Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
MANHOOD OF DE VERE
(AN INTERLUDE)
[295] BEFORE entering upon a consideration of the third and final period of De Vere's life it is necessary to touch upon a few circumstances belonging to the closing years of the second period, which form a kind of link with the third or last period.
In 1587 we get the last indications of Oxford's dramatic activities. Towards the end of the previous year Sir Philip Sidney, after enjoying his knighthood for only three years, died four weeks after the battle at Zutphen in which he had been injured. At the time when Sidney was lying dying the trial of Mary Queen of Scots was proceeding in England, and on the commission appointed to try her was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Certain dates relative to the two events just mentioned must first be fixed. Mary appeared before the commission on the 14th of October, 1586, and received her sentence on October the 25th. Sidney died on the 17th of the same month; that is to say a week before Mary received her sentence. Mary was executed on the 8th of February, 1587, that is to say three and a half months after receiving her sentence, and Sidney was buried on February 16th, a week after Mary's execution. Roughly, Mary's sentence was pronounced at the time of Sidney's death and her execution took place at the time of Sidney's funeral, from three and a half to four months elapsing between the two pairs of events.
[296] It was, of course, an extraordinary length of time to keep Sidney's body awaiting interment. It is still more extraordinary that this period should exactly synchronize with that during which Elizabeth was hesitating about, and Burleigh and Walsingham were urging, the carrying out of the sentence against Mary. To this must be added the fact that the most determined and unscrupulous agent in bringing about Mary's execution was Sidney's father-in-law, Walsingham, and it was he, too, who was most actively concerned in arranging for the elaborately organized public funeral that was accorded to Sidney; the latter affair entailing a call upon his private purse to the extent of no less than six thousand pounds, an enormous sum in those days, equivalent to about £50,000 of our money. All this hardly looks like accidental coincidence.
We draw attention to these facts because an appreciation of their bearing will help towards an understanding of the times in which Oxford lived, and the personalities with whom he had relationships.
Mary's trial and execution is a reminder of the fears entertained by politicians like Walsingham and Burleigh that a Roman Catholic revival might occur at any time in England, and that the accession of a Roman Catholic sovereign would mean for them ruin and possibly loss of life. Mary's execution was therefore determined on by them upon political grounds. The country generally could not be considered wholeheartedly in favour of this step. The only people who really wished for Mary's execution were the politicians and the extreme Protestants; and therefore much remained to be done after securing the sentence before it could safely be carried out. Burleigh's association with the puritans, his "brethren in Christ," it is quite understood rested on grounds of policy. They represented a serviceable force, and he was not the man to neglect anything that would further his purposes. As the execution of Mary had become a set purpose with him and Walsingham, the puritans and [297] any party or circumstance, which could be used for the fostering of that public opinion upon which the most despotic of governments, ultimately depends, must needs. be turned to account.
Now, apart from political considerations, Sidney's sudden transformation into a national hero is one of the most curious of historical phenomena. We are not urging that he was not a worthy young man. We are quite willing to rest his case on the best that his friends have made out for him. Let us grant that he was the perfection of courtesy in his deportment, and that his conversation was attractive. Let us assume that the one chivalrous act recorded of him, the foregoing of a drink of water in the interests of a dying soldier, is true and was unparalleled in its unselfishness. Still, it is not for these things that people are accorded elaborate public funerals and their deaths lamented as national calamities. When it is asked what he actually accomplished in life, we begin to wonder at the great demonstration that was organized for the reception of his body in England, and later on for his interment. Neither in arms nor in statesmanship had he attained such a pre-eminence as is usual in the recipients of such state distinctions, whilst his achievements in literature, had they been as noteworthy as those of Spenser, would not have secured for him one half the national honour that attended his obsequies. We are naturally disposed, therefore, to look for some political motive behind the public demonstration and all the panegyrics that followed on it.
Now Elizabeth's fear that the execution of Mary might result in a revulsion of public feeling against herself was so real as to cause her not only to delay the carrying out of the sentence but also to provide for shuffling the odium on to subordinate agents, when the execution should have taken place. Burleigh and Walsingham were therefore not likely to be less sensible of their danger, and they, too, took steps to secure themselves against being saddled with the [298] chief responsibility. Meanwhile a public opinion favourable to their purpose must be fostered by every available artifice. In those days "public opinion" meant to a great extent "London opinion" and in times of crisis this, could be systematically stimulated and directed by spectacular displays.
As Sidney had been a staunch supporter of the antipapal policy of Burleigh and Walsingham, a policy including antagonism to the Guises; having somewhat aggressively made himself the spokesman of those who thought they were opposing the Queen at the time when she was diplomatically toying with the idea of marriage with the Duke of Anjou; and as his life had been lost in an adventure in support of the same anti-papal policy, his death, with its power of sentimental appeal, was a valuable asset to his party which Burleigh and Walsingham could not afford to neglect. The projected execution of Mary being part of the same policy which had led to the affair at Zutphen, Sidney's death was capable of being turned to account. His party now had the inestimable good fortune of possessing
a martyr, and this must needs be worked for all it was worth.The elaborately organized obsequies, so out of proportion to any recorded achievement of Sidney's, bears much more the appearance of political strategy than of merited honour: the politicians of any one period being strikingly similar to those of any other. It is the very excess of the demonstration joined to the fact that it did not come spontaneously from any public body but was worked up by interested individuals that places the whole business under suspicion. We cannot recall any other instance in which London went into mourning with the same éclat as it did for Sidney. The matter was well staged and the Sidney-mourning-fashion caught on. No blame can attach to the man himself for all this, but when we are asked to perpetuate the adulation we shall persist in asking, What did he [299] do to merit it all? The fame that he has enjoyed throughout history probably owes much to the factitious send-off that it got at this time, and to the fact that the movement and the party to which he belonged were then, and afterwards continued, in the ascendant.
Oxford, on the other hand, with his strong medieval affinities, was completely out of touch with the ascendant party, and his fame has, suffered under a corresponding disadvantage. Indeed we may say that what he stood for remained under a cloud until the middle of the nineteenth century, when, through the combined influence of "Shakespeare," Scott, and Newman, a sense of what was admirable and enduring in medievalism began to revive.
Protestant sectarianism was as contrary to his outlook upon life as it is to the wide genius of Shakespeare. On the other hand we cannot say confidently of Edward de Vere, any more than we can of Shakespeare, that he was an orthodox Roman Catholic. With the exception of the remark which we have quoted from Green we cannot discover any further evidence of his connection with the ancient Church. It is much more likely that his was the Catholicism of a universal Humanity, "with large discourse looking before and after," taking into itself the culture of Greece and Rome on the one hand, and on the other the visions that belong to a "prophetic soul of the wide world dreaming on things to come." We find no trace of medieval theologism in his poetry, nor any religious pietism such as that we have mentioned as appearing in the poems of Raleigh. Oxford's attachment was probably to the human and social sides of Catholicism and Feudalism, which he saw crumbling away and being supplanted by an unbridled individualism and egoism.
We have dwelt at some length upon Sidney's death and Mary's execution not only because Oxford's name and reputation are mixed up with Sidney's affairs, and one of the few recorded acts of [300] his life is, connected with Mary, but also because the relationship we have traced between the celebrity of one and the execution of the other helps us to focus Oxford's religious and political environment, and to realize something of his relationship to contemporary parties. These things go a long way towards accounting for the obscurity into which the names of Oxford and his immediate associates have fallen as compared with his antagonists. It also accounts for the peculiar fact, which has probably struck most of our readers, that we seldom meet with his name except in connection with opponents, thus giving the general impression of a man at loggerheads with every one - excepting in certain literary and dramatic contacts. This compels us to examine closely the reputations of rivals and to modify any artificial advantages that they owe in this matter merely to the turns of fortune. Between Oxford and Sidney we see that there lay matters much deeper than the artistic vanity of rival poets. The two men represented opposing social tendencies, and to these are largely due the glamour that has gathered round one name and the shadow that has remained over the other. At the time of the French marriage proposal, which Burleigh, Sidney and their party opposed, Oxford had been one of those who favoured the project. One modern writer sees in this nothing more than an attempt on his part to win royal favour - from all accounts the last thing he was likely to go out of his way to do. Only as we realize his spontaneous hostility to the social and political tendencies represented by Burleigh, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh and Fulke Greville shall we be able to judge him accurately or adjust ourselves properly to the Shakespeare problem.
The question which concerns us is whether Shakespeare can be claimed as representing Oxford's attitude to contemporary religious and political movements or the attitude taken by the group of men we have just named. On the religious side we have already seen that their ultra-Protestant tendencies meet [301] with no support in Shakespeare, and in this Shakespeare and Oxford are at one. In continental policy the aim of Burleigh (and Sidney) was to keep open the breach between England and France. Oxford, as we have seen, favoured a policy of amity and alliance between the two countries. That this was "Shakespeare's" view is made quite clear in the closing scene of Henry V., where he expresses the wish "that the contending kingdoms
"Of France and England, whose very shores look pale
With envy of each other's happiness,
May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction
Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord
In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His bleeding sword twixt England and fair France."That never may ill office, or fell jealousy
Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms.
That English may as French, French Englishmen
Receive each other."In international policy, then, Shakespeare and Oxford are again at one.
How differently might the whole course of European history have unfolded itself if the policy of Shakespeare had prevailed instead of that of the politicians of his time. Oxford's general relationship to those politicians, moreover, is most clearly reflected in the works of Shakespeare where the very word "politician" is a term of derision and contempt.
"That skull had a tongue in it and could sing once; how the knave jowls it to the ground as if it were Cain's jaw-bone that did the first murder! It might be the pate of a politician, one that would circumvent God, might it not?"
("Hamlet," V. 1.)"Get thee glass eyes;
And, like a scurvy politician, seem,
To see the things thou dost not."
("Lear," IV. 6)We can imagine all his contempt for Burleigh running through the above lines, and the minister's pretended [302] attachment to the growing force of puritanism, his "brethren in Christ," finds a counterblast in the words,
"Policy I hate: I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician"
("Twelfth Night")an expression of contempt for both politicians and puritans. In a word, then, Shakespeare represents the Oxford point of view and not that of Oxford's antagonists.
There can be little doubt as to which side Oxford's sympathies would lean during the trial of Mary; and so, when Burleigh, wishing to furnish himself with substantial authority for going forward with the execution, called together the ten men upon the authority of whose signatures he proceeded, Oxford was not one of the number.
Again, we have nothing to do with the merits of the case in the matter of Mary's trial and execution; but, as we read of her wonderfully brave and dignified bearing, and of her capable and unaided conduct of her own defence, we can quite believe that if the dramatist who wrote the "Merchant of Venice" was present at the trial of the Scottish Queen, with
"ringlets, almost grey, once threads of living gold,"
(H. G. Bell - "Mary Queen of Scots")he had before him a worthy model for the fair Portia, whose
"sunny locks
Hung on her temples like a golden fleece."
("Merchant of Venice," Act I. sc. 1.)Of this trial Martin Hume says, "Mary defended herself with consummate ability before a tribunal almost entirely prejudiced against her. She was deprived of legal aid, without her papers and in ill health. In her argument with Burleigh she reached a point of touching eloquence which might have moved the hearts, though it did not convince the intellects, [303] of her august judges." And, in a footnote, he quotes from Burleigh's letter to Davison, "Her intention was to move pity by long, artificial speeches." With this remark of Burleigh's in mind, let the reader weigh carefully the terms, of Portia's speech on "Mercy," all turning upon conceptions of royal power, with its symbols the crown and the sceptre.
"It becomes the thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice."Now let any one judge whether this speech is not vastly more appropriate to Mary Queen of Scots pleading her own cause before Burleigh, Walsingham, and indirectly the English Queen, than to an Italian lady pleading to an old Jew for the life of a merchant she had never seen before. Who, then, could have been better qualified for giving an idealized and poetical rendering of Mary's speeches than "the best of the courtier poets," who was a sympathetic listener to her pathetic and dignified appeals?
In February, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded, and this is the year in which we lose traces of Edward de Vere's connection with drama. It was a time of great stress and excitement in the country. The fear of a Spanish invasion lay heavily on the nation and preparations were in full swing to meet the expected Armada. Passing, as we of these days have done, through times of still greater stress, we can now quite see the allusion to England prior to the coming of the Armada in the following passage from Hamlet.
"Tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land;
[304] And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint labourer with the day?"Oxford, like many others who were out of sympathy with the policy of the government, nevertheless, put aside all differences to join in the common cause of resisting the invader. As a volunteer he was permitted to join the navy, and took part in the great sea fight that scattered the Armada and delivered England from the fear of subjugation.
The picture of Spain's immense war vessels sailing grandly up the Channel, flying past the English ships, many of them but small traders that rose and fell with each slight movement of the sea, is familiar now to every English boy and girl. It is worth remarking then that the same play of Shakespeare's which suggests the figure of Mary Queen of Scots contains also a picture suggestive of the contrast between the two fleets.
"There where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curtsey to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings."Then as we remember the disaster that befell some of these huge vessels through the Spaniards' ignorance of the shoals and sandbanks round the English coast, we can see the picture of one of them, lying on her side with the top of her mast below the level of her hull, in the lines:
"I should not see the sandy hour-glass run,
But I should think of shallows and of flats,
And see my wealthy Andrew, dock'd in sand,
Vailing her high-top lower than her ribs
To kiss her burial."[305] Quite what position the Earl of Oxford might have occupied on board ship it is not easy to imagine; but we can well believe that as an intelligent though inexperienced seaman he would find considerable interest and occupation in
"Peering in maps for ports and piers and roads."
The Earl was not a seafaring man, nor is there anything in the record of his life that suggests a special enthusiasm for the sea. The same is true of "Shakespeare" as revealed in his works as a whole, whilst the passages we have quoted indicate some slight but special experiences of a keen observer, who humanized everything on which his eye alighted; not only the active vessels but even the battered wrecks seeming to him to possess a human personality.
Associated with Oxford's experience of sea life was, the death of his wife. During the month preceding the appearance of the Armada Lady Oxford died, June 6th, 1588. What this may have meant to De Vere himself is a mystery which will probably never be quite solved, and which mankind would be content to pass over in silence if the Earl of Oxford were to remain for all time no more than what has been supposed hitherto. If, however, he comes to be universally acknowledged as Shakespeare, interest in the matter is certain to be revived, and we may find that in his role of dramatist he either answers our questions on the subject, or suggests some reasonable conjectures.
Hamlet's sea experiences we observe stand in direct associati . on with the death of Ophelia. It is whilst he is away that she dies. He returns at the time of her burial, and after the graveyard scene resumes with Horatio the discussion of his sea adventures. As, then, the attitude of Hamlet to Ophelia resembles in some particular that of Oxford to his wife, we may hope, at any rate, that, as "Shakespeare," he gives us in the famous graveyard scene a revelation of the true state of his affections: a supposition [306] which even his conduct at the time of their rupture quite justifies.
The death of Lady Oxford, and the subsidence of the national excitement in relation to the Spanish Armada, following, as they do, closely upon the last indications we have of his theatrical enterprises, may be taken as marking the time at which he began "to sit in idle cell," or the beginning of the third period of his life.