Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
SUPPLEMENTARY EVIDENCE
[454] ONE of the chief difficulties with which we have had to contend in penning the foregoing pages has been that of keeping pace with the accumulation of evidence and placing it in its proper connections: a very strong testimony to the soundness of the general conclusions. Even after the work was virtually all set up some most interesting evidence, one piece of which will probably crown the whole structure, came into our hands. These matters we can only briefly indicate.
I
THE POSTHUMOUS ARGUMENT
First, we would quote the following passage which we had overlooked in the English Men of Letters series, which gives valuable support to our "Posthumous" argument:
"At the beginning of his career Shakespeare made very free use of the work of other men. . . . Towards the end of his career his work is once more found mixed with the work of other men, but this time there is generally reason to suspect that it is these others that have laid him under contribution, altering his completed plays, or completing his unfinished work by additions of their own" ("Shakespeare," by Sir Walter Raleigh, p. 109).
II
OXFORD'S CREST AND FAMILY MOTTO
An examination of the De Vere Crest in "Fairbairn's Crests" (vol. II, plate 40, 2) and in the "De Walden [455] Library" (vol. Banners, Standards and Badges, P. 257) discloses the interesting fact that what Sir Edwin DurningLawrence in "Bacon is Shakespeare" (page 40, had taken for Bacon's Crest, because it chanced to be in a presentation copy of the "Novum Organum," is in fact the De Vere Crest. Several families had the Boar as their crest; but the distinguishing mark of this one is the crescent upon the left shoulder of the animal (see "De Walden Library"). This is peculiar to the De Vere Crest, and appears in Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence's illustration. Whatever value there might be in this writer's argument therefore belongs to De Vere. We shall not, however, discuss that argument at present.
The stars upon the De Vere banner and the family motto:
"Vero, nihil verius"
— nothing truer than truth — are specially interesting in view of Hamlet's poesy to Ophelia:
"Doubt that the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love."This mode of exaggerating by representing something as being "truer than truth" comes out again in Shakespeare's satirizing of Euphuism, where he represents Don Armado as using the terms of the De Vere family motto:
"Thou art . . . truer than truth itself."
III
OXFORD'S PORTRAIT AND THE DROESHOUT ENGRAVING
It is not generally known that there is no Shakespeare portrait before the Droeshout engraving which appeared in the First Folio: that is to say, seven years after the [456] death of the man it is supposed to represent; and it is of a totally different type from the bust of him, that was set up at Stratford, where he would be personally known. Droeshout, moreover, was only a lad of fifteen when Shakspere died; he would be only twelve when Shakspere was in London probably for the last time, and was born only the year before Shakspere's, supposed retirement in 1604. These facts, combined with the peculiar character of the portrait he produced, has made the question of what he had to work on not the least interesting of the many problems connected with Shakespearean authorship.
It was, not until a few months ago that we had an opportunity of seeing a portrait of Edward de Vere in Fairfax Murray's reproductions of the portraits that are in the Duke of Portland's place at Welbeck Abbey, near Worksop, Nottingham.
Certain features in the picture immediately suggested the Droeshout engraving; most particularly the thin dark line which runs along above the upper lip, leaving a slight space between this suggestion of a moustache and the edge of the lip itself. Since then we have looked over a large number of portraits of the time, and have discovered nothing else similar. In addition there were the same facial proportions, the same arching of the eyebrows, the identical pose (three-quarter face), the same direction of gaze, about an equal amount of bust, the chief difference being that one is turned to the right and the other to the left: altogether there was quite sufficient to suggest that, when the two could be brought together, a very strong case might be made out for Droeshout having worked from this portrait, of Edward de Vere, making modifications according to instructions. For Oxford was only twenty-five when the portrait was painted, and, of course, it was necessary to represent Shakespeare as an older man. This would explain the peculiar Tom Pinch-like combination of youthfulness and age that is one of the puzzling features of the Droeshout engraving.
[457] We have now before us, however, what may prove to be the most sensational piece of evidence that our investigations have so far yielded. This is a picture known as the Grafton portrait of Shakespeare at 24. The full particulars respecting it are narrated in a work on the subject by Thomas Kay and published in 1915: the chief aim of the book being to show the connection between this and another portrait from which the Droeshout engraving was conceivably made.
Now, until we can place an acknowledged portrait of the Earl of Oxford alongside of it, we shall defer saying positively that this is actually another portrait of him; but speaking from recollections of the other we would say at first sight that it is so. The eye is at once arrested again by the thin dark line on the upper lip that we noticed in Oxford's portrait; there are all the features which we, noticed his portrait had in common with the Droeshout engraving; and in those points in which the older features of the Droeshout engraving differed from Edward de Vere this one agrees with the latter. The probability that it is another portrait of the Earl of Oxford is therefore very strong.
We now come to the startling facts. First of all, although the portrait is that of a young man aged twenty-four, he is dressed as, an aristocrat, and Stratfordianism is driven to invent far-fetched explanations. Again under the 4 of his age there had been a 3, and again more explanations have to be invented. Then, under the 8 in the date it looks again as if there had been another 3, and authorities are quoted to controvert it. Now as, the Earl of Oxford would be twenty-three in the year 1573 these two alterations are two out of the three precise alterations which would be necessary to make the, age and date in a portrait of Edward de Vere agree with the particulars for William Shakspere of Stratford.
In a word we have here probably (to be cautious for the present) a portrait of the Earl of Oxford with [458] particulars, altered to fit the Stratford man: in which case our evidence is about as, complete as it could be. The probability is, as a study of the work suggests, that this portrait was placed before Droeshout as the basis for his engraving. We would further add that the numbers were probably altered so that the engraver need not be in the secret. The scrubbing to which the picture has been subjected has brought up the numbers, from underneath. That same scrubbing has, unfortunately, obliterated the high lights on the nose of the portrait, thus altering its shape and reducing its value for identification.
This enables us to finish our argument almost in strict accordance with the original plan, the seventh and last step of which was to connect directly as far as possible the newly accredited with the formerly reputed author.
Note. — The Grafton portrait of Shakespeare has now been carefully compared with the Welbeck portrait of Edward de Vere, and when proper allowances are made for evident differences of artistic treatment and skill, and for the denudation of high lights from the former, as well as other disfigurements resulting from ill-usage to the picture, there seems abundant justification for the point of view assumed in the above argument. In our opinion the portrait of the Earl of Oxford has more in common with both the Grafton portrait and the Droeshout engraving than these two have with one another.