WHY DO
SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS MIMIC THE LIFE OF EDWARD DE VERE?
The short
answer is that generally they don't. However, the original
Oxfordian, J. Thomas Looney, perceived certain parallels with the
life of the 17th Earl of Oxford. Here are two prominent
examples:
The male lead in
All's Well That Ends Well is Bertram, Count of Rousillon.
As portrayed in the play, the fatherless young count becomes a royal
ward; he resists a marriage which has been arranged for him; he
travels abroad, leaving behind a loving and distressed young lady;
he yearns to serve in military campaigns, but is commanded by his
monarch to remain at Court. Subsequently he goes away without
permission. On two occasions Shakespeare seems to make a slip
by referring to him as an earl (III, v, 12 and 19).
In Hamlet the most plausible potential
caricature is the king's advisor, Lord Polonius, who in some
respects resembles Queen Elizabeth's chief advisor, Lord Burghley.
In Act I, Scene iii, Polonius gives life-advice to his departing
son, Laertes, in the form of what he terms precepts. Around
1584, Burghley had also provided his son, Robert, with life-advice
in the form of a letter of ten precepts.
Oxfordians (and some others) point out that all
of the above-described circumstances of Bertram match the personal
history of Edward de Vere - too close a fit to be dismissed as
coincidence, in their opinion. And, they say, only someone
close to Burghley - like his one-time ward and son-in-law, Oxford -
could know of the precepts he gave to his son (though these are
hardly original in their thrust and bear little resemblance to those
enunciated by Polonius, as can be seen at
http://www.princehamlet.com/burghley.html).
However,
there is another person who shares such history and connections.
Shakespeare's patron, the third Earl of Southampton, was also a ward
of Burghley, as was his great friend, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.
Strong echoes of Essex and Southampton are perceivable in the
characters of Hamlet and his friend Horatio, respectively. And
Southampton is at least as good a match as Oxford for Bertram, since,
unlike Oxford, both Southampton and Bertram won battle honours in the
rank of "General of the Horse".
Interestingly,
Bertram's character is far from admirable. He is depicted as
lascivious, vainglorious, rash and unworthy; a snob and a liar, who
does not keep his promises or pay his debts. We cannot rule
this out as a caricature of Oxford (though it is unlikely he would so
depict himself, if he were the author). On the other hand, the
unflattering portrayal is well explained by the later history of
Shakespeare and Southampton (see link below).
These two
examples illustrate a circumstance generally given insufficient
weight: the remarkable correspondence between the lives of Edward de
Vere and Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Each was
an earl and courtier, was an only son who at a young age lost his
father, became a ward of Burghley, had problems with a step-father,
studied at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, was initially refused leave by
the Queen for military service and foreign travel, travelled
nevertheless, was summoned back by the Queen, eventually served in
both army and navy, could be quarrelsome and petulant, had high
profile ructions on or by the tennis court, plotted against and was
imprisoned by the Queen, had difficulties with marriage and finances,
displayed bisexual behaviour, impregnated a Queen's maid of honour,
raised three daughters, had connections with France and Italy, was
forbidden by the Queen to duel, fell out with Burghley, officiated at
the coronation of King James, patronised literature and theatre and
had personal connections with actors.
The truth is that any
perception of an Oxford-Shakespeare parallel is most likely an
illusion, caused by genuine correspondences in the lives of Oxford
and Southampton. The perceived Shakespearean parallels, if not
reasonably explainable as coincidences, can be construed far more
plausibly as a by-product of Shakespeare's intercourse over many
years with the Earl of Southampton - an intimacy fleshed out in Biography in the Sonnets.
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