The Shakespeare Conspiracy, Conspiracy.
Created | Updated May 31, 2013
Sometimes things are not as they seem
Enlightened folk have, over the last two hundred and fifty years attempted to set up and popularise various alternative creators of the bard’s work. It is indeed a credit to their learning and their indefatigable zeal that they have managed to find such a large and varied cast of successors to the fame that is rightly due to the person who created such wonderful works as ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear’.
I say ‘person’ but this is not strictly true. Many persons have been identified as the rightful heirs for our literary approbation, of all genders, but it would be a failure on my part not to mention that a number of small groups have also been discovered working in harmony towards that one creative goal. And as in all things human, where a small group of individuals can be found successfully carrying out a worthwhile purpose, it will not be long before a larger, more powerful co operative organisation will be found attempting a take over. In this regard we can mention the Rosicrucians and the Society of Jesus without either of whom no proper conspiracy theory can begin to form.
The problem with a sitting tenant
The problem that all these theories butted up against in their noble attempts to fill Master Shakespeare’s boots was that Master Shakespeare was rather solidly encased in them already and indeed not only snugly fitted but also laced up almost to the ankles. It was necessary before any boot filling could occur that the present incumbent be forcefully evicted from the aforesaid foot furniture. To understand how this could have happened we need to step back a little in time and trace out the fascinating workings of bibliophilic paleontology.
A trip back in time
Many years ago in a civilisation a long, long way away, a poet called Homer sang his songs with such beauty that they were carefully recorded and kept safe for generations as yet unborn. Those unborn generations finally achieving the correct state of born-ness immediately repaid the conservators of these gems of literature by not only casting doubt on the primacy of Homer in the creative process but also consigning him to the coldest regions of unlife as a myth.
But that was as nothing to their next task which was to prove that the Bible was not only created by many hands and minds, and the majority of those either not present at the time of the events they recorded or indeed not even responsible for any recording as such, merely having their names attached as a publicity ploy to increase the sales. Some even went so far as to say that far from being a direct communication from GOD the testaments were nothing more than a selection of the greatest hits of the Semite tribes of the Middle East.
No more heroes
It was at this exact moment of these two critical bomb blasts in the literary and academic worlds that a man called David Garrick, a man justly famous in theatrical circles, decided to create a god in an approximation of his own image, and deified Master Shakespeare. From being regarded in his own time as first among equals, to being regarded by later ages as ‘a bit rough and uncouth’, to being established as a diamond in the literary crown of England, Master Shakespeare suddenly found himself to be an idol to be worshipped, a pure and unsullied stream of beauty and power.
In the ‘Age of Reason’ the only purpose left for a god to fulfil was to be an object to be pulled down. If the works of Shakespeare were so divine it followed that the creator must be even greater than the work. And it became most obvious to all right thinking people that a glover’s son from a provincial town could not possibly have that knowledge and background required to create perfect works of art. And whilst the mainstream Shakespearian scholars happily busied themselves with applying the latest fashionable sociological theories to their textual studies, they signally failed to notice the Lilliputian Anti Stratfordians attaching their cables and winching the bemused Stratfordian Gulliver from his footwear.
And all the men and women merely players
The game was now afoot to plant the rightful claimant in his, hers, or their rightful cobbled inheritance. The variety of claimants was extraordinary, from the highest and mightiest to the simplest. Men and women, kings and queens, politicians and nuns, no walk of life was too high or low not to be included in the scramble for primacy. The widest breadth of influence and fame might separate a Queen Elizabeth from the nun Sister Anne Whateley or the reprobate and probably inconveniently dead poet Christopher Marlowe from the undoubtedly learned and erudite scientist and politician Sir Francis Bacon, but all these people did share two common characteristics. None of them had been christened William Shakespeare and not a shred of primary, contemporary, documented evidence existed to support any of their varied claims.
There is a theory
There is a theory common in the whole of the known universe, and confidently asserted within that known universe to be common enough even in the unknown universe, that any event that can be properly explained by the application of evidence garnered either scientifically, academically, or forensically is for that reason alone obviously the result of a conspiracy by some unnamed and shadowy power block, often called, for the sake of brevity, ‘Them’. It takes but a moment’s thought to realise that a man as revered and famous as William Shakespeare and especially his works will naturally fall into this category of persons or things which are the result not of the natural workings of a random universe but the careful planning of one or more persons bent on hiding the true reality of life from a class of others, usually for the sake of brevity described as ‘Us’. So for the anti Stratfordians the lack of any evidence to support their theories was taken as conclusive proof that the underlying conspiracy had hidden or deleted any reference to their candidate and thus successfully proved beyond any doubt that their candidate must be the true heir.
There is another theory
There is another universally held theory that states that any human activity worth pursuing must follow the dictates of fashion, otherwise it is automatically defined as an activity not worth following. Conspiracies, being undoubtedly worth engaging in are therefore by definition acted upon by fashion. Many worthies have been promoted over the last two and a half centuries for the candidacy of Great Dramatist but sadly many have fallen by the wayside as being a shade too regal or just not quite the right sexual orientation for the prevailing taste. At the present time one man stands head and shoulders above all other candidates; Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He has all the requirements for the position. He is male, white, and very aristocratic. He is known to have dabbled in literary pursuits and has been named as a writer in contemporary documents proving that, unlike our erstwhile former hero, he was demonstrably literate. He also has the unshakeable support of a vast emptiness of any evidence linking him directly to the plays and poems without which any conspiracy theory could not survive. The clinching fact in his curriculum vitae is that he is the subject of a moving picture story in full and natural colour which, in the absence of contemporary evidence, can now be substituted for any reasoned argument in the minds of the greater majority of the intelligent bipedal life forms currently inhabiting this planet.
A distasteful dissertation on a noble mind
That he is the Noble Poet and the son of the Queen of England and the incestuous father of another son by his own royal mother may be put down to the natural exuberance of his supporters coupled with a rather risqué sense of humour prevalent amongst many of them. Why this educated and tasteful man should wish to hide his genius and forswear the adulation which was rightly his due can be easily explained. It was a shameful thing for an aristocrat to be seen to be working in a literary function even for as high an art as poetry and most definitely in the ignoble art of the public theatre. As described by his supporters, a great deal of effort and cunning was involved in Edward de Vere’s natural desire to remain anonymous, and so highly successful were his endeavours that no one knew that he was a poet and dramatist apart from the people who wrote about his poetry and dramas at the time and everybody else since. The great confusion which had lead to the glover’s son from Stratford being apportioned the high praise for the works was a natural result of de Vere unfortunately deciding to take that person’s name for his nom de plume. It is said by some of de Vere’s supporters that it wasn’t just an idle decision based on the de Vere family crest being a hand shaking a spear, but was made necessary as the person chosen as the ‘front’ was indeed an actor with that very name. Some would even suggest that the actor and the glover’s son were in fact, the same person.
Where there is a Will
For proof of this we have to look no further than the last will and testament of the Stratford Shakespeare. In a brilliant coup the conspirators managed to obtain this document after Shakespeare’s death and interlineate certain bequests, which linked him without doubt to the London stage and did this before the document could be taken to the court of probate at Canterbury to be recorded, proved and stored. It is natural that based on this evidence and many other carefully planted snippets that the general public should fall into the trap of believing that the Stratford man was the author. The more informed and less easily hoodwinked members of today’s beau monde were not so trapped. They had the undoubted advantage of the knowledge that William of Stratford was to all intents and purposes, illiterate. That he could read somewhat they grant as how else could he have made a living on the public stage as an actor. But they point to the inescapable truths that there is no record of William ever attending University or even a school, despite there being an excellent one in existence in Stratford during this time coupled with the undoubted fact that as a high town official John Shakespeare was entitled to have his sons educated free of any charges, had he so wished. The annoying fact that no records exist to show that any one was educated in Stratford between 1550 and 1600 is regarded, quite reasonably, as a minor inconvenience.
Is absence of evidence, evidence of absence
They also correctly point out that a man who supposedly made his living as a writer left no documents behind him, no letters home to his wife or children and no carefully preserved play scripts either. Though this was a common enough occurrence amongst most documents not of an official nature in Elizabethan England it is an important fact to bear in mind when dealing with the documentary legacy of someone who ought to have realised the need to ensure the survival of this evidence if it really did come from his hand. Indeed the lack of this documentary proof is even more supportive of the theory that these papers were destroyed to maintain the subterfuge. Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against the glover’s son is that he had no books. His will makes no mention of what would have been valuable property to bequeath, and despite the fact that a number of his contempories who were undoubtedly men of wide learning and known to have collected libraries of books also felt no inclination to bequeath them in their wills, it stands as fairly conclusive evidence that poor William couldn’t write to save his life, or his now tarnished reputation.
Many reputations remain in danger
There is far too much evidence of this nature supporting the notion of a vast conspiracy known to only two people although everyone else was allegedly gossiping about it at the time, and this essay is too small to contain or report it all. Suffice it to say that the small body of evidence used to assign the authorship of the works to William of Stratford is conclusive proof that the supporters of de Vere are correct and the Stratfordians wrong. It only remains for the de Vere supporters to turn their attention to the other one hundred and seventeen major literary figures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for whom even less evidence exists as to their hand in the dramatic creations granted to them by a deluded and misinformed public.
Hiding amongst the pages
Against this pitiful supply of contemporary, primary, documentary evidence to support the laughable claims of the glover’s son the supporters of the true de Vere claim can place such an enormous storehouse, completely empty of any document it is true, but an enormous storehouse none the less. Their conclusive evidence lies in the works themselves. Human nature being what it is even a magnificently noble minded specimen of human reason as Edward de Vere could not resist not just the subconscious urge to write his history in every line of the drama but also to consciously (and perhaps rather cruelly) tease us with coded messages scattered throughout the poetry.
A life on the stage
Any educated person (and by that we do mean any person that holds Edward de Vere to be the Great Dramatist) cannot read the plays and poems without seeing de Vere in every act, every verse. Edward had daughters just as King Lear did and killed a man in a mistaken brawl just as Hamlet did. Edward’s mother was widowed and remarried very soon after just as Gertrude was. The coincidences continue through the works, far too many to list here. Everywhere we look we see scenes from the life of de Vere. Some of the events have to be taken on trust it must be said. The actual period of time when de Vere was a black man has never been reported, and certain occasions when he went abroad dressed as woman disguised as a boy have naturally been covered up for the sake of decency.
Some good advice
Watch the film ‘Anonymous’ directed by Roland Emmerich. You will no longer be in any doubt.
