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EARLY MANHOOD OF EDWARD DE VERE
II
After spending about six months in Italy Oxford travelled back as far as Paris, and from a letter which he wrote there, addressed to Burleigh, it appears that he purposed making an extended tour embracing Spain on the one hand, and south-eastern Europe, Greece and Constantinople, on the other. At this point we approach a great crisis in his life which, when his biography comes to be written, will require much patient research, and the most careful weighing of facts, before a straight story can be made of it or the events placed in a clear light. From the documents preserved in the Hatfield manuscripts, however, certain facts specially relevant to our argument already stand out boldly and distinctly. The first is that he expresses a warm regard for his wife. The second is that a responsible servant of his, his receiver, had succeeded in insinuating into his mind suspicions of some kind respecting Lady Oxford. The third is that her father, for some reason or other, recalled Oxford to England, thus upsetting his, project of extended [228] travel. The fourth is that on his return he treated his wife in a way quite inexplicable to her, refusing to see her; whilst she, for her part, showed an earnest desire to appease him. The fifth is that reports unfavourable to Lady Oxford's reputation gained currency. And the sixth is that there seems to have been no shadow of justification for these reports.
It hardly needs pointing out that we have here a great many of the outstanding external conditions of Shakespeare's celebrated tragedy of jealousy in connubial life: "Othello." Brabantio, the father-in-law of Othello, was, like Oxford's father-in-law, the chief minister of state and a great potentate, having "in his effect a voice potential as double as the duke's." Othello himself, like Oxford, was one who took his stand firmly and somewhat ostentatiously upon the rights and privileges of high birth:
"I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege, and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reached."Desdemona is represented as one who, in the words of her father, "was half the wooer," just as Anne Cecil is represented in the contemporary letter already quoted; whilst a similar youthfulness combined with a premature development along certain lines, is expressed in the lines:
"She that so young could give out such a seeming,
To seal her father's eyes."Iago, the arch-insinuator of suspicion, is Othello's own "ancient," and occupies a position analogous to Oxford's "receiver," who had dropped the poison of suspicion into his master's mind. Iago's reiterated advice, "Put money in thy purse," is redolent of the special functions of Oxford's receiver: a suggestion repeated in Iago's well-known speech "Who steals my purse steals trash." So the four central figures in this connubial tragedy of real life, [229] Burleigh, Oxford, Lady Oxford, and Oxford's receiver, are exactly represented in Shakespeare's great domestic tragedy by Brabantio, Othello, Desdemona, and Iago.
To this correspondence in personnel must be added an even more remarkable correspondence in the two-fold character of the cause of rupture. Before alighting upon this letter of Oxford's and the memoranda of Burleigh's dealing with the crisis, we had supposed that the whole ground of the trouble between him and his wife was his being recalled to England by her father; she having been a party to the recall. The perception that there was yet another cause, suggestive of Othello's principal motive, altered the entire aspect of things; and this, along with the presence in both cases of the subordinate motive — the recall by the lady's father — brought the two cases immediately into line with one another; the whole complex situation finding its expression in Desdemona's pathetic and puzzled appeal to Othello:
"Why do you weep?
Am I the motives of these tears, my lord?
If haply you my father do suspect,
An instrument of this your calling back
Lay not the blame on me."It is worth while remarking that Othello was called back from Cyprus: the very part of the world which Oxford was prevented from visiting by his recall; and that he was called back to Venice, the city which Oxford had just left.
In the light of what we now know of the trouble between Lord and Lady Oxford, let the reader go carefully over the first two scenes of Act IV in
"Othello," noticing the intermingling of the two elements of mistrust insinuated by a subordinate, and the "commanding home" of Othello. A sense of identity — with due allowance for the difference between actualities and the poet's dramatization — will, we believe, be irresistible. We shall, therefore, finish off this particular argument by placing together a sentence taken from a [230] letter written by Oxford to Burleigh in which he virtually closes the discussion of the subject and a sentence which "Shakespeare" introduces by the mouth of a subordinate character into the closing part of this particular episode:Oxford:
"Neither will he (Oxford) trouble his life any more with such troubles and molestations as he has endured, nor to please his lordship (Burleigh) discontent himself.""Shakespeare" (in "Othello"):
"I will indeed no longer endure it, nor am I yet persuaded to put up in peace what already I have foolishly suffered."Parallel passages in published writings may only be instances of plagiarism or unconscious memory. In this case, however, the passage published reproduces a sentence of a private letter not made public until centuries had elapsed. This is all that seems necessary from the point of view of this particular argument; and so conclusive does it appear that we are almost inclined to question the utility of accumulating further evidence. The letter from which we have quoted, we remark, contains also a familiar Shakespearean innuendo respecting parentage. It also expresses a continued regard for his wife; resenting Burleigh's so handling the matter as to have made her "the fable of the world and raising open suspicions to her disgrace."
What Burleigh's ubiquitous informers may have reported leading to Oxford's recall does not appear to be known. Certain it is that even from Italy Burleigh's agents had been forwarding reports the truth of which was denied by an Italian attendant on Oxford. At any rate Oxford himself on his return refused, in a most decided manner, to meet his wife. "Until he can better satisfy himself concerning certain mislikings," he says, "he is not determined to accompany her." Whether he suspected her of being a party to espionage practised upon him or to attempts at domination over him, or whether there were indeed other hidden [231] matters of a graver nature we cannot say. It may not be without significance, however, that later on we find one of those spying agents of Burleigh's, Geoffrey Fenton, a continental traveller and a linguist, dedicating to Lady Oxford a translation he had made.
The cryptic explanation of his conduct which we have just quoted seems to have been the only one which Oxford would vouchsafe - to Burleigh at any rate. Burleigh complains of Oxford's taciturnity in the matter: that he would only reply, "I have answered you" — which is strikingly suggestive of Shylock's laconic expression "Are you answered?" One account suggests that the attitude he assumed on his arrival was a sudden and erratic change. If this be correct it is certainly suggestive of that lightning-like change one notices in Hamlet's bearing towards, Ophelia, when he detects that she is allowing herself to be made the tool of her father in spying upon Hamlet himself (Act III, scene 1 ).
As usual the matter is reported as reflecting discredit upon Oxford. It was an instance merely of bad behaviour towards his wife. One writer, however, states that Oxford had at least offered the explanation that his wife was allowing herself to be influenced by her parents against himself. And this is a reasonable explanation of the only charge that Oxford makes against her, at a time when he makes other charges against Burleigh's administration of his affairs. Lady Oxford's father had undoubtedly treated her husband badly, and if she did not hotly resent and repudiate her father's actions she must be reckoned as being on his side. It was one of those simple cases in which there was no midway course possible, and in which it was, impossible for her husband to mistake the side on which she stood.
Oxford had at any rate come home with his mind fully made up to have done once and for all with Burleigh's domination. That he had borne with it at all seems to suggest that there had been about his personality something of that mildness of [232] manner which dominating men are apt to mistake for weakness, a supposition to which the only portrait we have seen of him, taken at the age of twenty-five, seems to lend support. Certainly his poetry testifies to an affectionateness that might easily be so misconstrued. When such men are at last driven to strike, their blows have frequently a fierceness that comes as a surprise and a shock to their adversaries: and Oxford's poetry does indeed display a capacity for fierce outbursts. We suspect that something of this kind happened in the present instance. Burleigh had adopted a policy in relation to Oxford that the latter was not prepared to tolerate any longer. Anne, during the five years of married life, had passed from girlhood into womanhood. Her father had created a situation in which she must choose definitely between father and husband. The unravelling of the facts and their proper interpretation must, however, form matter for future investigations.
Most writers agree that much of Oxford's subsequent conduct was dictated by a determination to revenge himself on Burleigh for some reason or other; and that his plans of revenge included the squandering of his own estates and separation from his wife. Castle Hedingham in Essex which Oxford had made over to Burleigh, we are told in local histories was almost razed completely, by Oxford's orders, as part of his plan of revenge. How he could have razed a castle which was no longer his own we do not pretend to explain: we merely repeat in this matter what is recorded. The following two stanzas from one of his early poems are, however, of special interest in this connection:
"I am no sot to suffer such abuse,
As doth bereave my heart of his delight;
Nor will I frame myself to such as use,
With calm consent to suffer such despite.
No quiet sleep shall once possess mine eye,
Till wit have wrought his will on injury.
[233] My heart shall fail and hand shall lose his force,
But some device shall pay Despite his due;
And fury shall consume my careful corse,
Or raze the ground whereon my sorrow grew.
Lo, thus in rage of ruthful mind refus'd,
I rest revenged on whom I am abus'd."The old records suggest a political motive — the imprisonment and execution of his kinsman the Duke of Norfolk — for Oxford's scheme of revenge. If, however, we may connect it with these verses, as we reasonably may, it is evident that the motive was much more directly personal to himself. If, moreover, we connect it with these political matters the time is carried back to the year 1572: the year immediately following his marriage. The disentangling of events and dates in these matters we do not feel to be sufficiently pressing to demand the arrest of our present argument.
Without waiting, therefore, for these obscurities to be cleared up, we may introduce now what has been the most remarkable piece of evidence met with in the whole course of our investigations: a discovery made a considerable time after this work had been virtually completed and indeed after it had already passed into other hands. This evidence is concerned with the play, "All's Well"; the striking parallelism between the principal personage in the drama and the Earl of Oxford having led us to adopt it as the chief support of our argument at the particular stage with which we are now occupied. This argument was carried forward to its present stage at the time when our discovery was, announce d to the librarian of the British Museum. What we have now to state was not discovered until some months later.
In tracing the parallelism between Bertram and Oxford we confined our attention to the incidentals of the play, in the belief that the central idea of the plot — the entrapping of Bertram into marital relationships with his own wife, in order that [234] she might bear him a child unknown to himself — was wholly derived from Boccaccio's story of Bertram. The discovery, therefore, of the following passage in Wright's "History of Essex" furnishes a piece of evidence so totally unexpected, and forms so sensational a climax to an already surprising resemblance that, on first noticing it, we had some difficulty in trusting our own eyes. We would willingly be spared the penning of such matter: its importance as evidence does not, however, permit of this. Speaking of the rupture between the Earl of Oxford and his wife, Wright tells us that, "He (Oxford) forsook his lady's, bed, (but) the father of Lady Anne by stratagem, contrived that her husband should unknowingly sleep with her, believing her to be another woman, and she bore a son to him in consequence of this meeting" (Wright's "History of Essex," vol. 1, p. 517). The only son of the Lady Anne, we may mention, died in infancy.
Thus even in the most extraordinary feature of this play; a feature which hardly one person in a million would for a moment have suspected of being anything else but an extravagant invention, the records of Oxford are at one with the representation of Bertram. It is not necessary that we should believe the story to be true, for no authority for it is vouchsafed. A memorandum in the Hatfield manuscripts to the effect that Burleigh laid before the Master of the Rolls and other's some private matter respecting this domestic rupture may, however, have had reference to this. The point which matters is, that this extraordinary story should be circulated in reference to the Earl of Oxford; making it quite clear that either Oxford was the actual prototype of Bertram, in which case false as well as true stories of the Earl might be worked into the play, or he was supposed to be the prototype and was saddled with the story in consequence. In any case, the connection between the two is now as complete as accumulated evidence can make it. We hesitate to make reflections upon prospective dissentients; but we feel entitled to assert that the man who [235] does not now acknowledge a connection of some sort between Edward de Vere and Bertram in "All's Well," has not the proper faculty for weighing evidence.
Having thus raised the peculiar situation, represented in the play, in relation to our problem, we notice something analogous repeated in the relationship between Angelo and Mariana in "Measure for Measure" along with the fact that Angelo, specifies a period of "five years" between the making of the marriage arrangement and the special episode (V, 1): the exact period between the date of Oxford's marriage and the particular time with which we are now dealing (1571-1576). Angelo also remarks:
"I do perceive
These poor informal women are no more
But instruments of some more mightier member
That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord,
To find this practice out."With such possibilities of discovery lying in the play of "All's Well," it is not surprising that after having first of all appeared under fhe title of "Love's Labour's Won," it should have disappeared for a full generation, and then, when the Earl of Oxford had been dead for nearly twenty years, reappeared under a new name. "Measure for Measure" is also on ' e of the plays not published until 1623, although it had been played in 1604.
The one thing that stands out clearly from all these events is an unmistakable antagonism between Oxford and Burleigh, over which Burleigh especially tries to throw a cloak of benevolence. His next move is somewhat astute: he seems to have given it out that the Earl had been enticed away "by lewd persons." There is no suggestion, however, that Anne had left Oxford, or that Burleigh had sought to separate them because of dissoluteness on the Earl's part. The facts all point unquestionably in the opposite direction: for it was he who exerted all his influence to bring about a [236] rapprochement when the mischief had been done. There was, therefore, no question of protecting a daughter against a profligate husband; and if his charges against Oxford were well founded it is upon the character of Burleigh himself that they react most disastrously. For it is hardly possible to conceive a more despicable character than that of a father exerting himself to throw back his daughter into the arms of her dissolute husband when she had been delivered from him by his, own voluntary act. The probability is that Burleigh himself did not believe his own accusations, and that they were a mere ruse de guerre on the part of an unscrupulous and crafty fighter. Had he believed his own story he ought rather to have rejoiced at the turn things had taken.
The real root of much of the trouble, it is easy to see, was the control that Burleigh attempted to exercise over Oxford's movements; the purely negative and restrictive control of a man whose exercise of power, even in the greatest affairs of state, was always governed by considerations of himself, his family, his own policy and his instruments. To a man of Oxford's spirit the position must have been irksome in the extreme; and when we find the fact of his being held in leading strings pointedly alluded to in a poem of Edmund Spenser's, it must have been specially galling. If, then, Oxford succeeded in making himself a thorn in the flesh of his dominating relative, we shall probably agree that the astute minister had at last met his match and got hardly more than he deserved. Lady Oxford's fault was probably no worse than that of having weakly succumbed to, a masterful father, or rather two masterful parents. Ophelia's weakness, then, in permitting herself to be made her father's tool in intruding upon Hamlet, certainly suggests her as a possible dramatic analogue to the unfortunate Lady Oxford.
One is always upon uncertain ground in attempting to lay bare the facts which have lain behind the effusions of [237] poets. A note recurs in more than one poem of De Vere's which seems to point to this trouble between himself and his wife. From the dates given we judge them to belong to this particular time of crisis in his life; and if the reference is actually to the breach between them, it would seem that, notwithst an ding the course he had been obliged to take, there had been awakened in him an intense affection for his wife. This is certainly the peculiar situation represented in the -poems: affection of the poet for one who had formerly sought him but who had become in some way at variance with him. We give two stanzas from separate poems on this theme:
"O cruel hap and hard estate
That forceth me to love my foe;
Accursed be so foul a fate,
My choice for to prefix it so.
So long to fight with secret sore,
And find no secret salve therefor.""Betray thy grief thy woeful heart with speed;
Resign thy voice to her that caused thee woe;
With irksome cries bewail thy late done deed,
For she thou lov'st is sure thy mortal foe.
And help for thee there is none sure,
But still in pain thou must endure."(As we shall have to refer to this stanza in dealing with the question of "Spenser's Willie" we ask the reader to keep it in mind.)
These two poems, both published when Oxford was but twenty-six years old, are certainly suggestive of Bertram's reference to Helena as one "whom since I have lost have loved." In the play of "All's Well," everything works out to a satisfactory conclusion. In real life things do not always so work out, and though Oxford and his wife were ultimately, in some sort, reconciled, we are assured that henceforth the relationship between them was not altogether cordial.
Whatever view may be taken of Burleigh's character, [238] and of the antagonism between him and Oxford, every record testifies unmistakably to the former's wish to exercise an unwarrantable ascendancy over the movements, of the latter. Had Oxford been an adventurer and a needy supplicant for court favour like Raleigh, or one desirous of political and diplomatic advancement like Sidney, Burleigh's, methods for holding him in subjection might have succeeded permanently. At this time, however, there was nothing in the shape of wealth or social eminence, which others sought that was not already his; and ambitions after military or naval glory, such as could only be realized through the co-operation of those in power, he seems definitely to have abandoned after his return from Italy. Henceforward his powers and interests seem to have been concentrated in literature and drama. Many of the poems from which we have quoted seem to have been published, and some of them evidently written, just about this time. His letter to Bedingfield, so completely free from any suggestion of personal unhappiness, was, in fact, written just at this time. In view of the whole of the circumstances, then, it seems quite safe to say that he returned from Italy, being then close on twenty-six years of age, with his mind finally determined on a literary and dramatic career. In this he was in no way dependent upon the authorities, and viewing the attitude of his powerful relative as a sheer impertinence he was at liberty to set him at defiance.
The path he had chosen was, one, however, in which he might expect to meet with still greater hostility from Burleigh; though now the hostility would be more or less baffled and impotent. His plans not being confided to those with whom he was in direct personal contact, would involve a good deal of reserve on his side, permit a similar amount of misconstruction on theirs, and afford free scope for efforts at working the situation to his discredit. This, it appears, is just what did happen.
[239] The reference in Shakespeare's sonnets to a time of special crisis when "he took his way" has already been mentioned. Amongst the things which he kept "to his own use" "under truest bars" we may reckon the manuscripts at which he was working.* From a remark in one of Oxford's letters (Hatfield MSS.) it appears that he was, accustomed to take with him, when going into the country, important papers secured in a small desk. His secret treasures would, no doubt, include also those Italian plays and other important documents which we now know were freely used by the great dramatist in the composition of his works. That De Vere would bring back such things from Italy it is impossible to doubt. The number and expensiveness of the articles he brought home from his Italian tour is dwelt upon at length, and in much detail, in the account from which many of our facts are taken. It is almost absurd to suppose that he brought back all these goods and omitted to bring with him just those things that touched his own keenest interest most directly. And it would be just such literary treasures that, as Shakespeare, he would guard:
"That to his use they might unused stay
From hands of falsehood in sure wards of trust."The fulfilment of the purpose we suppose him to have set himself, involved his throwing himself into those literary and dramatic circles whose character has been already described. This is what we suppose Burleigh to refer to in speaking of his being enticed away by "lewd persons." It is, remarkable, however, that, although we have an abundance of such general accusations against him, we have not been able to discover, up to the present, a single authoritative case in which his name appears in a discreditable personal connection; notwithstanding the fact that, through the records of those [240] times, the evidence of such affairs in the lives, of eminent people is only too frequent and unmistakable.
Of all the artifices by which an older man may seek to maintain an ascendancy over a younger one, there is hardly any more contemptible than that of playing upon his regard for reputation and good name; and Burleigh, in attempting to apply this method in bringing pressure to bear upon Oxford, was only employing one of his recognized stratagems. In this matter we are again able to present the testimony of no less a witness than the poet Edmund Spenser. The following passage taken from his poem, "Mother Hubbard's Tale," Dean Church assures us, is generally accepted as referring to Burleigh:
"No practice sly
No counterpoint of cunning policy,
No reach, no breach, that might him profit bring
But he the same did to his purpose wring.
* * *
He no account made of nobility.
* * *
All these through feigned crimes he thrust adown
Or made them dwell in darkness of disgrace.The last part of the quotation might almost be supposed to have direct reference to Burleigh's special treatment of the Earl of Oxford himself; whilst the character of trickster, which Spenser fixes upon Elizabeth's great minister, certainly meets us at more than one point in his dealings with his son-in-law. Indeed it appears almost as if it were a character in which he himself gloried, as the following story which we quote from Macaulay shows:
"When he (Burleigh) was studying the law at Gray's Inn he lost all his furniture and books at the gaming table to one of his friends. He accordingly bored a hole in the wall which separated his chambers from those of his associate, and at midnight bellowed through the passage threats of damnation and calls to repentance in the ears of the [241] victorious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and refunded his winnings on his knees next day. 'Many other the like merry jests,' says his old biographer, 'I have heard him tell.'" One who thus gloried almost childishly in his own low cunning was not the kind of man to stick at any "Practice sly, or counterpoint of cunning policy," that he could "to his own purpose wring." Edward de Vere was certainly "made to dwell in darkness of disgrace"; and no sane reading of Shakespeare's sonnets can avoid the conclusion that "Shakespeare" was one who suffered in the same way, whilst no trace of contemporary disrepute has been pointed out respecting the Stratford Shakspere.
Even if Burleigh had good reasons for believing that what he was urging against Oxford was true, it seems clear that the opportunist minister who "winketh at these love affairs" was merely striking at his son-in-law's reputation as part of his usual cunning. That the attack upon De Vere's good name had not only succeeded in injuring him, but had cut him to the quick, is evident from the poem on the loss of his good name. That the plan did not succeed either in bringing him into subjection or in diverting him from his purpose is equally clear. Indeed, it looks as if, though at great cost to himself, Oxford had in a measure got the whip hand over Burleigh: possibly the only man who was ever able to do this. From this time forward his leading interests were literary and dramatic. He became "the best of the courtier poets of the early days of Queen Elizabeth," and in drama "amongst the best in comedy"; yet the only surviving poems known are a few fragments belonging mainly to his youth and early manhood, whilst of the fruits of the dramatic activity that filled the period of his life with which we are now to deal no single example is supposed to be extant - every line is supposed to have perished: "lost or worn out."
* Note. - Amongst complaints formulated against his father-in-law and wife, Oxford states that he had been refused possession of some of his own writings. (Hat. MSS.) back