Alan Stott – Stourbridge, U.K.
Abstract:
The new century has seen some outstanding controversial research in Shakespearean studies. These current discoveries and inferences now invite a reconsideration of both authorship and inspiration. This paper summarises the latest research (Anderson, Stritmatter, Whittemore, Beauclerk), discusses the perceptions of poets and creative writers, who do not cease to be poets when writing criticism (Blake, Keats, James Joyce, Charles Williams, Ted Hughes) and follows up two insights of Rudolf Steiner on the authorship question concerning the figure of Hamlet and the role of James I.
“Something cannot be. Only it is”: Beyond the Murder of Gonzago [PDF]
William Blake’s letter to John Flaxman of 12 September 1800 acknowledges that Shakespeare “in riper years gave me his hand” along with Paracelsus and Jakob Boehme. During the previous decade Blake had come to the view that there is a living connection between the artist as historical person (the Spectre) and the created works (the Shadow). Still following Blake, the artist reincarnates “time after time” while the Shadow has a life of its own. It follows, as Blake’s later Prophetic Books indicate, that the two may meet at different times.
That the Shadow of Shakespeare has evolved is undeniable, passing through 18th-century pantomimes, critical revaluation – especially through S.T. Coleridge [1] –, Victorian music-hall and rebirth at the hands of literary critic A.C. Bradley in 1904. [2] Whereas the period 1904-1920 was witnessing a staggering rediscovery of the works, J. Thomas Looney [3] in 1920 initiated the research that identified “Shakespeare” as real-life Edward de Vere; James Joyce reopened the debate regarding the relationship between Hamlet and Shakespeare; Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), I submit, offered assistance regarding both the authorship question and the figure of Hamlet. [4]
After his earlier work at the Goethe Archives in Weimar, Steiner led a literary life in Berlin. He edited and also wrote the theatrical reviews for a national weekly, the Magazin für Literatur, equivalent of the London Saturday Review. Throughout his lecturing career, admittedly, Steiner’s remarks comply with what is called the conventional or orthodox view, that the actor William of Stratford-on-Avon (1564–1616) wrote the plays. The arguments that Francis Bacon (1561–1626) – the chief alternative candidate in Steiner’s day – was the Bard, Steiner says, “are utterly superficial”. [5] Steiner certainly reveals a common inspiration linking both Bacon and Shakespeare, also suggested more recently by historian Frances Yates. [6] I return to this in what follows. Baconians, then, see something but could be jumping to premature conclusions. Further to the debate, as a candidate for authorship Looney published a constellation of powerful arguments pointing to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (?1548–1604), an argument that has been recently (2010) updated by Charles Beauclerk. [7] In other words, we must accept that the first decade of the 21st century has forcefully reopened the authorship issue in much the same way as 1904-1920 rediscovered the works.
Everyone knows the Shakespearean records are sparse. If we assume Steiner’s spiritual vision meets the facts of the case, then – also assuming the hand that held the pen had to be concealed – a spiritual reporter may have had good reasons to go along with repeating the accepted fiction. He would be perfectly aware that historical and literary evidence would come to light at the right time. In such circumstances, we might expect an appeal to concrete imaginative perception will be made, perhaps with a certain verbal irony. Nobody accuses Chaucer (prob. 1345–1400) of conveying untruths about his Canterbury Pilgrims; on the contrary, we appreciate how through irony the poet reports on their real characters. “Gospel irony,” writes the independent researcher and specialist in Oriental law J. Duncan M Derrett, “which is one of the gems of world literature, is almost entirely unrecognised for what it is.” [8] Irony is recognised as a standard means to point to the truth, counteracting a fixed literalness and even pomposity (in music, too, Haydn and Beethoven employed overt and subtle irony long before modern composers made it standard practice). But we find that the Bard himself made irony and satire his consistent life-style. (Irony and satire are not the same as sarcasm; Elton Trueblood’s short account of “The Humour of Christ” (1964) might supply a useful corrective here.) Beauclerk draws attention to the three “interlocking plots in any given Shakespeare play”: the fictional plot, the topical satire, and the “soul story” of the author’s unconscious or “mythic existence” (Beauclerk. 162). In this comprehensive context, I select for closer scrutiny one passage from a lecture Steiner delivered 100 years ago, and another later statement concerning the Bard’s inspiration.
Recent publications
A full-length biography of Edward de Vere by Mark Anderson (2005) [9] points out the plentiful connections to the Shakespearean canon. Anderson, supported by the necessary scholarship, provides a flesh-and-blood candidate to fill the yawning gap in our knowledge of the Bard. The biographer avoids suppositions, ciphers and esoterics; the evidence he produces is historical, cumulative and considerably furthers Looney’s claims. We follow the life, studies, marital problems, travels, literary and theatrical career, frustrations and crises – all this raw material in relation to the canon. A list of documented solid facts concerning the life of the Stratford candidate, as distinct from suppositions, would be exhausted in a few pages. [10]
At the same time it is necessary to re-investigate that particular text (a probable wedding-anniversary present), the quickly supressed Shake-Speares Sonnets (1609) “by our ever-living poet” – the adjective, it is clear, never used of a living person –, with their enigmatic biographical references. As a start, the intricate formal devices of the Sonnet sequence – a remarkable tour de force, second only to Spenser in complexity – have been convincingly revealed by the exemplary scholarship of Alastair Fowler (1970). [11] The Sonnets, he shows, are numbered correctly, and clues to the pyramid-form are presented by the position of the few intentionally irregular sonnets. But now, Hank Whittemore (2008), [12] incorporating the three year-parts and other temporal references and deciphering the imagery, reveals line-by-line that, running parallel to the overt literary meaning, there is a hidden personal story of national, indeed international interest. Far from indulging the “biographical fallacy” in our reading, Whittemore shows that the Sonnets were intended to transmute a tortuous life-story into a work of art. The story takes place in real time, some Sonnets marking a day-by-day diary. The author created a permanent “monument” to the “fair youth”. In other words, the Sonnet sequence communicates more to us when we recognise the living author. If this were not so, then the entire work of postmodernists such as John Barth would be reduced in meaning. In the face of the cumulative weight of recent research there is no option but to reconsider Shakespeare, man and author.
“Shake-Speare”’s initial concern in the first 17 Sonnets is that of a father and potential grandfather, as C.S. Lewis surmised: “What man in the whole world, except a father or a potential father-in-law, cares whether any other man gets married?” [13] The “Dark Lady” of the Sonnets, Whittemore now shows, is Queen Elizabeth, and the “fair youth” is her and de Vere’s 17-year-old son (b. late May 1574, d. 1624) – brought up as Henry Wriothesley (see Beauclerk 105-107). He is the love-child “Cupid” in Sonnets 153 and 154 that refer to a royal visit to the city of Bath, [14] which de Vere joined in August 1574:
But found no cure; the bath for my help lies
Where Cupid got new fire – my mistress’ eyes.
As 3rd Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, is the dedicatee of “Shakespeare’s” first and second of relatively few – indeed, the only official – publications in his lifetime, the two poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and Rape of Lucrece (1594). The author, Whittemore suggests, in effect took a treasonous step by associating the name “William Shakespeare” with the cause of those demanding that Queen Elizabeth name her successor. If acknowledged, Henry would have become Henry IX of England. Earlier, Wriothesley had chosen rather to pay the handsome, punitive fine (£5,000 = c. £185,000, or c. $1.3 million in today’s money) by refusing the plan of William Cecil (Elizabeth’s chief minister) that he marry Cecil’s eldest granddaughter (also Wriothesley’s half-sister), de Vere’s daughter Elizabeth by Anne Cecil, and thus bring the Cecil family into royalty. The tension came to a head with the abortive “Essex rebellion” (so called) of Feb. 7, 1601 that challenged the regime, in particular Robert Cecil who held the power behind the throne. When Essex was beheaded, Elizabeth was distraught. Southampton was the only leader to survive. The agreement to save his life, Whittemore lucidly suggests, was not only on the condition that this unacknowledged prince give up all claims to the throne, but also by guaranteeing the complete silence of his father, the hidden author known to posterity as “Shakespeare”. The mask became stuck. Among the first things King James I (1566–1625) did as the new sovereign was to release Wriothesley from imprisonment on April 10, 1603. Conveniently side-lined, he became Captain of the Isle of Wight on July 7, 1603, a “little kingdom” out of harm’s way.
Roger Stritmatter, [15] moreover, provides evidence that Edward de Vere was a hidden writer in a scrupulously researched Ph.D. thesis on the markings of the latter’s Geneva Bible (2001). Some underscored verses refer to secret authorship – the life-style of irony of God’s fools and prophets: “the prophet is a foole; the spiritual man is mad” (Hosea 9:7); Matthew, chapter 6:4 advises giving “almes… in secret, & thy Father that seeth in secret, he wil rewarde thee openly”. Recall Hamlet’s feigned “madness”, Lear’s Fool who speaks the truth, Edgar as “poor Tom” – not to mention, too, such themes as disguise, mistaken identity, twins and the sequence of bastard characters. A significant number of underscored verses in this Bible relate to the canon itself and its relationship to the inner life of Edward de Vere.
We encounter more controversial areas with Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom (2010). Charles Beauclerk, concentrating on the Bard’s relationship to Elizabeth, explores further both the mythology and the scandalising circumstances that led to the increasingly urgent question of the succession. It is certainly possible that Elizabeth (1533–1603) – the “Virgin Queen” of accepted myth, married to her subjects, was the mother of several children – one author argues for ten pregnancies. [16] There were strange illnesses and confinements; in a police state you keep quiet about certain secrets. But, there again, people also wanted to believe the national myth. There is the portrait, too, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (c. 1594) in Hampton Court, Greater London, of a pregnant lady, originally identified as Queen Elizabeth; one could add that the later van der Werff portrait in Dublin, Ireland, depicts Elizabeth with three children. [17] After a childhood with foster parents, it is claimed they turn up with the “royal wards” living in Cecil House on the Strand, near London’s River Thames – William Cecil, made Lord Burghley in 1571, was to become de Vere’s father-in-law. De Vere was the first, Wriothesley the last royal ward. There they received probably the best education in the land, with access to remarkable libraries.
Beauclerk follows up the suggestion that royal incest was revived by the succession-obsessed and sex-obsessed Henry VIII, father of Elizabeth. She herself, it seems, inherited his appetites. This brilliant Princess translated (1544) Queen Margaret of Navarre’s The Mirror of the Sinful Soul [18] – a religious text with ambiguous innuendos.
O my sauioure, through faith I am planted, and ioyned with the. O what vnion is thys syth (through faith) I am sure of the, and now I maye call the: sonne, father, spowse, and brother, Father, brother, sonne, husband….
What prompted the interest of the precocious 11-year-old Princess Elizabeth? In our democratic age we favour genetic common sense, and – relatively recently in fact – we respect the claims of romantic love. But for a powerful hereditary aristocracy, a “good family name” and arranged marriages were the norm. “Keeping it in the family” with illicit unions of mythical and historical precedent even achieved a sacred nimbus. Royal blood was sacred; it was to be kept “pure”. In tracing Elizabeth’s inner torment with historical and sympathetic psychological insight, Beauclerk offers reasons why she persisted in not naming a successor and thus snuffed out the Tudor dynasty. “Her resolution not to marry and not to share her throne was part of this unyielding determination to create an image for herself that transcended her origins” (Beauclerk. 35). With regard to the canon, nobody can deny that the incest theme, overt in Pericles, is not far beneath the text in Hamlet, Lear and other plays. [19] The protagonists, at least everyone agrees, are very troubled characters indeed.
It should not be overlooked that James Joyce saw the connections between text and author are indissoluble. In his epic, modernist novel in the ironic mode Ulysses (serialised 1918-20, pub. complete in Paris 1922), Joyce stages a virtuoso discussion in the National Library (section: Scylla and Charybdis) where many themes so far mentioned appear, and others still to be mentioned. In his helpful notes, Declan Kiberd [20] writes: “The time is 2 p.m.; the organ, brain, the art, literature, the symbols, Hamlet and Shakespeare; and the Linati schema renders the sense as ‘two-edged dilemma’.” The concept of fatherhood, and a critique on the idea of author is the focus. There is good evidence that Stratfordian William Shakespeare acted the part of the ghost-father in Hamlet. “Stephen… seems to suggest that the artist suffers real pain in the act of creation and that art is a way of knowing and suffering a self, the better to transcend it” (Kiberd in Joyce. 1014). Joyce needed to re-express and transmute the repeated claims in Homer’s Odyssey that Odysseus was “the most unfortunate of men”. We misread Ulysses if we do not respond to the pain that surrounds Bloom; we misread Hamlet if we are not genuinely interested in “Wm Shakespeare” and Edward de Vere.
Emerging from our review of recent research it is a strident appeal that Joyce, Beauclerk, Michell and others focus their particular attention on Hamlet and the authorship question. “Oxford makes a convincing Hamlet – or vice versa”, concludes John Michell. [21] If Hamlet is largely a self-portrait of its creator and the play of that name depicts his situation, and if moreover he even reappears behind leading protagonists in later plays, then in the canon we are given clues to the inner turmoil of the world’s most admired playwright – and the most discussed play in the world. Through art, though “made tongue-tied by authority” (Sonnet 66), this hidden writer found a way not only to survive, but also to surmount his seemingly impossible life-situation. This fact, sympathetically followed by Beauclerk, could increase our admiration for the Bard’s – and his latest biographer’s – achievement. How otherwise do we imagine the great tragedies – indeed, the comedies too, with their subtle topical satire [22] – and the late works could otherwise have been written, but from inner experience and supreme creative effort, using the theatre as a mirror of his world? Who would not claim that the “real” characters Polonius and Claudius play a false role, whereas the “fictional” play-within-the-play “The Murder of Gonzago”, represents reality?
Keats wrote (letter 123, Feb. 1819), that “A Man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory—and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life—a life like the scriptures, figurative […]. Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it”. What Keats divined has now been substantiated through cumulative research which continues to point in the same direction.
The Shadow: search for identity
If the “Shadow” of Shakespeare has emerged from a concrete historical figure whose strongest self-expression is Hamlet, then it is time to address Steiner, who takes up the theme of the search for identity at the deepest level in the introductory lecture of his course on Mark’s gospel (1912). [23] His remarks on Hamlet, seen in the light of recent research, throw a bright light on the authorship question. The lecturer sketches the East-West situation, mentioning the ancient spirituality of the East, but also five writers who profoundly influenced Western culture – David, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. Steiner emphasises that the five mentioned writers present a truer picture of events than outer historical accounts alone can. In this context, the lecturer goes on to sketch the profound effect of the Mystery of Golgotha, the death and resurrection of Christ, on souls who incarnated before and who reappeared, inwardly changed, after that Event. The concept of metamorphosis applied to human life had already been argued (1904). [24] As practical examples, Steiner takes two great souls, Empedocles and Hector of Troy, and their subsequent incarnations in the West.
Hector grew out of Troy. “He clung in the ancient way to his home city of Troy… a towering figure, a man of all-embracing humanity.” Steiner reveals: “The real figure underlying Hamlet, as presented by Shakespeare, is Hector. The same soul that lived in Hamlet lived in Hector.” The real Hamlet lived as a Danish prince “at one time”. But, the eleventh-century account by Saxo Grammaticus (d. c. 1204) of a Danish prince Amleth, providing the basis for the earthly story, disappears from view. For we discover, the playwright fashions the account to end differently from what the chronicles relate. [25] This fact is crucial. At the end of his play the stage is strewn with corpses – the military takes over. The result of systematic revenge, the playwright shows, leads to racial suicide. With Shakespeare’s next play, Measure for Measure, the theme of self-knowledge and forgiveness brings a new turn to a potentially tragic situation, traced by John Vyvyan. [26] Shakespeare’s characters begin to learn of the change at the heart of earth-evolution. This is not what we learn from the story of Amleth who obtains his revenge.
The five personalities whom Steiner mentions as moulding culture are literary artists, that is, creators of stories, of myth, that which expresses lasting value and suggests polysemous meaning. The influence of their creations supersedes the limitations of their age, which leaves behind some issues. For example, David, according to scholars, did not actually pen all the Psalms. King David gave his name to a genre. The Psalms, among humankind’s first lyrics, are also prayers; taken by Richard Meux Benson as a whole and read on the level of myth, the Psalter constitutes “a continuous epic of Messiah’s conflict with evil”. [27] Again, is Homer an individual, or a figure who unites folk-tradition? Here scholars today prefer the former view, on literary grounds. And, of course, Shakespeare is gaining interest today precisely in this connection of “who held the pen?” In the lecture under consideration, Steiner himself suggests that centuries hence the existence of Goethe will be contested. Little of him will be known – this, he even adds, will be “a good thing!” Not his entanglements, then, but Goethe’s poetical creation of Faust, the searcher for truth, is the important concern for posterity. On the other hand who would want to separate Faust entirely from Goethe’s knowledge of Cornelius Agrippa? And in Milton Blake portrays both the historical figure struggling with his family and Blake struggling with Milton’s Shadow – the world’s consciousness of Paradise Lost.
To be clear about this, contemporary research unavoidably points to the historical figure, Edward de Vere, as author, while at the same time there is what could be called a meta-historical figure lying behind and informing the Shadow Hamlet. Empedocles “stands behind” Faust. Hector and Empedocles represent “a conclusion”; in their subsequent lives “great souls appear small”. In bypassing William Shakespeare, about whose life little substantial is really known, is Steiner’s purpose necessarily concealed? In 1912 the authorship question only occupied the attention of an “eccentric fringe”. Instead, Steiner reveals “the real figure underlying Hamlet, as presented by Shakespeare, is Hector”.
Just as our understanding of the author is rooted in the Elizabethan court, so an approach to Hector will be occupied with the fall of Troy. Troy, says Steiner, [28] flourished in the age of instinctive clairvoyance (Cassandra predicts the death of Hector), ruled by a priestly hierarchy. Troy had to fall to the Greeks, for the new intellectual consciousness had to develop with the spread of Hellenism. But now, at “the tremendous transition” beginning at the end of the fifteenth century C.E., a new, or better said renewed consciousness starts to unfold. As the new self-awareness of the Renaissance led to new developments in artistic vision and creativity, it seems particularly relevant that Shakespeare’s contemporaries spoke of London as a “new Troy”, no doubt influenced by the myth-making magus John Dee (1527–1608/9) and others. Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas of the Trojan legend, for example, attended the Druid College near Totnes, Devon, before founding London, home of the later Globe Theatre. Art imitates life and life imitates art – fictional Leopold Bloom orders a glass of Burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich in Davy Byrne’s; visitors to the real Davy Byrne’s in Dublin on 16th June will be served the same in commemoration of Bloomsday.
Shakespeare devoted Troilus and Cressida – written about the same time as Hamlet – to the Trojan War. Troilus, it has been pointed out, is really the romantic side of Hector, who himself personifies Troy. Troilus-Hector is, as it were, one man (Hughes 200). Charles Williams points to the significance of this neglected play. [29] In Troilus’ crisis faced with Cressida’s philandering, the play pinpoints “the only interior crisis worth talking about”. Shakespearean crisis, he emphasises, includes but exceeds philandering: “Something cannot be. Only it is.” Experience of this magnitude, Williams observes, citing more tragic cases, is “the change with which Shakespeare’s genius was concerned”. It took the rest of the Bard’s career to work out. Ted Hughes [30] comments on the myth – Keats’ “allegory” – that enabled the author to carry it out. Venus and Adonis, combined with its secular reversal The Rape of Lucrece, together yield the tragic formula, the “mythic equation” in evidence from As You Like It onwards (first performed in 1598), right into the late plays with their eventual overcoming of tragedy. The mythic equation is no abstract theory; Ted Hughes recognised the solemn marriage of author and shadow, both of which have their pasts.
“The pen is mightier than the sword”
We turn now to a second of Steiner’s contributions. Speaking of the inspiration of the age and the importance of the first decade of the seventeenth century, Steiner (1917 and 1924) mentions four personalities – Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Jakob Boehme and Jakob Balde. They shared the same Rosicrucian inspiration, represented on earth by “an initiated personality”. The identity of that personality, that “lästige Patron—difficult/ annoying patron”, is contested; Friedrich Hiebel [31] suggests James I is meant, and Richard Ramsbotham [32] argues similarly. Steiner speaks of a dual stream flowing from Britain. Bacon activated an empirical, materialistic natural science. This was mitigated by another stream that, Steiner emphasises, is crucial, “something which [the British, the Anglo-Saxon people] must not lose if they are not to fall utterly into materialism”. [33] This other stream, working against the grip of commercialism and materialism, derives from the “inoculations” initiated by James I.
The Bard managed to transform his conceivable initial, “official” task of justifying the Tudor monarchy. The playwright who intensely pursued and portrayed the painful pathway of self-knowledge – which, as we know, is the only real knowledge – was active mainly during Elizabeth’s reign. His offerings were also bound up with his relationship to her. Elizabeth herself, claims Charles Williams in his perceptive biography of James I, [34] “the spiritual godmother of James, … knew if that spiritual kinship held that he must inevitably win, and she must inevitably lose, the Crown that was still hers. He was fourteen and she was forty-seven…” in 1580. As soon as he began his reign in England, King James I, taking over de Vere’s troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and renaming them (May 1603) the King’s Men, did his best to promote Shakespearean productions. Furthermore, the second “good” Quarto of Hamlet (1604-5) appeared under a printer’s Gemini-designed headpiece with the royal coat of arms in the centre (reproduced here); a festival of seven Shakespearean plays was given at court for the Christmas season of that year. Does this tribute to the deceased author mark the beginning, and part of the referred-to “inoculations”? – a good word, for the plays are written in the author’s heart’s blood. The canon, the product of creative myth, is surely a major transforming influence in society. But how did James, in a capacity beyond his ambiguous earthly personality, inspire the sacrifices of the Bard? Clearly, more is meant than that James’ Daemonologie (1597) provided some information for the witches in Macbeth. James qualifies as a main player in Shakespeare’s story. With the murder – during his infancy – of his father, and the disreputably romantic escapades of his mother, James even shows a striking kinship to Hamlet’s situation. Art imitates life?
The verb “inspire” used in an esoteric context would seem to indicate the spiritual, or mythical level. It took a poet to research this level in the Bard. Ted Hughes delves deeply into Jaques (= Shax-père), as “self-representative”, discussing how myth and reality intertwine all three of that name (a name not found in Shakespeare’s sources): Melancholy Jaques, Jaques de Boys and Jaques le Grand. [35] Few would disagree that As You Like It and All’s Well That Ends Well (1598/9) mark a distinct entry into a new world. If we sense from this date on a towering and informing human inspiration, were the seeds planted even earlier? Aside from the erudition of James (Jacob/Jaques) and his political, theological, poetic and dramatic works, his strong claim to the throne of England backed up by the Anglo-Scottish League (1586) that smoothed his way, at one level undoubtedly qualifies James as a real-life “usurping” or “rival brother” (genetically, on the Oxfordian claim, second cousin) with all the creative tension that inspires. The two-brothers motif is sometimes called the Gemini myth; there is also the profoundly relevant myth of the twins Jacob and Esau in the Hebrew Bible. [36] In All’s Well, a third and sacred Jaques contains both “brothers” of the same name. The two brothers, in fact, may be taken as a long-established and resonant symbol of a “real” author and his/her Shadow, both going forward, as Blake would say, “from eternity to eternity.”
It has been pointed out, that de Vere’s part as juror at the trial (1587) of James’s mother Mary Queen of Scots, must certainly have disturbed him. The implications for the succession and the stimulus the event gave the unacknowledged English prince may have led him to create a (likely) first version of the Scottish play. “In all the plays… Macbeth is the only hero to live the fully aware inner lives of both these opposed figures [the irrational brother and Adonis] simultaneously” (Hughes 247). This play is unique in marking the crucial turning-point in the central Shakespearean double-myth of Venus-Adonis/ Tarquin-Lucrece. Adonis is portrayed not only becoming the Boar but also knowing the fact – the Boar (his tusks are Macbeth’s daggers) who is nevertheless still divine. Hughes’s profound thinking gives the lie to the much-repeated assumption that the playwright responds to public events. The Bard’s self-knowledge sets him demonstrably streaks ahead of everyone else, not least on the subject of topical references. As regards Macbeth, Kenneth Muir (editor of the Arden Second Series edition, 1984) concedes [37] as much: “Equivocation therefore links up with one of the main themes of the play, and the equivocator would have earned his place in the porter scene if Father Garnet had never lived or become involved in the Gunpowder Plot” of 1605.
However valid my initial suggestions here might appear in order to come to grips with Steiner’s claim for the “significant mystery” of James’s inspiration, the subsequent value of literature in an imperialist, consumer society is certainly inestimable – or subversive, depending on one’s view. “Beneath the rule of men entirely great,/ The pen is mightier than the sword”, writes Edward Bulwer-Lytton. [38] This famous saying seems relevant. In early 1601, lines from the play Sir Thomas More were marked by a government censor for deletion, while executions for the Essex rebellion proceeded apace. “The Murder of Gonzago” was indeed effective.
Though he claimed the Shakespeare authorship question is not an issue, Northrop Frye – perhaps the most influential literary critic of the twentieth century – in his life’s work on the whole “order of words” (Coleridge’s phrase) has accounted for the origins of literature in myth, that is, stories about “what is”. Oxfordians claim the Bard both lived his myth and re-expressed it in the canon. He develops all four of Frye’s “modes”: comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony/satire. [39] Adonis-Oberon/Bottom-Hamlet-Troilus/Hector-Anthony and Venus-Titania-Gertrude-Cressida-Cleopatra are artistic creations based on a real-life relationship. The perspective of the poets – that the Bard’s life was “an allegory” (Keats), a unique relationship of Spectre and Shadow (Blake); that his imagination was drawn to solve the deepest tragic issues (Williams), through the interior demands incumbent on a working-out of the “mythic equation” (Hughes) – appear to me to provide clinching concepts to reconcile apparently exclusive views arising from biographical and historical knowledge. Oxfordians, for example, claim that references to contemporary events cease after 1604 (Anderson 360); those who claim to detect the influence of James I assume certain plays were written after James came to England in 1603. The Tempest, we know, was performed for the betrothal of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick, the Elector Palatine, 27th December 1612. This does not indicate it was written just prior to that occasion, though some scholars speculate without any evidence that the nuptial masque could have been added. The date of composition of The Tempest – the crucial case – is now shown to be on or before 1603. [40] Frances Yates writes on the early years of the seventeenth century as an attempted “Elizabethan revival” [41] (my emphasis) of ideals, mythology and philosophy. An in-depth scrutiny should clear up the riddles, especially once the union of myth and biography is recognised. Why else does As You Like It end with the empty cave? Why else indeed does Haydn accompany “Go forth and multiply” (The Creation) with a plangent cello?
Nevertheless, there is a problem with the Hector–Hamlet pairing. Homer certainly portrays Hector as Steiner reports. But Hamlet is much more than the dithering cynic seen by the literary critics of Steiner’s day, and even our day. “Shakespeare’s Hamlet” – Steiner’s phrase in the lecture of 1912 – succumbs to the temptations of his father’s impure ghost, demanding revenge. Hamlet’s human nobility has to be systematically destroyed (Vyvyan). This situation is transcended in the later plays. “Hamlet”, as the playwright’s persona, does develop his inherent humanity, eventually metamorphosing into the magus Prospero who forgives those who had usurped him of his dukedom. Similarly we find Stephen Dedalus desperate to leave Ireland at the close of Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, returning in Ulysses to proclaim as the last word of the “Telemachus” section, “Usurper!”, foreshadowing the Hamlet-motif. In this instance we know that the author has embedded some of his deepest feelings in the work. Should we not know equally about Shakespeare?
Sovereignty
The present article is one reader’s response to a unique scenario. Broadly speaking, early in life I met a rather sentimental view of a chameleon, instinctive playwright, but now I have been shown the disaffected pariah, bastard, prodigy and nameless man who suffered an acute identity crisis – all for love. It cannot be gainsaid that the search for the human being behind the literary creations comes into sharp focus when, in the case of Hamlet, creation and creator unite. The literary creation Hamlet reveals the author and his world, the Elizabethan court. If Beauclerk and the Oxfordians are right, the author himself, a cultural leader of our age, is difficult to identify as a country person. Shakespearean Stratford is largely an eighteenth-century invention of playwright and actor David Garrick and others, building up the rustic image the politicians wanted posterity to believe.
If this is so, the Bard would be the brilliant, unpredictable, troubled aristocrat at the heart of government, torn between feudal lord and bohemian. As an enthusiastic and, like his “rival brother” James I, no doubt also a “difficult/ annoying patron” of the re-born theatre, who kept at least one troupe of actors throughout his adult life, his theatrical career provided a mirror “to catch the conscience” of the Queen. [42] At the same time The Lord Chamberlain’s/ King’s Men perform in the public theatres. The Bard educates posterity, basically by founding the artistic use of the English language. Thirty-five of the thirty-six plays (the exception is Merry Wives) in the First Folio concern royalty and ducal personalities, focussing on their interior troubles and eventual transformation. In the playwright’s Hamlet – who himself wrote for and rehearsed a group of players, of which the leading actor demonstrated a speech from the fall of Troy, and who with his dying breath bids Horatio,
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story. (Hamlet V, ii)
– it is hard to disbelieve that we see portrayed the man who wrote Shakespeare.
In speaking to the eurythmists about the art of visible speech, [43] the first poet Steiner mentions is Shakespeare. He speaks of this poet as the chief wordsmith at a formative stage in the growth of the language. Max Müller (1861) claimed Shakespeare’s vocabulary was 15,000 words – later scholars claim up to 21,000 words –, about twice as much as Milton, who uses 8,000. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Shakespeare as using 3,200 words for the first time. That is, Shakespeare is sovereign of a much more extensive kingdom than that of the crowned monarch. If, then, Edward de Vere is the hidden author, he paid the personal price involved in having to renounce a royal destiny and indeed his very name as an author. The evidence is there in the Sonnets, the Bible markings and the relationship of the canon to the biography. In exchanging a temporal eminence, this poet “lived the life of allegory”, a “figurative” life for the sake of all users of the world’s most-used tongue – the English language. His influence reaches in translation even beyond this, of course. Inspired by his treacherous Venus, the Dark Lady, and his “rival brother” James, internalising all youthful military ambition, and – if my thesis is accepted – deeper still, changing a pre-Christian condition of soul by internalising and thus eventually surmounting all the thwarting circumstances of his life, the man who wrote Shakespeare became a spiritual world-sovereign whose reign has no foreseeable end. “In some way or other we in the English-speaking world have all become his subjects,” concludes Beauclerk (387).
Conclusion
If the historical records of the makings of our modern world have been manipulated, history needs re-writing, its implications for our age re-assessed. But this does not reduce art to biography and history. Do we really imagine the Shakespearean authorship question is superfluous, since we “have the plays”? Yet do we have them? For one lover of the Bard at least, the work of scholars to reveal the mythical and satirical inspirations of the flesh-and-blood author opens a deeper appreciation and renewed respect for that human being whose sacrifices led to sovereign art. Sitting at his feet, I learn even more about the creative process sustained against the heaviest odds. The Bard now emerges as probably the foremost subversive, dissident author – he is our contemporary.
In the present painful times, it is important to understand, to see through certain things while endeavouring to establish our own certainties and spiritual identity. Moreover, in the current squeeze on art that is forcing us all to be clear about our priorities and to commit ourselves, it is timely to realise to what good company all striving artists may be privileged to claim they belong. Beyond stating my belief that nobody saw earlier or further on the authorship question than Steiner, and who consequently provides the cornerstone, I might even learn to be grateful to the Cecils – the Machiavellian villains of the piece – for being the sand in the oyster. “To understand everything,” claims novelist George Eliot, “would be to pardon everything.” Despite disagreement concerning some details in the sketch outlined here, what essential facts are now missing from the story?
_______________________________________________________________________________
For this article, I acknowledge help from my friends, especially Neil Franklin, Ph.D., who made several valuable additions and suggestions. The weaknesses are all mine—A.S.
Headpiece: Printer’s headpiece appearing on the opening page of the “good” Quarto of Hamlet (1604-5) with the centrally inserted royal coat of arms.
[1] Coleridge assumed the conventional authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, while rejecting the facts of his life and character: “Ask your own hearts, – ask your own common sense – to conceive the possibility of this man… being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular, genius of our daily criticism! What! are we to have miracles in sport? – Or, I speak reverently, does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?”
S.T. Coleridge. “Shakespeare’s Judgement equal to his Genius”. Lectures, 1818, in
Coleridge: Poems and Prose. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth. 1957. 240; also
“Old” Everyman, Coleridge’s Essays & Lectures on Shakespeare. London: Dent/ New York: Dutton. ND. 47.
[2] A.C. Bradley. Shakespearean Tragedy. London: Macmillan. 1904.
[3] Online: www.archive.org/details/shakespeareident00looniala. Latest edition: Ruth Loyd Miller, ed. & J. Thomas Looney. “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. 2 vols., 3rd ed. Port Washington, NY/London: Kennikat, 1975.
[4] The present article explores aspects first broached in: Alan Stott. “Shakespeare: Who held the pen?” in Shakespeare Matters, Summer 2007, journal of The Shakespeare Fellowship; also Newsletter of the Section for the Arts of Eurythmy, Speech and Music, No. 47, Dornach. Michaelmas 2007. Internet access via the Fellowship or the Goetheanum websites, or direct www.alansnotes.co.uk (articles also in German).
[5] Rudolf Steiner. The Karma of Untruthfulness. Vol. 2. Lecture Dornach, 15 Jan. 1917. GA 174. London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1992. 131. Again in: Rudolf Steiner. Karmic Relationships. Vol. 2. Lecture Dornach, 12 April 1924. GA 236. Internet access, German originals – http://fvn-rs.net/index. Interestingly, the name “Shakespeare” occurs in the very first paragraph of Charles Williams’ biography Bacon. London: Arthur Barker/New York: Harper & Bros. 1933: “The mortal greatness of Francis lacked but one thing – he was not Shakespeare; his judgement lacked but one intelligence – he would not have supposed the subordination was on his side” (1). “[T]he real difference is metaphysical; it is between a man possessed of a particular vision of the universe and a man possessed of no vision but of the universe. It would be almost easier to believe that Bacon wrote Milton; the serious mind aspiring to schematize the universe is in both” (105; see also 310).
[6] Frances A. Yates. Shakespeare’s Last Plays. London: Routledge. 1975. 131. Am. title: Majesty and Magic in Shakespeare’s Last Plays. Germ. tr. Shakespeares letzte Spiele. 1975. Fr. tr. Les dernières pièces de Shakespeare. Belin 2000. Sp. tr. Las últimas obras de Shakespeare. Fondo de Cultura Económica. 2001.
[7] Charles Beauclerk. Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom: The true history of Shakespeare and Elizabeth. New York: Grove Press. 2010.
[8] J. Duncan M. Derrett. Jesus’s Audience. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. 1973. 26.
[9] Mark Anderson. Shakespeare by Another Name. The life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man who was Shakespeare. New York: Gotham Books. 2005.
[10] Eric Sams. The Real Shakespeare: Reviving the early years, 1564-1594. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. 1995. A thorough and original attempt to map the first 30 years from the Stratfordian view.
[11] Alastair Fowler. Triumphal forms: Structural patterns in Elizabethan poetry. Oxford: OUP. 1970. 183-197.
[12] Hank Whittemore. The Monument. Marshfield Hills, Massachusetts. Meadow Geese Press. 2008. Websites: http://shakespearesmonument.com/ http://shakespearestreason.com/ etc.
[13] C.S. Lewis. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama. Oxford: OUP. Oxford. 1954. 505.
[14] “The suggestion that Shakespeare here alludes to a visit to the spa at Bath may be quietly ignored,” claims John Kerrigan (Shakespeare: Sonnets & A Lover’s Complaint, New Penguin Edition. 1986. 387). Why should rational humans choose to imitate the ostrich here? If the truth is to make us free, we need to face it. No doubt “the sonnets may be deft, but they are sordid too” (62). No doubt “sweating tubs (= baths) were used to cure the pox” in Jacobean London. A preoccupation with the hot water-tap does not preclude investigating the entire heating system – that is, the love-story of a royal couple, one party of which is the Bard himself – including the fact that a conception took place in the city of Bath, revealed in Hank Whittemore’s definitive edition of the sonnets (see endnote 11).
[15] Roger A. Stritmatter. The Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s Geneva Bible: Providential discovery, literary reasoning, and historical consequence. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst. Feb. 2001. Northampton, MA 01060. Oxenford Press. Obtainable through the Shakespeare Fellowship website, and online: http://shake-speares-bible.com/dissertation/
[16] Elizabeth’s offspring according to Roberta Ballantine. Marlowe Up Close. Bloomington: Xlibris. 2007:
- 1549 twins: Edward de Vere & Edward Manners, by Admiral Tom Seymour.
- 1554 Philip Sidney, by Prince Philip of Spain.
- 1556 twins: Mary de Vere & Philip Howard, by Prince Philip again.
- 1558 Ferdinando Stanley, by Philip now King of Spain.
- 1561 Francis Bacon, by Francis Walsingham.
- 1561 Mary Sidney Herbert, by Robert Dudley (Elizabeth had secretly married him in 1560).
- 1562 Robert Cecil, by Robert Dudley.
- 1563 Robert Sidney, by Robert Dudley.
- 1566 Robert Devereux, by Dudley, now Earl of Leiceister.
- 1573 Henry Wriothesley, by Edward de Vere.
There appears to be good documentary evidence for the changes in Elizabeth’s dress sizes during the pregnancies: some of the original notes of measurements still exist.
[17] The portrait by Gheeraerts (c. 1592) is reproduced in Beauclerk (see endnote 7). An engraving (c. 1675–1700) by Cornelius Vermeulen of the Adriaen van der Werff (1659–1722) portrait in Trinity College, Dublin, is reproduced (opp. p. 129) & discussed in Jean Overton Fuller. Sir Francis Bacon: a biography. George Mann of Maidstone. 1994. 349-51. One child with a cloak buckled like a Roman Imperator holds a martyr’s palm (Essex?); the other holds a viol/ rudder with helm (secret musician/ poet holding the helm of the/ a kingdom: Oxford?) and sprigs of corn (resurrection symbol). A Theban sphinx (echoes of Oedipus?) is to be seen under the hand of the third child in the background (Arthur Dudley?). Image (prints available) on National Portrait Gallery website: http://npg.org.uk/
[18] Queen Margaret of Navarre [tr. Princess Elizabeth Tudor]. The Mirror of the Sinful Soul. London: Asher & Co. 1897. Facsimile reprint ed. Kessinger 2007. 83. Also, in modern letterpress: Elizabeth 1: Translations, 1544-1589, ed. Janet Müller & Joshua Scodel. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. 2009. 95.
[19] On King Lear, see, e.g., Shellee Hendricks “The Curiosity of Nations: King Lear and the Incest Prohibition”. Master’s thesis. McGill Univ. Montreal 1999. <digitool.library.mcgill.ca:8881/dtl_publish/5/30173.html>
[20] James Joyce. Ulysses. Intro. & notes by Declan Kiberd. Bodley Head 1992/ Penguin Bks 2000.
[21] John Michell. Who Wrote Shakespeare? London & New York: Thames & Hudson. 1996. 169. Michell usefully summarises the candidates for authorship. He also recounts the discovery of Mr W. Hall of Hackney as “Mr W. H.”, 179-80. After a lecture (2004), Michell (1933–2009) said to the present writer that the evidence linking de Vere and the Sonnets fits “hand in glove”. This was said before Whittemore’s publication appeared in 2008 (see endnote 11 above).
[22] Beauclerk offers some revealing interpretations, e.g., of the early play A Midsummer-Night’s Dream (200-207). We know MND was first performed for the marriage of de Vere’s daughter Elizabeth to the Earl of Derby, prob. on Jan 26 1595, also prob. performed for the second marriage of Southampton’s foster-mother Mary Browne Wriothesley to Sir Thomas Heneage, May 2, 1595, then finally revised and performed for the wedding of Southampton (referred to as a “little changeling boy” and also represented by Demetrius) to Elizabeth Vernon 1598. The historical personalities are all represented in the play (see also Anderson 287-88; endnote 8 above).
[23] Rudolf Steiner. The Gospel of St Mark. Lecture I, Basel 15 Sept. 1912. GA 139. New York: Anthroposophic Press/ London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1986. Internet access: www.rsarchive.org (website for texts in Germ., see endnote 5 above).
[24] Rudolf Steiner. Theosophy. Chapter 2. GA 9. Germ. orig. ed. 1904. Internet access: www.sacred-texts.com/eso/theo/index.htm, or http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA009/English/AP1971/GA009_index.html
[25] Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet. Translation, history and commentary by William F. Hansen. Lincoln & London: Univ. of Nebraska Press. 1983. Saxo wrote the oldest extant literary account based on oral tradition of unknown age. Hanson states (2): “We have no reason to believe that Amleth is a historical character or that any of the events that Saxo relates… even happened, either in the pre-Christian period or later. At least there is no evidence to support a belief that Amleth has existed anywhere other than in story.”
[26] John Vyvyan. The Shakespearean Ethic. London: Chatto & Windus. 1959. A much valued study.
[27] Richard Meux Benson. The War-Songs of the Prince of Peace. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1901. This tr. and commentary occupies a class of its own.
[28] Rudolf Steiner. Lecture Berlin, 28 October 1904.
[29] Charles Williams. The English Poetic Mind (1932). Reissued New York: Russell & Russell. 1963. 59.
[30] Ted Hughes. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. London: Faber & Faber. 1992.
[31] Friedrich Hiebel. Das Drama des Dramas. Dornach 1984. 56-61.
[32] Richard Ramsbotham. Who wrote Bacon? London: Temple Lodge. 2004. The author – to whom I am personally indebted for several insights – mentions my earlier article in a footnote to his Afterword to the Germ. tr. (Jakob I. Basel: Perseus Verlag. 2008). Unfortunately, his brief reply to Oxfordian contentions betrays the customary misinformation. Like many people, Mr Ramsbotham scorns the idea of an educated nobleman replacing the inspired country person of the Stratfordian view. A country-person, though, could be at odds in the list: King David, Homer, Dante, Goethe…. However that is, the Bard celebrates the spiritual reality that we are all born in the purple. Self-knowledge is sovereign – as Ted Hughes explains, Macbeth eventually becomes Prospero. If Philipp. 2:7-11 presents the whole human blueprint, then transformation doesn’t drop out of the sky for anyone. Ramsbotham certainly recognises transforming power in the Bard (“Shakespeare and World Destiny”. The Golden Blade 49. Floris Books: Edinburgh 1997. 102-20), yet he apparently fails to appreciate the Bard’s real-life sacrifices as revealed by recent Oxfordian research. In my opinion, he consequently misapplies the important insights of conspiracy theory concerning a Western ruling élite. My text submits that the onus is on those who hold what is called the conventional or orthodox view, despite its 400-years standing, to answer the informed contention that the orthodox view originated in a political conspiracy.
[33] Rudolf Steiner. The Karma of Untruthfulness. Vol. 2. GA 174. London: Rudolf Steiner Press. 1992. 131.
[34] Charles Williams. James I. London: Arthur Barker. 1934. Reprinted: Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers. 2008. 38.
[35] Ted Hughes 1992. 101-116, also note 431f. Jaques le Grand is only mentioned by name (As You Like It. III. iv. 4 and III. v. 35, also 95 “great Saint Jaques”). Through the theme of pilgrimage, Hughes also connects to St Jaques le Grand, alias St Iago of Compostella, Spain. The play, again, is partly set in Florence, near which is situated the church of San Giacorno d’Altopasis. That there is a church dedicated to St James the Great at Snitterfield near Stratford (Jonathan Bate, Soul of the Age. Penguin 2008. 39) relates neither to this play, nor to the canon. A good read, Bate’s informative book, however, with its anti-Oxfordian polemic and special pleading for William, nowhere affects the arguments in my text.
[36] Stephen Prickett, The Origins of Narrative. Cambridge: CUP. 1996, explores appropriation as fundamental to all development in literacy. Owen Barfield, “Israel and the Michael Impulse”, Anthroposophical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1956, 2–9 (rsh-library@anth.org.uk), suggests the implied answer to Jacob’s question put to the wrestling angel regarding the latter’s name (Genesis 32:29) points to the very origin of literacy, i.e., the giving of the divine-human alphabet.
[37] Kenneth Muir, ed. Macbeth. The Arden Shakespeare Second Series. London & New York: Routledge. 1984. xxviii. The Jesuit leader Henry Garnet is believed to have written “A Treatise of Equivocation” c. 1595. Commentators, attempting to establish a late date for the Scottish play’s composition, also take the sole use in the canon of the word “combustion” (II, iii, 57) to allude to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Muir notes the word meant “tumult, confusion, especially of a political kind” (Arden Ed. 1951, corr. 1972. 62), cf. “combustion in the state” Hen. VIII, V, iv.
[38] Cardinal Richelieu in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play “Richelieu; or the Conspiracy” (1839); perhaps the author had Heb. 4:12 in mind.
[39] Northrop Frye. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton Univ. Press 1957. Penguin Books 1990. Summarised: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism. Germ. tr. Analyse der Literaturkritik. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. 1964.
[40] Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky. A Moveable Feast: Sources, Chronology and Design of Shakespeare’s Tempest (forthcoming). See article: http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/tempest/kositsky-stritmatter%20Tempest%20Table.htm.
See also http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com
On the general question of dating:
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/moore_datesofplays.html
[41] Frances A. Yates. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London: Routledge. 1972. Ark edition 1986. Routledge Classics 2001. Germ. tr.: Aufklärung in Zeichen des Rosenkreutzes. 1997. See also endnote 6 above.
[42] Every other playwright in the police state of Elizabethan England was at some time reprimanded or imprisoned for running foul of the censor – how did “Shakespeare” manage to escape this fate? The Oxfordian position provides a satisfactory answer to this question.
[43] Rudolf Steiner. Eurythmy as Visible Speech. Tr. Alan Stott. Weobley: Anastasi. 2005. Lecture, Dornach 24 June 1924. GA 279. ET. 33. Germ. ed. 50.