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Shakespeare and Oxford: 25 Curious Connections

Shakespeare and Oxford
25 Curious Connections

Edward De Vere,
17th Earl of Oxford

William Shakespeare,
the Writer
VERSION 5.0

The Crime and the Suspects
The Crime

Edward De Vere
17th Earl of Oxford

Shakespeare
the Writer

William
of Stratford

The First Step
1. What do Stratfordian Scholars say about the writer Shakespeare?
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets

Language &
Accolades

The
Shakespeare
Dedicatees

The Second Step
2. How does William of Stratford connect to these people and things?
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets

Language &
Accolades

The
Shakespeare
Dedicatees

The Third Step
3. What connections exist between Oxford and these people and things?
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical

Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets

Language &
Accolades

The
Shakespeare
Dedicatees

Characters in Hamlet

Characters in
Hamlet

Topical Characters
(1937) Stratfordian John Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare:
“Elizabethan drama was a social institution which performed many
functions…. Among other things it was, like the modern newspaper, at once
the focus and the purveyor of the London gossip of the day. In a word it was
topical.” (11)

Topical Characters
(1984) Annabel Patterson in Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions
of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England:
"…poetry, or literature, has had from antiquity a unique role to play in
mediating to the magistrates the thoughts of the governed, and that it exists,
or ought to, in a privileged position of compromise." (13)
"In the plays of Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger, in Shakespeare's King
Lear, in a court masque by Thomas Carew, in the sermons of John Donne,
there is evidence, if we look carefully, of a highly sophisticated system of
oblique communication, of unwritten rules whereby writers could
communicate with readers or audiences (among whom were the very same
authorities who were responsible for state censorship) without producing a
direct confrontation.… One of the least oblique critics of Jacobean policy,

the pamphleteer Thomas Scott, remarked in the significantly entitled Vox
Regis that "sometimes Kings are content in Playes and Maskes to be
admonished of divers things." (45)

Topical Characters
(1988) Leah S. Marcus in Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Readings and Its
Discontents.
"Given the feckless, highly ingenious, almost ungovernable gusto with which
contemporaries found parallels between stage action and contemporary
events, there are few things that plays could be relied upon not to mean. In
early Tudor times, plays were openly used both for official propaganda and
for political agitation….During the 1560s Elizabeth herself regularly
interpreted comedies presented at court as offering advice about the
succession: she was to follow the "woman's part," a part she professed to
dislike, and marry as the heroine inevitably did at the end. Given her ability
to find ‘Abstracts of the time’ even in seemingly neutral materials. No
comedy performed before her was safe from topical interpretation. Negative
examples are the most prominent in the surviving records if only because
censorship caused them to receive special scrutiny. So, in 1601, a sudden
rash of performances of Shakespeare's Richard II was taken by Elizabeth

and her chief ministers (and not without reason) as propaganda for the
Essex rebellion." (27)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1869) Stratfordian George Russell French in
Shakspeareana Genealogica:
“The next important personages in the play are the
‘Lord Chamberlain,’ POLONIUS; his son,
LAERTES; and daughter, OPHELIA; and these are
supposed to stand for Queen Elizabeth's celebrated
Lord High Treasurer, Sir WILLIAM CECIL, Lord
Burleigh; his second son, ROBERT CECIL; and his
daughter, ANNE CECIL.” (301)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1920) Stratfordian Lilian Winstanley in Hamlet and the Scottish
Succession:
“Polonius, throughout the play, stands isolated as the one person who does

really enjoy the royal confidence; he is an old man, and no other councillor
of equal rank anywhere appears. This corresponds almost precisely with the
position held by Burleigh….Burleigh’s eldest son – Thomas Cecil – was a
youth of very wayward life; his licentiousness and irregularity occasioned his
father great distress and, during his residence in Paris, his father wrote
letters to him full of wise maxims for his guidance; he also instructed friends
to watch over him, and bring him reports of his son’s behaviour. So Polonius
has a son – Laertes – whom he suspects of irregular life; Polonius provides
that his son, when he goes to Paris, shall be carefully watched, and that
reports on his behaviour shall be prepared by Reynaldo.” (114-116)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1930) Stratfordian E. K. Chambers in William Shakespeare:
It has often been thought that Polonius may glance at Lord Burghley, who
wrote Certain Preceptes, or Directions for the use of his son Robert Cecil.
These were printed (1618) 'from a more perfect copie, than ordinarily those
pocket manuscripts goe warranted by'. Conceivably Shakespeare knew a
pocket manuscript, but Laertes is less like Robert Cecil than Burghley's
elder son Thomas. (Vol. I, 418)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1937) Stratfordian J. Dover Wilson in The Essential Shakespeare:
“It is certain then that Shakespeare did not deliberately avoid topical
allusion, as those who worship the Olympian claim. And if so, may we not
suspect allusion and reference in many passages where it has hitherto not
been detected? We not only may but should; for once again, the essential
Shakespeare will be altogether misconceived if we think of him as one who
stood apart from the life of his time.” (12)
“Polonius is almost without doubt intended as a caricature of Burleigh….”
(104)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1955) Stratfordian Conyers Read in Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen
Elizabeth:
“’If you offend in forgetting God by leaving your ordinary prayers or such
like, if you offend in any surfeiting of eating or drinking too much, if you
offend in other ways, by attending and minding any lewd or filthy tales or

enticements of lightness or wantonness of body, you must at evening bring
both your thoughts and deeds as you put off your garments to lay down, and
cast away those and all such like that by the devil are devised to overwhelm
your soul.…’
“This is the sort of sermon which William Cecil liked to preach to young
men. He preached many such in the course of his life. They reveal the
strong Puritan strain in him. In this particular case we get some inkling of
those weaknesses in young Thomas about which his father was most
concerned. Obviously William Cecil had a very inadequate understanding of
the psychology of adolescence. Even Polonius was never quite so tedious
and pedantic as this.” (214)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1958) Stratfordian Joel Hurstfield in The Queen’s Wards, on Burghley’s
wordiness:
“It is the authentic voice of Polonius.”
(1964) Joel Hurstfield in Shakespeare's World (written with James
Sutherland):
"The governing classes were both paternalistic and patronizing; and

nowhere is this attitude better displayed than in the advice which that
archetype of elder statesmen William Cecil, Lord Burghley – Shakespeare's
Polonius – prepared for his son." (35)

Connection One
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, as Polonius
(1963) Stratfordian A.L. Rowse in William Shakespeare: A Biography:
“Nor do I think we need hesitate to see reflections of old Lord Burghley in
old Polonius – not only in the fact that their positions were the same in the
state, the leading minister in close proximity to the sovereign, in ancient
smug security.… there are certain specific references reflecting Burghley’s
known characteristics.”
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare:
“…many scholars have argued that that Burghley is being satirized as
Polonius in Hamlet.... Polonius’ famous advice to Laertes (I, iii, 58-80) is
strikingly similar to Burghley’s precepts in this treatise. Hamlet’s reference to
Polonius as a ‘fishmonger’ may also be an allusion to Burghley’s attempt as
treasurer to stimulate the fish trade.” (90)

Connection One

Shakespeare
the writer

William Cecil,
Lord Burghley
as Polonius

Connection Two
Anne Cecil as Ophelia

Connection Two
Anne Cecil as Ophelia
(1869) Stratfordian George French in
Shakspeareana Genealogica:
“The next important personages in the play are
the ‘Lord Chamberlain,’ POLONIUS; his son,
LAERTES; and daughter, OPHELIA … his
daughter, ANNE CECIL.” (301)
“[M]arriage was proposed by their fathers to take
place between Philip Sidney and Anne Cecil, the
‘fair Ophelia’ of the play.” (302)

Connection Two
Anne Cecil as Ophelia
(1920) Stratfordian Lilian Winstanley in Hamlet and the Scottish
Succession:
“Intercepted letters and the employment of spies were, then, a quite
conspicuous and notorious part of Cecil’s statecraft, and they are certainly
made especially characteristic of Shakespeare’s Polonius. Polonius
intercepts the letters from Hamlet to his daughter; he appropriates Hamlet’s
most intimate correspondence, carries it to the king, and discusses it
without a moment’s shame or hesitation: he and the king play the eaves
dropper during Hamlet’s interview with Ophelia: he himself spies upon
Hamlet’s interview with his mother. It is impossible not to see that these
things are made both futile and hateful in Polonius, and they were precisely
the things that were detested in Cecil….” (122)

Connection Two
Anne Cecil as Ophelia
“Cecil, in fact, was always particularly careful not to let Elizabeth or anyone
else think that ambition for his daughter could tempt him into unwise political
plans. In exactly the same way we find Polonius guarding himself against
any suspicion that he may have encouraged Hamlet’s advances to Ophelia.
The king asks [Act II., ii.]: ‘How hath she received his love?’ and Polonius
enquires, ‘What do you think of me? ‘The king replies: ‘As of a man faithful
and honourable’; Polonius proceeds to explain that, such being the case, he
could not possibly have encouraged the love between Hamlet and his
daughter….” (124)

Connections One and Two

Shakespeare
the writer

William Cecil,
Lord Burghley
as Polonius

Anne Cecil
as Ophelia

Connections One and Two

?

William of
Stratford

William Cecil,
Lord Burghley
as Polonius

Anne Cecil
as Ophelia

Connections One and Two

William Cecil,
Lord Burghley
as Polonius

Anne Cecil
as Ophelia

Connection One
Connection to Oxford: The Earl of Oxford grew up in Lord
Burghley’s household as a ward of the Crown. Oxford and
Burghley were at odds until Burghley’s death.
In Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth Conyers Read
states: “Oxford… entered Burghley’s household as ward
in 1562.”
And those seeing Hamlet in Court would recognize
another connection: Lord Burghley’s Latin motto was
Cor unum, via una, – “One heart, one way.” Stratfordian
W. W. Greg states in The Editorial Problem in
Shakespeare: “In this text [Q1 of Hamlet] for some
obscure reason the names Corambis and Montano were
substituted for Polonius and Reynaldo.” The reason for
Corambis, however, is not obscure. Corambis, the
original name for Polonius, alludes to the Latin “Cor
Ambo” for “double-hearted” or “of two hearts,” a clear
shot at Cecil’s motto.

Connection Two
Connection to Oxford: Anne and Oxford grew up together
in Burghley’s household and were later unhappily
married.
The primary source for the Hamlet story is Saxo
Grammaticus’s Historiae Danicae. The text, referring to
the couple later represented as Hamlet and Ophelia,
states: “For both of them had been under the same
fostering in their childhood; and this early rearing in
common had brought Amleth and the girl into great
intimacy.”
This mirrors Anne and Oxford. Both were raised together
in their youth. Stratfordian Conyers Read in Lord
Burghley and Queen Elizabeth: “Oxford…entered
Burghley’s household as a ward in 1562, at the age of
twelve.” (125)

Connection Two
Lilian Winstanley says, “[There] is a further curious
parallel in the fact that when Cecil’s daughter married De
Vere, Earl of Oxford – the husband turned sulky,
separated himself from his wife, and declared that it was
Cecil’s fault for influencing his wife against him.”
She then quotes Hume’s The Great Lord Burghley:
“Oxford declined to meet his wife or to hold any
communication with her; Burghley reasoned,
remonstrated, and besought in vain. Oxford was
sulky and intractable. His wife, he said, had been
influenced by her parents against him and he would
have nothing more to do with her.”
Finally, Winstanley draws the parallel, “So, also, in the
drama we find Polonius interfering between his daughter
and her lover, we find his machinations so successful that
Hamlet turns sulky, and is alienated from Ophelia for
good.” (122-124)

Connections One and Two

Earl of Oxford
as Hamlet

William Cecil,
Lord Burghley
as Polonius

Anne Cecil
as Ophelia

Hamlet as Autobiography
(1911) Stratfordian Frank Harris in The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic
Life-Story:
“Even if it be admitted that Hamlet is the most complex and profound
character of Shakespeare’s creations, and therefore probably the character
in which Shakespeare revealed most of himself, the question of degree
remains to be determined.” (7)
(1950) Stratfordian Harold C. Goddard in The Meaning of Shakespeare:
“To nearly everyone both Hamlet himself and the play give the impression of
having some peculiarly intimate relation to their creator.” (332)

Hamlet as Autobiography
(1962) Hugh Trevor-Roper, “What’s in a Name?” in Réalités (Englishlanguage edition):
“Shakespeare wrote another play which, it is now widely agreed, is largely
autobiographical: that most bewildering, most fascinating of all his plays,
Hamlet. Hamlet, the over-sensitive man, whose chameleon sympathy with
all around him, whose capacity to enter into all men’s doubts and fears,
enabled him to mount a brilliant play but disabled him from imposing his
personality on events or leaving any personal trace in history – this is
Shakespeare himself.” (43)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

William had a son, Hamnet, named after his neighbor,
Hamnet Sadler. Some Stratfordians see Hamlet as a
memorial to that son.

Connection Three
The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet
Connection to Oxford: There are many striking parallels between Oxford
and Hamlet.
The several connections already discussed demand that we acknowledge
the parallels between Hamlet and Oxford:
• Both were noblemen and courtiers.
• Both had mothers who remarried after their father’s death.
• Both were spied upon by Polonius/Burghley.
• Both were patrons to players.
• Both were playwrights.

Connection Three
The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet
• Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) whose father was the immediate
counselor to the throne.
• Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) accused of infidelity.
• Both had a lover (Ophelia/Anne) who dies untimely.
• Both had been thought somewhat mad by others in Court.

Connection Three
The Earl of Oxford as Hamlet
If Polonius is Burghley, and there is compelling reason to think that people
at that time would have easily recognized him as such, then the further
parallels between Laertes and Ophelia and Burghley’s offspring cement the
identification, and compel us to look at who would then be Hamlet.
Despite attempts to identify Hamlet as Philip Sidney or Essex (neither
mistreated Anne nor had intimate relations with her), Oxford is clearly the
reasonable, indeed the natural, candidate.
Once the number of parallels between Hamlet and Oxford are identified –
some highly unusual – then the identification is compelling. Only those who
have professional or private concerns with that identification have reason to
argue against it.

Idiosyncratic Topical Events

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Connection Four
Bed Trick Episode
In All’s Well That Ends Well Bertram arrives at Diana’s bed, not knowing that
he is in reality sleeping with Helena.
Connection to Oxford:
G.K. Hunter, ed. of the Arden All’s Well That Ends Well :
“Fripp [in Shakespeare Man and Artist (1938) II, 601] gives a reference to
Osborne’s Memoires and here we seem to find a roughly contemporary
attitude to the same trick in real life. Osborne writes of
…the last great Earle of Oxford, whose Lady was bought to his bed
under the notion of his Mistris, and from such a virtuous deceit she
[sc. Pembroke’s wife] is said to proceed
(1658 ed., p. 79)
This is a close parallel from the court-life of Shakespeare’s time, and it
shows only moral admiration for the trick.” (xliv)

Connection Five
Attacked by Pirates while Bound for England
Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii, 14-18
Hor. (reads the letter) … Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very
warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we
put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them.
Connection to Oxford:
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth:
“[Oxford] started home, apparently in a fine rage, which was not alleviated
by the fact that his ship was intercepted by pirates and he was stripped to
his shirt.” (133)

Connection Six
Gad’s Hill Episode
Henry IV, Part 1, Act I, Scene 2, 120-138:
Poins. But my lads, my lads, tomorrow morning, by four o’clock early at
Gad’s Hill! There are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and
traders riding to London with fat purses. I have vizards for you all; you have
horses for yourselves; Gadshill lies tonight in Rochester; I have bespoke
supper tomorrow night in Eastcheap: we may do it as secure as sleep. If
you will go, I will stuff your purses full of crowns; if you will not, tarry At home
and be hanged.
Henry IV, Part 1, Act II, Scene 2, 51-53:
Bardolph. Case ye, case ye, on with your vizards! There’s money of the
king’s coming down the hill; ‘tis going to the king’s exchequer.

Connection Six
Gad’s Hill Episode
Connection to Oxford: In 1573 Oxford’s men, when the Earl was a young
man like Prince Hal, conducted a similar prank in the same location. Gad’s
Hill is located in Kent on the highway between Rochester and Gravesend.
Letter to Lord Burghley dated May 1573 by William Fawnt and John Wotton,
former associates of Oxford: “…Wootton and myself riding peaceably by the
highway from Gravesend to Rochester, had three calivers charged with
bullets, discharged at us by three of Lord Oxford’s men…who lay privily in a
ditch awaiting our coming with full intent to murder us.…”
From the details given in the letter there is little doubt that the Gad’s Hill
episode in the drama is based directly upon the actual prank: the men were
patently travelling on business connected with the Exchequer, hence their
appeal to the Lord Treasurer Burghley.

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Topical connections? Uh….

Shakespeare’s Library & Books

Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Connection Seven
Shakespeare’s Library
(1904) Stratfordian H.R.D. Anders in Shakespeare’s Books: “[W]e now may
safely assert, that Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Latin language was
considerable, and that he must have read some of the more important Latin
authors.” (39)
(1933) E.K. Chambers in A Short Life of Shakespeare: “There has been…
much enumeration of the books, ancient and modern, erudite and popular,
which may, directly or indirectly, have contributed to his plays….One may
reasonably assume that at all times Shakespeare read whatever books,
original or translated, came in his way.” (21)
(1947) Stratfordian Sister Miriam Joseph in Shakespeare’s Use of the Arts
of Language: “[He] utilized every resource of thought and language known
to his time.” (4)

Connection Seven
Shakespeare’s Library
(1962) Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘What’s in a Name?’ in Réalités (Englishlanguage edition): “No scholar today would see Shakespeare as a mere
‘child of nature.’ On the contrary, we realize that he was highly educated,
even erudite. It is true, he does not parade his learning. He wears no heavy
carapace of classical or Biblical or philosophical scholarship, like Donne or
Milton. But he is clearly familiar, in an easy and assured manner, with the
wide learning of his time and had the general intellectual formation of a
cultivated man of the Renaissance.” (42)
(1986) Stratfordian Aubrey Kail in The Medical Mind of Shakespeare:
“Shakespeare’s plays bear witness to a profound knowledge of
contemporary physiology and psychology, and he employed medical terms
in a manner which would have been beyond the powers of an ordinary
playwright or physician.” (14)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Shakespeare’s Library
No known connection. No evidence exists that William
had a library, nor did he leave books in his will as
others have done, in an age where books were so
valuable they were chained to desks. Stratfordians
suggest that William borrowed printer’s copies of
books from publisher Richard Field while living in
London, but there is no suggestion that he had access
to such books in Stratford.

Connection Seven
Shakespeare’s Library
Connection to Oxford: Cecil House held one of the finest libraries in
England, which Oxford took advantage of in his youth.
Martin Hume in The Great Lord Burghley: “[Cecil] was an insatiable book
buyer and collector of heraldic and genealogical manuscripts. Sir William
Pickering in Paris, and Sir John Mason, had orders to buy for him all the
attractive new books published in France; and Chamberlain in Brussels had
a similar commission….[T]he Hatfield Papers contain very numerous
memoranda of books and genealogies bought by Cecil.” (48)
Conyers Read in Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth: “Without doubt
Burghley took a great interest in the education of promising young
Englishmen. His household indeed was currently regarded as the best
training school for the gentry in England.” (124-5)

Connection Seven
Shakespeare’s Library
A.L. Rowse in Eminent Elizabethans:
“As a royal ward [Oxford] was taken into that school of virtue, Cecil House in
the Strand…. Here, under the surveyance of the great man, Edward was
placed under the direction of a succession of tutors; for the first couple of
years his uncle Golding; then the remarkable scholar, Laurence Nowell; for
a time, the no less scholarly Sir Thomas Smith. Young Oxford was sent only
briefly to St. John’s College, Cambridge – Burghley’s own; but he emerged
from this training well educated, with literary interests and of good promise,
considering that along with his rank.” (77)
If any library could be said to be worthy of Shakespeare, one can easily say
that Cecil’s qualified.

Connection Eight
Geneva Bible
(1904) H.R.D. Anders in Shakespeare’s Books: “The bible he [Shakespeare]
would have been most likely to use himself. Was the Genevan Version….”
(1935) Richard Noble in Shakespeare’s Biblical Knowledge: “[O]n occasions
Shakespeare used the Genevan, just as on others he use the Bishops; and
on others again, a rendering found in the Prayer Book,…but the evidence is
in favor of Shakepeare’s possession of a Genevan Old Testament.” (57)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Geneva Bible
No known connection.

Connection Eight
Geneva Bible
Connection to Oxford: The Earl of Oxford owned the Geneva Bible and
annotated in a way that correlates with Shakespeare’s use of that edition.
B.M. Ward in his biography The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford:
‘Payments made by John Hart, Chester Herald, on behalf of the Earl of
Oxford from January 1st to September 30th, 1569/70 [...] To William Seres,
stationer, for a Geneva Bible gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s works in French,
with other books and papers…’ (32-33)
(Plutarch was also a prime source for several Shakespeare plays.)
Oxford’s Geneva Bible is currently owned by The Shakespeare Folger
Library and is the subject of a dissertation by Dr. Roger Stritmatter of the
University of Massachusetts.

Connection Nine
Golding’s Metamorphoses
(1598) Francis Meres in A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with
the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poet, quoted in The Shakspere-Allusion
Book, Vol. 1: “As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras:
so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued
Shakespeare…” (46)
(1965) Stratfordian John Frederick Nims in his Introduction to Ovid’s
Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation (1567): “L. P. Wilkinson, in
the best book we have on Ovid, reminds us that Shakespeare echoes him
about four times as often as he echoes Vergil, that he draws on every book
of the Metamorphoses, and that there is scarcely a play untouched by his
influence. Golding’s translation, through the many editions published during
Shakespeare’s lifetime, was the standard Ovid in English. If Shakespeare
read Ovid so, he read Golding.” (xx)

Connection Nine
Golding’s Metamorphoses
(1993) Stratfordian Jonathan Bate in Shakespeare and Ovid: “If
Shakespeare and his contemporaries owed their intimacy with Ovidian
rhetoric to the grammar schools, their easy familiarity with Ovidian narrative
was as much due to Golding.” (29)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Golding’s Metamorphoses
No known connection. Orthodox scholars speculate
that William read Golding at the Stratford Grammar
School, but there is no record that William attended
this school.

Connection Nine
Golding’s Metamorphoses
Connection to Oxford: Arthur Golding was Oxford’s uncle, and they both
lived in William Cecil’s household in the earlier years that Golding spent
translating Ovid. Part of Oxford’s early education was an in-depth, 2-hourper-day study of Latin.
Stratfordian Louis Thorn Golding, a descendent of Arthur Golding, in An
Elizabethan Puritan: The Life of Arthur Golding: “It has been assumed that
he acted as tutor to his nephew Edward. No definite record has been found
indicating such a connection which, however, would appear reasonable in
view of the factor of relationship as well as the fitness of the one and the
youth of the other. . . It is evident, however, that Arthur was in close contact
with the lad and was interested in and observant of the progress and the
development of his nephew’s brilliant mind. This is made clear in the
dedication to him of his translation of Trogus Pompeius: ‘I have had
experience thereof myself how earnest a desire your honor hath naturally
grafted in you to read, peruse and communicate with others as well the
histories of ancient times and things done long ago, also the present state
of things in our days.” (29, 30)

Connection Nine
Golding’s Metamorphoses
Young Edward was then 14 years old. Oxford’s astonishingly precocious
intellect is further evidenced by the statement of his other tutor, Lawrence
Nowell, Dean of Lichfield, to Lord Burghley the year before: “I clearly see
that my work for the Earl of Oxford cannot be much longer required.”

Connection Ten
Castiglione’s The Courtier
(1916) Shakespeare’s England: “There was a favourite Elizabethan story,
which illustrates this practice; it is alluded to by the porter in Macbeth:
Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, I’ the name of Beelzebub?
Here’s a farmer that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty:
come in time. (II. Iii. 3-6)
…It is told long before Shakespeare’s time by Castiglione in his book of the
Courtier….” (I, 39)
(1928) W. B. Drayton Henderson in the Everyman edition of The Courtier:
“[W]ithout Castiglione we should not have Hamlet…. But it is not only
Shakespeare’s Hamlet that seems to follow Castiglione. Shakespeare
himself does.” (xiv, xvi)

Connection Ten
Castiglione’s The Courtier
(1958) Abbie Findlay Potts in Shakespeare and The Faerie Queen: “The
Book of the Courtier, has again and again been cited to show that
Shakespeare’s persons illustrate ideas of courtliness….” (84)
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “[Castiglione] exerted a
strong influence on the courtly ideals of Elizabeth’s reign. The ‘merry war’ of
Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing may be derived from a
similar exchange of wit in The Courtier.” (99)
(1990) Stratfordian Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z: “Il Libro del
Cortegiano was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby, appearing in
1561 as The Courtyer. Shakespeare may have read Castiglione in Italian,
however.” (98)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Castiglione’s The Courtier
No known connection.

Connection Ten
Castiglione’s The Courtier
Connection to Oxford: In 1572 Oxford wrote the Latin Preface to the Latin
translation of The Courtier by Bartholomew Clerke, his tutor at Cambridge.
From Ward’s translation of the Preface:
“Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England, Viscount
Bulbeck and Baron Scales and Badlesmere to the Reader – Greeting.
A frequent and earnest consideration of the translation of Castiglione's
Italian work, which has now for a long time been undertaken and finally
carried out by my friend Clerke, has caused me to waver between two
opinions: debating in my mind whether I should preface it by some writing
and letter of my own, or whether I should do no more than study it with a
mind full of gratitude. The first course seemed to demand greater skill and…

Connection Ten
Castiglione’s The Courtier
…art than I can lay claim to, the second to be a work of no less good will
and application. To do both, however, seemed to combine a task of
delightful industry with an indication of special good-will. I have therefore
undertaken the work, and I do so the more willingly, in order that I may lay a
laurel wreath of my own on the translation in which I have studied this book,
and also to ensure that neither my good-will (which is very great) should
remain unexpressed, nor that my skill (which is small) should seem to fear
to face the light and the eyes of men.” (80-1)
Gabriel Harvey’s comment to Oxford on this Preface from his 1578
Gratulationes Valdinenses: “Let that courtly epistle, more polished even
than the writings of Castiglione himself, witness how greatly thou dost excel
in letters.” (88)
Oxford was still in his 20’s.

Connection Eleven
Cardan’s Comforte
(1839) Stratfordian Francis Douce in Illustrations of Shakespeare regarding
Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy: “There is a good deal on the subject
in Cardanus’s Comforte… a book which Shakespeare had certainly read.”
(133)
(1845) Stratfordian Joseph Hunter in New Illustrations of Shakespeare:
“[Cardin’s Comforte] seems to be the book which Shakespeare placed in the
hands of Hamlet.” (II, 243)
(1930) Stratfordian Lily Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes: “It is
easily seen that this book of Cardan has long been associated with Hamlet.
I should like to believe that Hamlet was actually reading it or pretending to
read it as he carried on his baiting of Polonius.” (n. 134)

Connection Eleven
Cardan’s Comforte
(1934) Stratfordian Hardin Craig in his article “Hamlet’s Book” in the
Huntington Library Bulletin, No. 6:
“[T]he correspondences between Hamlet and Cardan’s Comforte are really
very close… many of them are marked by circumstances of particularity,
which might be called arguments from sign, indicating that the
Shakespearean passages in question did actually come by suggestion or
borrowing from Cardan’s Comforte rather than from any of the numerous
other writings from which they might have been derived.” (35)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Cardan’s Comforte
No known connection.

Connection Eleven
Cardan’s Comforte
Connection to Oxford: Thomas Bedingfield’s 1571 translation of Cardan’s
Comforte was dedicated to Oxford. Bedingfield reveals that the translation
was at Oxford’s bidding. Furthermore, the translation contains a letter to
Bedingfield by Oxford that reveals he commanded its publication. After the
letter is a poem to the Reader, written by Oxford, an almost unheard of act
by a nobleman.
From the dedication (modernized from the 1576 edition):
“To the Right Honourable and my good Lord the Earl of Oxenforde, Lord
great Chamberlaine of England. MY GOOD LORD, I can give nothing more
agreeable to your mind, and my fortune then the willing performance of such
service as it shall please you to command me unto: And therefore rather to
obey then boast of my cunning, and as a new sign of mine old devotion, I do
present the book your lordship so long desired….

Connection Eleven
Cardan’s Comforte
…Sure I am it would have better beseemed me to have taken this travail in
some discourse of Arms (being your L. chief profession & mine also) then in
Philosophers skill to have thus busied my self: yet since your pleasure was
such, and your knowledge in either great, I do (as I will ever) most willingly
obey you. And if any either through skill or curiosity do find fault with me, I
trust notwithstanding for the respects aforesaid to be holden executed.”
(Italics added.)
From Oxford’s letter to Bedingfield: “To my loving friend Thomas Bedingfield
Esquire, one of her Majesties gentlemen Pentioners. After I had perused
your letters good master Bedingfield, finding in them your request far
differing from the desert of your labour, I could not chose but greatly doubt,
whether it were better for me to yield you your desire, or execute mine own
intention towards the publishing of your Book.”

Law, Music, Power, & Italy
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Connection Twelve
Knowledge of Law
(1790) Stratfordian lawyer Edmond Malone in The Plays and Poems of
William Shakespeare: “His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such as
might be acquired by the casual observation of even his all-comprehending
mind.” (qtd. by Greenwood 373)
(1865) Richard Grant White in Memoirs of the Life of Shakespeare: "No
dramatist of the time . . . used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness
and exactness. . . legal phrases flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary,
and parcel of his thought" (373).
(1883) Stratfordian Senator Cushman Davis in The Law in Shakespeare:
“[W]here such knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law,
Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it.” (4)

Connection Twelve
Knowledge of Law
(1911) Stratfordian lawyer Edward J. White in Commentaries on the Law in
Shakespeare: “True, almost every play, as well as the sonnets, display great
legal learning and accurate knowledge, not only of legal terms, but of the
science and philosophy of the law, as well.” (7-8)
(1959) Chief Justice John C. Wu in Fountain of Justice: “Shakespeare…
know[s] his common law and natural law pretty well. He knows the
psychological reason for case law.” (86)

Connection Twelve
Knowledge of Law
(2000) J. Anthony Burton in The Shakespeare Newsletter: “[In Hamlet ]
there is a consistent and coherent pattern of legal allusions to defeated
expectations of inheritance, which applies to every major character. The
allusions run the gamut from points of common knowledge by landowners or
litigants, to technical subtleties only lawyers would appreciate, but their
common theme is disinheritance and the way it can occur. It has already
been suggested that the many legal allusions in the play indicate it was
written with a legally sophisticated audience in mind. Who else, after all, but
lawyers and law students would appreciate the Gravedigger’s parody of
legal reasoning in a forty-year old decision written in the corrupted version
of Norman-English known as Law French?”

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Knowledge of Law
No known connection. The record shows that William
had some experience with lawsuits and property, but
no record shows that William attended or was
associated with Gray’s Inn, or engaged in legal activity
as a lawyer.

Connection Twelve
Knowledge of Law
Connection to Oxford: Oxford matriculated at Gray’s Inn, although there is
no evidence of residency, and in his position as premier Earl, he sat as a
judge on state trials, including both the Mary Queen of Scots trial and the
Essex trial.
Stratfordian Conyers Read in Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth. “In 1567,
following Burghley’s pattern, [the Earl of Oxford] entered Gray’s Inn.” (126)
Oxford was then 17 years old.
• Oxford’s position would require that he have a formidable legal education.
• At least one of Oxford’s tutors was an acknowledged scholar in Civil Law –
Sir Thomas Smith, who tutored Oxford from the age of 4 to 12. Smith did not
see law as a technical sideline, but rather an integrated part of one’s
education.
• Oxford was raised in the most legal/political house in England. And Cecil
was noted for encouraging the nobility to have a thorough education, for the
good of the country.

Connection Thirteen
Knowledge of Music
(1931) Stratfordian E. W. Naylor in Shakespeare and Music: “It is scarcely a
matter of surprise, therefore, that the musical student should look in
Shakespeare for music, and find it treated of from several points of view,
completely and accurately.” (1)
(1963) Stratfordian F. W. Sternfeld in Music in Shakespearean Tragedy:
“This book is the first to treat at full length the contribution which music
makes to Shakespeare’s great tragedies…. Here the playwright’s practices
are studied in conjunction with those of his contemporaries: Marlowe and
Jonson, Marston and Chapman. From these comparative assessments
there emerges the method that is peculiar to Shakespeare: the employment
of song and instrumental music to a degree hitherto unknown, and their use
as an integral part of the dramatic structure.” (inside cover)

Connection Thirteen
Knowledge of Music
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare:
“Shakespeare’s familiarity with the music of his time is indicated by more
than 500 passages in his works. His enthusiasm for this art is manifested in
the observances of many of his sympathetic characters….Shakespeare was
acutely aware of the emotional and dramatic appeal of the actual music that
could be recalled to the minds of his audience….Shakespeare’s uses of
vocal music in his plays were manifold, and always purposeful, ranging from
appropriate moments of pure entertainment to those of complete and
indispensable integration with the drama in order to illuminate character or
carry the action forward.” (574, 575)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Knowledge of Music
No known connection.

Connection Thirteen
Knowledge of Music
Connection to Oxford: Oxford was known as an accomplished musician and
patron of music. John Farmer dedicated two music books to him. Two
musical works bearing his name, The Earl of Oxford’s March and The Earl
of Oxford’s Galliard, may have been composed by him.
John Farmer, The First Set of English Madrigals (1599), in his dedication to
Oxford: “Most Honorable Lord… I have presumed to tender these Madrigals
only as remembrances of my service and witness of your Lordships liberal
hand, by which I have so long lived, and from your Honorable mind that so
much have loved all liberal Sciences: … for without flattery be it spoken,
those that know your Lordship know this, that using this science as a
recreation, your Lordship have overgone most of them that make it a
profession. Right Honorable Lord, I hope it shall not be distasteful to
number you here amongst the favorers of Music, and the practicers, no
more then Kings and Emperors that have been desirous to be in the roll of
Astronomers, that being but a star fair, the other an Angels choir.

Connection Fourteen
Knowledge of Power
(1892) Whitman: “[O]nly one of the ‘wolfish earls’ so plenteous in the plays
themselves, or some born descendent and knower, might seem to be the
true author of those amazing works.”
(1929) H. B. Charlton in Shakespeare, Politics and Politicians, referring to
the history plays: “A better name would be political plays, for they are plays
in which the prevailing dramatic interest is in the fate of a nation. Since that
is their nature there will be in them much of what Shakespeare’s insight had
apprehended of the forces which shape a nation’s destiny.”

Connection Fourteen
Knowledge of Power
(1965) Adolf A. Berle, former ambassador and special assistant to the
Secretary of State under President Kennedy, in Power, his treatment of
modern political power in its myriad manifestations: “One wonders what the
personal reveries of a Plantagenet or Tudor dictator must have been.
Shakespeare probably gives a better analysis than historians. His pictures
of the breakdown of MacBeth, of Richard II, and of Richard III are more
convincing than most historical studies….[Shakespeare’s] historical dramas
are poetry all the way through. Reference has been made in the text to a
few interesting passages only. Regretfully, I have omitted many more. Take,
for example, the evolution of MacBeth from well-meaning field commander
to murderous police-state dictator, leading to loss of touch with reality and
consequent downfall. It could be paralleled by the history of several
contemporary Caribbean dictators I have known…or, for that matter, by the
chronicles of contemporary European dictators. Interplay of personality and
power is constant; perhaps the best education a power holder could have
would be a solid acquaintance with Shakespeare’s plays.” (122, 579)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Knowledge of Power
No known connection. He is never mentioned in the
company of power-holders or being present in Court.

Connection Fourteen
Knowledge of Power
Connection to Oxford: Oxford had frequent access to Court, an insider’s
experience with Elizabeth, the machinations of foreign heads of states and
ambassadors, and fawning courtiers. He saw power manifested in a variety
of corruptions. Furthermore, being raised as a ward in Burghley’s
household, and given his noble position, Oxford would have been exposed
to the absolute center of England’s power.
A. L. Rowse in Eminent Elizabethans: “The 17th Earl of Oxford was, as the
numbering shows, immensely aristocratic, and this was the clue to his
career. In Elizabethan society full of new and upcoming men, some of them
at the very top, like the Bacons and Cecils – the Boleyns themselves, from
whom the Queen descended, were a new family – the Oxford earldom stood
out as the oldest in the land. He was the premier earl and, as hereditary
Lord Great Chamberlain, took place on the right hand of the Queen and
bore the sword of state before her.” (75)

Connection Fifteen
Knowledge of Italy
(1873) Stratfordian Karl Elze in Essays on Shakespeare: “Distinguished
Shakespearean scholars have expressed their conviction that Shakespeare
visited Upper Italy, especially Venice, and that within and without his works
there are numerous weighty intimations calculated to awaken and support
the belief in such a journey; nay, that if any supposed journey of
Shakespeare can be made probable, it is above all the journey to Italy….Mr.
Ch. A. Brown frankly admits that nothing can shake his faith in
Shakespeare’s travel’s in Italy, which, he adds, not only extended to Verona
and Venice, but also to Padua, Bologna, Florence, and Pisa, probably even
as far as Rome.” (262)

Connection Fifteen
Knowledge of Italy
(1930) Stratfordian E.K. Chambers in William Shakespeare: “Much research
has been devoted to a conjecture that he spent part of this period in
northern Italy. It is certainly true that when the plague was over he began a
series of plays with Italian settings, which were something of a new
departure in English drama; that to a modern imagination, itself steeped in
Italian sentiment, he seems to have been remarkably successful in giving a
local colouring and atmosphere to these; and even that he shows familiarity
with some minute points of local topography.” (61)

Connection Fifteen
Knowledge of Italy
(1949) Stratfordian Ernesto Grillo in Shakespeare and Italy: “Shakespeare
evinces a varied and profound knowledge of the country in general and of
our cities in particular….Innumerable are the passages where he speaks of
special characteristics of our peninsula, of her history, and of her
customs…. He knew that Padua with all its learning was under the
protection of Venice and that Mantua was not….The various scenes in
Othello are no mere Venetian reminiscences, but pictures exhaling the very
spirit of Venice, which Shakespeare has transferred to his drama.” (qtd. In
Sobran 98, 135)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Knowledge of Italy
No known connection. Orthodox scholars now doubt
that he ever left England.

Connection Fifteen
Knowledge of Italy
Connection to Oxford: Of the 16 months Oxford traveled the continent, 10
were spent in Upper Italy, primarily in Venice, Padua, Milan, and Florence.
Alan H. Nelson, Professor of English at the University of California,
Berkeley, supplies Oxford’s itinerary on his web site:
Oxford first arrived in Venice in May 1575, made it the base of his
operations, and interrupted his stay on at least three different occasions:
•Between May and 23 September, when he visited Genoa and Milan (also
Palermo, Sicily?) Oxford was back in Venice on 23 September.
•On 27 November, when he visited Padua. Oxford was in back Venice on 11
December.
•Between 12 December and 26 February 1576, when he visited Florence
and Siena (he was in the latter city on 3 January). Oxford was back in
Venice by 26 February and remained until 6 March.
•Oxford left Venice for Paris on March, travelling via Milan and Lyon.

Connection Fifteen
Knowledge of Italy
Shakespeare plays with locations in or excessive references to:
Venice: The Merchant of Venice, Othello
Genoa: The Merchant of Venice
Milan: Two Gentleman of Verona, The Tempest
Padua: The Taming of the Shrew
Florence: All’s Well That End’s Well
Verona: Romeo and Juliet, Two Gentleman of Verona
(Verona lies midway between Venice and Milan, near Padua.)
Messina: Much Ado About Nothing
Sicily: The Winter’s Tale

Shakespeare’s Fellow Poets
Law, Music
Power, & Italy
Shakespeare’s
Library & Books

Idiosyncratic
Topical
Events

Characters in
Hamlet

Shakespeare’s
Fellow Poets

Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
(1936) Stratfordian A. S. Cairncross in The Problem of Hamlet: “Like Leir,
[King] Lear also, independently, drew on The Faerie Queen. The form
“Cordelia” comes from Spenser alone.” (169)
(1966) The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare: “Spenser has been
credited with making one of the earliest allusions to Shakespeare. In Colin
Clouts Come home againe, the poet Aëtion is praised as a gentle shepherd
whose muse, ‘full of high thoughts invention,’ does ‘like himselfe Heroically
sound.’. …Numerous verbal parallels suggest that Shakespeare was
familiar with Spenser’s work. A recent trend in scholarship has been the
study of themes and techniques common to these two poets but modified by
the demands of their respective genres.” (818-819)

Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
(1990) Stratfordian Charles Boyce in Shakespeare A to Z:
“[A]uthor of works that influenced Shakespeare. Spenser’s monumental epic
poem The Faerie Queene (published 1590, 1598) provided the playwright
with the inspiration for many passages, especially in the earlier plays and
poems. The pastoral poems in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar (1579),
and possibly his great wedding poem Epithalamon (1595), did the same for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another of Spenser’s poems, ‘The Teares of
the Muses’ (1591), may be alluded to in the Dream (5.1.52-53).” (612)

Connection to Shakspere

?

William of
Stratford

Edmund Spenser
No known connection. Spenser died in 1599, well
within the time of Shakespeare’s fame as a poet and
playwright. They were the two great poets of that
decade. Yet Spenser never mentions William of
Stratford and William never mentions Spenser.

Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
Connection to Oxford: In The Fairie Queene, Spenser dedicates a sonnet to
Oxford that stands above the other 16 in its astonishing deferment to
Oxford’s special relationship to the Heliconian Imps (the offspring of the nine
Muses), a relationship that would be reserved for someone of
Shakespeare’s stature. Spenser and Oxford were nearly exact
contemporaries.
Receiue most Noble Lord in gentle gree,
The vnripe fruit of an vnready wit:
Which by thy countenaunce doth craue to bee
Defended from foule Enuies poisnous bit.
Which so to doe may thee right well besit,
Sith th’antique glory of thine auncestry
Vnder a shady vele is therein writ,
And eke thine owne long liuing memory,
Succeeding them in true nobility:

Connection Sixteen
Edmund Spenser
And also