The Great Shakespeare Hoax

By Randall Barron

We all know that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare.

But...

What if he didn't? What if it were not true? Would it make any difference to the world?

It would have made a great difference to Elizabethan England. And so arose the necessity for The Great Shakespeare Hoax...

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 4, 2000
• ISBN: 9781403378378

Randall Barron

Randall Barron has published various articles in the Shakespeare-Oxford Newsletter and has addressed the 1998 Shakespeare conference at Concordia University. He has a website expressing his views on the Shakespeare Authorship Question and has two novels in preparation concerning the same. As to his Shakespeare research, he is most proud of having pointed out on his website and to the audience at Concordia University where Shakespeare himself declares he is a knight, and of his investigations into Love's Martyr, an enigmatic and obscure book published in 1601, which he believes is another important key to understanding The Great Shakespeare Hoax. He and his wife, Gloria, also were the first to discover and call attention to the Inquisition Post Mortem of Edward de Vere in London, in 1992.

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Copyright © 1996, 2000 by Randall Barron

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4033-7838-X

ISBN: 978-1-4033-7837-8 (ebook)

1stBooks-rev. 6/12/00

About the Book

We all know that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare. But…

What if he didn’t? What if it were not true? Would it make any difference to the world?

It would have made a great difference to Elizabethan England. And so arose the necessity for The Great Shakespeare Hoax…

Preliminary

What was the Shakespeare Hoax? How did it come about? Who carried it out, and how? Above all, why?

To answer those questions is a little like the case of the Blind Men and the Elephant. Those visually challenged individuals each came up with a different description, varying according to the particular part of the elephant they happened to make contact with.

The Shakespeare Hoax is very like that.

Much of it is still unproven, there are a thousand loose ends and unconnected parts. A modern comparison might be made with the enigma of the Kennedy assassination.

You know it isn’t like the Warren Commission said it was, and yet at this writing we still don’t know exactly how it was, or maybe not even approximately how it was, nor who was ultimately responsible nor even why.

And so…

I could have written a documentary about the Shakespeare Hoax, but I did not.

I could have written a novel or a play about the Shakespeare Hoax, but I chose not to. At least not yet.

This…this is a kind of introduction to the general enigma.

I have taken the bold approach most of the time, asseverating things some of which may never be proven true, or someday may even be proved false. What I want to do is give the rough outline of the Hoax and let the many chips fall where they may.

To accomplish that I have used a strange mixture of direct, unsubstantiated interpretation intermixed with the most factual and footnoted of academic articles of my own, some of them previously published.

Back to the blind men and the elephant. While each of the six came up with a very distorted view of what an elephant was like, still, if you put the six together and applied them correctly, you would have a serviceable overview of the elephant itself.

Readers can do that, and this way they become part of the picture, too.

Now, I said I was not writing a drama, and I am not. Still, if I were, the program for it might look very much like the following…

The Great Shakespeare Hoax

A drama in three acts

Cast of Characters

Featured players…

Queen Elizabeth of England

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton

William Cecil, later made Lord Burghley, Principal Secretary

to the Queen

Supporting players…

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex

Robert Cecil, successor to his father as Principal Secretary to the Queen

William Shakspere or Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, actor of small parts, stage manager and jack-of-all trades theater man

Question: Can a great Queen conceal an indiscretion and maintain a myth throughout her lifetime even if it means the necessary creation of another myth…one about a poor lad from Stratford-upon-Avon who comes to London and quickly becomes the world’s greatest dramatist and poet?

At stake is…

At first, the survival of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.

Ultimately, the Succession…who was to wear the crown after Elizabeth was no longer alive.

The Play

Act 1. In 1574 a child is born in secret to the Virgin Queen of England, Elizabeth. The father is a young nobleman named Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

Act 2. In 1593 a new name blazes its way across the literary skies of London with the publication of a brilliant long narrative poem, Venus and Adonis.

If it were ever known the sexually aggressive, shameless Venus of the poem is based on Queen Elizabeth, and that the author of the poem is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, it might bring down the government.

Thus the necessity for a pseudonym backed up by a living, breathing smalltime theater man of London, a certain William Shakespere or Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. The Great Shakespeare Hoax has begun.

Act 3. In 1598 all the cards are turned face up on the table when Lord Burghley, the Queen’s longtime Principal Secretary dies. On his death bed he reveals all about the child he was given to dispose of in secret some 24 years previous.

That child is now Lord Southampton, one of the most handsome and dashing of the young nobles in Elizabeth’s court.

Will the Queen acknowledge him now as her heir and appoint him to be the next Ruler of England on her demise?

If so, the veil over the true identity of William Shakespeare may also be lifted.

If not, the Shakespeare Hoax must go on…

Key Documents…

Venus and Adonis, published 1593

The Passionate Pilgrim, published 1599

Love’s Martyr, published 1601

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, published 1609

Let us suppose you know nothing whatsoever about the Great Shakespeare Hoax. More, that until you are shown otherwise you prefer to believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works of Shakespeare.

That is a perfectly honorable position, and one held by the vast majority of humans who bother even to think about it at all.

But…

If I could show you that the True Shakespeare, whoever he might have been, was a dedicated tennis player? Would that cause you to think twice about the man from Stratford as Shakespeare?

If not…

Well, if I could show you where Shakespeare himself states directly that he is a knight…would that make any difference? After all, no one to date has ever claimed knighthood for the man from Stratford-upon-Avon.

Then, if I could show how Shakespeare himself states clearly that he was made lame at some point in his life…and then point out how no one has ever claimed William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was ever said to be lame…would that cause you to think twice or begin to wonder a little bit about the true identity of Shakespeare?

And if Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, were shown to be an accomplished tennis player, who was also a knight, and who was lamed for life in a savage duel or street fight with Sir Thomas Knyvet…would that give you any reason to consider changing your mind about the possible true identity of Shakespeare?

Well, I intend to do all that in these pages.

In addition you will find some questions answered about the man from Stratford-upon-Avon. Such as…

What was his personality really like?

What did he really look like?

Did he have a nice singing voice?

Was his hair really a mess?

Did he have notably skinny legs?

Did he really wear satin suits as in the famous Droeshout

portrait universally reproduced to represent Shakespeare?

None of the dozens of Shakespeare biographies will answer these questions to anyone’s satisfaction, because their authors simply did not know where to look to find the answers.

But I will answer them all in these pages. Or if not, at least dance around them in an entertaining manner, which in such murky territory, is sometimes the best that can be done.

William Shakespeare.

The poor country boy who goes to the big city and outsmarts all the city slickers to become rich and famous.

What power that has for us. If it is a myth, it is one that has been played out not only on the world stages many times, but also in real life.

So it is entirely understandable how the world should fall in love with the Shakespeare story.

The poor boy from Stratford-Upon-Avon who, by dint of hard work and industry, not excluding some sharp dealing along the way, worked his way to the top of the world’s literary tree.

How did he accomplish this amazing feat?

Well, basically he attacked the world of the Theater, and the world of Literary Arts, as if it were a business project. He was, we are told, more interested in enriching himself than in writing great plays or poems. And thus his indifference to the ownership and even to the survival of his works, which to him were merely vehicles that carried him towards enrichment, means to an end.

That, at least, is the point of view of many people, including the successful industrialist Henry Clay Folger, who founded the Folger Shakespeare Library. He wished the world to know that things literary were no different than things industrial, that anything could be used as a mechanism towards personal enrichment, even literature. Of which Will Shakespeare is the primordial example, the Horatio Alger par excellence.

There is no particular trick to literature, you see. It can be manufactured like wickets are manufactured, and subject to demand and astute cost control, of course, can be the road to riches like anything else.

Many Shakespearean biographers and critics seem to agree with that assessment.

But…is that true?

Is literature really like that?

Well, many times we are told that it is.

The truth?

Quite different.

The truth in general but even more so about Shakespeare.

Point in question…

The True Shakespeare was probably the world’s worst businessman.

All the evidence shows he was systematically taken advantage of from Day One…

That his enormous land holdings were mostly sold off at ridiculously low prices, much of it engineered and overseen by the great Lord Burghley, his father-in-law, who in HIS business practices YES would have warmed the cockles of Henry Clay Folger’s heart.

As to his literature…

Most of it both during and after his lifetime was attributed to others, including the man from Stratford.

But first we must answer the question, who was this man? This literary genius the world has come to know as William Shakespeare…

There is no need to try to be coy here, to reserve his name as a kind of climactic surprise late in this narrative.

No, let’s put up front the things that deserve to be up front.

He was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, in his time the premier Earl of England, with a pedigree so ancient he could almost have been King of England either by decree or popular demand.

But why does the world in general not know him now to be the True Shakespeare?

Ah, yes, why not?

Because of the hoax. The Great Shakespeare Hoax. Which is what this book is about.

I should say something here. That I have liberated myself, if you will, from academic protocols to this degree. To solve this greatest mystery in the world where many of the clues are as beyond recapture as are the principals involved…I have adopted a tactic.

That tactic is to use any viable combination of fact and speculation, of historical and literary research and intuition, to advance me towards my goal.

Which is to explain the Great Shakespeare Hoax.

Because if we can not explain it, in terms that make sense to the general run of humanity, then we have no argument, and may as well leave the stage to the man from Stratford. Let Illusion conquer reality, let theatrics usurp provable fact…

In my case, literary instincts and abstruse connections between one piece of writing and another have been my particular modus operandi, because I believe that is the direction in which my talents, if any, lie…lie…or, to rebut the negative connotations, search out truths that no one else has yet found.

And so I am bold, rash, improvident…what better qualifications could anyone have in the first place for daring to walk across this minefield that is also sacred ground?

If I am to be criticized for this… and that is certain as death and taxes…at least let the critics know I understand their rage, and the basis for it.

I don’t thumb my nose at them, no. Because I respect their concern.

But perhaps the time for such concern is past, given the overpowering momentum of the world’s greatest genius now inexorably demanding what is his, his recognition that is long past due.

So, without further ado, here goes.

First, some simple answers to some simple questions.

What was the hoax?

Simply this. The True Author of the Shakespeare works is not William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, as the entire world has been led to believe.

No, this is not a literary square earth theory. There are many facts to back up this bold statement.

Again, who is the True Author?

A nobleman called Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Who hereafter may be referred to by various names…de Vere, Oxford, Edward…even Shakespeare or the True Shakespeare.

How do we know he was the True Shakespeare?

Evidence. The preponderance of it all points in Edward de Vere’s direction and away from Shakespeare of Stratford.

What evidence?

To give the short and simple answer first, the primordial book in the field, Shakespeare Identified, by John Thomas Looney, first published in England in the year 1920.

That watershed and uniquely original book parted the waters of the Red Sea, allowing Exodus from the orthodox slavery of the cult of the man from Stratford.

Looney knew what he had, registered a sealed copy of his book with the British Museum a couple of years before he achieved publication against someone else’s stumbling upon the all too obvious secret he had discovered.

Since then, there have been many good books published supporting the same conclusion. Some of the most notable are This Star of England, by the Ogburns, Charlton Senior and his wife, Dorothy, The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn Jr., and all the books by Ruth Loyd Miller, whose notes and insights on the Shakespeare Authorship question are superb. I should also mention Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose by Elizabeth Sears, and A Rose By Any Name by Gertrude C. Ford, as well as Shakespeare: Who Was He? by Richard F. Whalen.

This book will try to answer the very basic questions about the hoax, which many people understandably find difficult to believe, or even to contemplate. These are questions about what the hoax was and is, how it came about and how it has been perpetuated until the present day, although for sure we can now be assured it is seeing the last of a long run on the world’s stage.

In simplest terms, what was the mechanism of the hoax? The presenting of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon as being the author of the Great Works. When he was not. When the true author was a nobleman in Queen Elizabeth’s court, her lover and father of her child, the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.

I believe my book is the first to make a comprehensive and chronological attempt to explain the hoax and why it has worked right up until the present time. With accompanying reasons why we can not reasonably expect it, however, to endure much longer.

The average reader has a certain preconceived conception of William Shakespeare…what he was like, how he thought, his attitude towards his plays and poems.

That attitude has been very carefully cultivated by the Shakespeare Industry, which tries to sell us all a bill of goods about the world’s greatest author.

Shakespeare knowledge falls into the category of common knowledge. Everybody knows about him, which is simple and easy, because so little is known about his life, but nobody knows the author himself.

We are usually given some fol-de-rol and la-de-da about the mystery of genius along with the paucity of facts, to make the pill go down easier.

Because if you had some idea of finding out how the greatest writer in history was as a person, how he perceived things, how he interpreted the world, how he produced his great works…well, good luck, because most people don’t find anything like that in the many biographies of the great Bard.

A biography of almost anyone would be more insightful, more instructive, and certainly more interesting.

And it is not my purpose here to write a biography of the True Shakespeare, Edward de Vere. That has already been done.

No, my purpose is just to talk about the hoax in the most simple terms, leaving the filling in of details for others.

Sometimes it is best to proceed not logically, but psychologically.

For that reason, before getting into the hoax itself, I am including a number of Smoking Guns. I mean by that term discoveries which tend to upset the applecart of traditional Shakespearean biography and criticism. The shock value of these may prepare the reader for the outline of the incredible hoax better than anything else.

Many of these Smoking Guns are my own, some of them previously published in The Shakespeare-Oxford Newsletter.

The first one should make any smug convinced Stratfordian think twice. Here it is…

THE HALT AND THE BLIND

—Randall Barron

Was Shakespeare lame?

Either lame or a liar.

He plainly talks of his lameness in the Shakespearean Sonnets, not once but several times.

Sonnet 37 describes him as decrepit.

As a decrepit father takes delight

To see his active child do deeds of youth,

So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite,

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.

He mentions his lameness again in the same sonnet… So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised,

Will Shakespere of Stratford may have been in his early life poor, may have felt despised, but no one I know of has ever said he was lame.

The seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, certainly had times in his life when he felt himself poor and generally out of favor. That in later life he was lame seems to be firmly established in history.

Again we read of Shakespeare’s lameness in sonnet 66…

And strength by limping sway disabled,

It is clear from these three direct statements that Shakespeare the great writer was indeed lame. Just as clear is the fact he felt it deeply. Felt it was a cruel stroke of fortune that greatly marred his life, felt himself physically damaged and decrepit, even disabled, with what he felt to be an ugly and obvious limping sway.

He was not born lame but made lame. How?

He tells us, briefly, but in a way that, for me at least, lets us know it was through a wound and an experience that was devastating. So devastating it put his life in danger at the time, changed his outlook, and had lingering physical and spiritual consequences that he came to feel would shorten his life.

In sonnet 74 he