cecil family were not harmonious. At any rate, the record of him, which is evidently originally from
Cecilian sources, is to the effect that he quarrelled with the other members of the household. In view of the fact that when Oxford entered the house Anne Cecil was a child five years old, Robert Cecil was still unborn and Thomas Cecil had already left home, it is not easy to see who there would be to quarrel with except the irascible Lady Burleigh. The quarrels are mentioned with the evident object of proving him quarrelsome. What is not mentioned, probably because the modern recorder had not observed it, is that three of the noblemen most hostile to the Cecils and the Cecil faction in Elizabeth's court, had all been royal wards, having had the great Lord Burleigh as their guardian — Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton; and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. These noblemen apparently considered it no great blessing to have had the paternal attentions of the great minister, and cherished no particular affection for the family. So far as the Earl of Oxford is concerned, whatever disaster may have come into his life, we are confident, had its beginning in the death of his father, the severance of his home ties, and the combined influences of Elizabeth's court and Burleigh's household, from which he was anxious to escape. The expression of it all is heard in sonnet III:"O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds;
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means that public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand."The attempt to explain this passage as William Shakspere's lament over a public career that was raising him, in early manhood, from poverty and obscurity to wealth and fame, after he had left — on the Stratfordian theory — wholesome home-life enlightened by a superior education, [204] is as grotesque a piece of explanatory comment as that theory has been responsible for.
The part which Burleigh took actively in Oxford's troubles belongs to a later stage of our story. Our present concern is with the nine years during which he was a royal ward (age 12 to 21), the period of his education proper. In these years we find him having just those experiences which, taken along with his own and his family's antecedents, and the evident bent of his genius, were supplying the precise kind of training needed for the production of the plays of Shakespeare, in several of their prime essentials. Without being actually a prince of royal blood he was so near to it, in all the points material to our argument, as to be regarded in that light. He enjoyed an easy familiarity with the Queen; he accompanied her on her journeys; he seems in his early life to have had a real affection for her and she for him; and, later on, as he developed into manhood, received attentions of such a nature from the Queen, now middle-aged, as to cause his irate mother-in-law to take her royal mistress to task about it. An entry appears in the Calendered State Papers stating that it was affirmed by one party that "the Queen wooed the Earl of Oxford but he would not fall in." (Domestic Papers, for 1601-3, page 56.) Elizabeth indeed showed a marked indulgence to what seemed like waywardness in him; and when, again at a later time, the quarrel between him and Sidney occurred she took his side and demanded an apology from Sidney-basing her demand, it is asserted, on the grounds of Oxford's superior rank. We have already had to draw attention to the startling character of the analogy between Oxford and the central character in "All's Well," the royal ward, Bertram Count of Roussilon, to which must now be added this proximity in social rank and intimate intercourse with royalty, to which Helena refers in her conversation with the King. It will be interesting to notice, too, the emphasis given both in this play and in "Hamlet" to the idea that by virtue of [205] their birth the chief characters had no personal liberty of choice in the matter of marriage.
Before leaving the consideration of these formative influences in the early life of Oxford, we return to its being specially recorded of him that he learnt to "dance, ride and shoot." Oxford's skill in dancing and its influence over the Queen is emphasized by one contemporary English writer, whilst an interesting illustration of it appears in the Spanish Calendered State Papers. When the Duke of Anjou visited England, Elizabeth sent for Oxford to come and dance before the Duke: but this he refused to do though repeatedly sent for. So far as dancing is concerned, "Shakespeare" was evidently well acquainted with it, as shown by the number of references to it and his knowledge of the names of different kinds of dances and steps. These references do not, however, seem to express any enthusiasm for it, or suggest that it occupied at all a prominent position amongst Shakespeare's interests. Indeed Bertram, in "All's Well," seems rather to be expressing the author's own attitude when he complains about having to
"Stay here,
Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,
Till honour be bought up, and no sword worn
But one to dance with."It is the attitude of a man who danced because he was denied a more manly outlet for his energies: secretly ashamed possibly of his own accomplishment and unwilling to put himself on exhibition.
Again, in the matter of shooting, if it is shooting with firearms that is meant, this is less than anything in Shakespeare's line; but if it be archery to which allusion is made, then it is in every way typical of "Shakespeare." Shakespeare has, of course, references to firearms; in one or two instances he even uses out-of-the-way terms; but, in the matter of archery his vocabulary is almost as rich, and his illustrations drawn from it [206] almost as copious as in the case of falconry; so that, in examining the matter now one wonders how it chanced to be overlooked at the beginning of our enquiry, when specifying his leading characteristics.
Most important of all, however, is this point of De Vere's horsemanship. Not only did Oxford learn to ride, but, in those days when horsemanship was much more in vogue than it will probably ever be again, and when great skill was attained in horse-management, he was, amongst those who excelled, particularly in tilts and tourneys, receiving special marks of royal appreciation of his skill. Horsemanship was, therefore, a very pronounced interest of his. His father, too, had been the owner of valuable horses, special mention of them being made in his will, which Arthur Collins quotes in his "Historical Recollections of Noble Families."
Turning now to Shakespeare' s works we feel again that it was another grave omission from our original statement of Shakespearean interests not to have mentioned horses. We find there is more in Shakespeare about horses than upon almost any subject outside human nature. Indeed we feel tempted to say that Shakespeare brings them within the sphere of human nature. There is, of course, his intimate knowledge of different kinds of horses, their physical peculiarities, all the details which go to form a good or a bad specimen of a given variety, almost a veterinary's knowledge of their diseases and their treatment. But over and above all this there is a peculiar handling of the theme which raises a horse almost to the level of a being with a moral nature.
In "Venus and Adonis," for example, we have what is in reality a poem within the poem, amounting to over seventy lines, in which a mere animal instinct is raised in horses to the dignity of a complex and exalted human passion.
Or, take the following dialogue from "Richard II":
[207] Groom: O! how it yearn'd my heart when I beheld
In London streets that coronation day,
When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary.
That horse that thou so oft hast bestrid,
That horse that I so carefully have dress'd.King Richard: Rode he on Barbary? Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him?Groom: So proudly as if he disdain'd the ground.
King Richard: So proud that Bolingbroke was on his back!
That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand,
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble? Would he not fall down,
Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?
Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on thee?It reads like a real personal experience; as if the man who wrote it knew what it was to own valuable horses and to suffer the mortification of seeing the animals he loved passing, as a result of his misfortunes, into the possession of others: an experience which, without any surmising, must have been endured by Edward de Vere.
In thus working from the early life of De Vere to the works of Shakespeare little remains to be said. With the scanty materials before us it is impossible to visualise the poet's life during those very early years. Whether or not he had begun to write poetry we cannot say. The poems before us seem from their contents to belong mainly to the early part of the next ten years, when he was between the ages of twenty and thirty. We wish to throw out a suggestion, however, which it may be worth while for literary men to examine. In "England's Helicon" there is a set of poems of superior merit, which, nevertheless, seem to us inferior to the poetry of Edward de Vere already examined. They appear over the signature of Shepherd Tony and constitute another of the [208] mysteries of Elizabethan literature. They do, however, contain certain marks of Edward de Vere's work, and it is not impossible that they may include his earliest juvenile efforts. For notwithstanding the evidence that his known work belongs mainly to his early years, it seems much too skilfully done to have been his first production. Even it seems to demand a "foreground somewhere"; and Shepherd Tony may represent that foreground. These particular poems seem to contain rather more of the affectation of the early Elizabethan poetry than do De Vere's recognized work, and have not always the same smoothness of diction. At the same time they mark a distinct advance in the direction of realism; and one poem of Shepherd Tony's, "Beauty sat bathing by a spring," which has been erroneously attributed to Anthony Munday, is a very decided break from the weaker work of earlier Elizabethan times.
Before leaving this early stage of his career we may add a somewhat inexplicable memorandum of Cecil's which concerns his affairs, dated July 10th, 1570, and preserved in the Hatfield manuscripts. Rumour was evidently rife that Cecil was managing Oxford's affairs in the matter of lands, to his own advantage and to Oxford's detriment: a matter on which the latter attacked him some six or seven years later. Cecil emphatically contradicts the allegation, and continues:
"Whosoever saith that I did stay my Lord of Oxford!s money here so as he had no money in Italy by the space of six months they say also untruly."
We cannot find any other indication of Oxford's visiting Italy before his tour in 1575 and 1576.
This chapter as a whole may be said to be concerned with biographical foundations; all the particulars of which relate themselves directly to the "Shakespeare" literature. The reputation which "vulgar scandal" had fixed upon him is represented in the sonnets. His pride of birth displays itself throughout the [209] dramas, and is reflected specially in Shakespeare's partiality to the Earls of Oxford. The hereditary office of his family is possibly alluded to in the sonnets. His orphanhood, royal wardship, and particulars of his early life are represented in "All's Well." Details of his education, particularly the part taken by his uncle, Arthur Golding, reproduce themselves in the outstanding features of "Shakespeare's" education, as given by eminent Stratfordians. The prominence of law in "Shakespeare" for the first time finds an explanation consistent with all the other requirements of the work. We therefore ask again, is all this mere accidental coincidence?