Interesting indeed is that detail in the Nazi plan for the conquest
of Britain which envisions the taking over and "rehabilitation"
of Shakespeare as a true German poet who had the misfortune to be born
outside the Third Reich.
The apostles of destruction have generously agreed to spare the Bard.
Whether this means that Stratford-on-Avon is not to be bombed is not
clear at this writing.
An April 24th wireless dispatch from Berlin to The New York Times
reads as follows:
The works of William Shakespeare will survive the present war without
having to undergo the disgrace of being identified by the Germans
with present-day England. The German Shakespeare Association has decided
that "Shakespeare was no spiritual companion of present-day British
plutocracy," so his works can continue to be identified with
the German spirit.
Professor Wolfgang Keller also proved to the satisfaction of a meeting
of the association here that Shakespeare was no friend of the French.
Several of his plays, Professor Keller declared, show that Shakespeare
regarded the French as "false, big-mouthed, frivolous and tricky—in
short, he did not like them."
Keller appears to have combed King John and the Henry Sixth
plays for anti-French sentiments.
It is notable, on the other hand, that he ignores the final scene in
The Life of Henry Fifth wherein we find expressed the fervent
hope—now fulfilled—
that
the contending kingdoms
Of France and England, whose very shores look pale
With envy of each other's happiness,
May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction
Plant neighborhood and Christian-like accord
In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance
His bleeding sword 'twixt England and fair France.
* *
* *
So be there 'twixt your kingdoms such a spousal,
That never may ill office or fell jealousy,
Which troubles oft the bed of blessed marriage
Thrust in between the paction of these kingdoms,
To make divorce of their incorporate league;
That English may as French, French Englishmen,
Receive each other. God speak this Amen!
We search the plays in vain for any speech by a Shakespearean character
expressing similar hopes for a permanent alliance between England and
Germany. Only one of the plays—the sombre Measure for Measure—is
given a Germanic setting, the stage locale being labelled "Vienna,"
though the coloring and characterization throughout is that of Elizabethan
England.
Mr. George Frisbee of San Francisco has pointed out that the author
of Hamlet had some colloquial knowledge of the German language,
as hinted in the early dialogue between King Claudius and the melancholy
Prince. With oily heartiness the usurper says:
"But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—"
and Hamlet mutters in an aside:
"A little more than kin; and less than kind."
The word kind here certainly expresses the purely Teutonic meaning
of child as well as the English meaning of natural and humane.
Shakespeare would never miss an opportunity to put over a pun as obvious
as this one.
In The Merry Wives of Windsor mention is made of a German "Duke"
who has entered England secretly and, with his rascally suite, is swindling
the tavern-keepers of Reading, of Maidenhead and of Colebrook out of
post-horses and other accommodations.
Doctor Caius, the excitable Gallic physician in the comedy, refuses
to accept this Elizabethan forerunner of the Nazi "Fifth Column"
at face value:
"I cannot tell vat is dat: but it is tell-a-me, dat you make
grand preparation for a Duke de Jamanie: by my trot, der is no Duke
that the. Court is know, to come: I tell you for good will: adieu."
Whereupon, mine host of the Garter, realizing that he has been victimized
by his easy acceptance of the slogan, "Germans are honest men,"
runs forth into the night shouting.
"Hue and cry, villain, go! Assist me, Knight, I am undone: fly,
run!
Hue and cry, villain, Vam undone!"
This "Duke de Jamanie" has been identified by Sir E. K. Chambers
and others as the Duke of Württemberg, formerly Count of Mömpelgart,
who visited England from August 9 to September 5, 1592. Mömpelgart
was received at Windsor by Queen Elizabeth and, on his own initiative,
pressed for the privilege of investment with the Order of the Garter.
During his tour of England the German and his suite were delayed at
Oxford, says Chambers, "because his post-horses were worn out,
and could not be replaced, even at double the normal cost." It
is also stated that he misused a warrant for securing post-horses to
the chagrin of certain innkeepers, such as mine host in The Merry
Wives.
The Teutonic "nobleman" did not, however, achieve his wistful
desire to be a Knight of the Order of the Garter until April 23,1597,
when he was installed by proxy in absentia.
Dr. A. S. Cairncross in The Problem of Hamlet very logically
concludes that both Chambers and Prof. Leslie Hotson are wrong in assuming
that The Merry Wives of Windsor was written after the German
Duke became a Knight of the Garter. The proper time to have rapped this
pushful boor would have been immediately following his invasion of England
in 1592, when his exploits were being currently discussed—rather
than five years later when the Queen had finally honored the Teuton
with England's most coveted decoration.
The author of The Merry Wives of Windsor possessed an intimate
knowledge of the village of Windsor with its castle, its Chapel of St.
George, royal preserves, Garter Inn and general topographical features,
as Maynard Dixon, historian of the famous borough, has shown in convincing
detail.
It is impossible to place the shadowy William of Stratford in Windsor
through any known documentation.
But one of the most interesting papers written by Mr. J. Thomas Looney
in support of his main arguments to prove that Edward de Vere Earl of
Oxford was the real creator of the comedy brings out the fact that Oxford
was familiar with the environs of Windsor from early youth. We even
have a contemporary sketch of him at the age of twenty-two, carrying
the Sword of State before the Queen during a royal procession on its
way to St. George's Chapel, June 18, 1572, the occasion being the installation
of the French Duc de Montmorenci as a Knight of the Garter.
At this same period Oxford was known to be Elizabeth's favorite entertainer,
putting on shows and pageants for the Queen's delectation.
And if, as Dr. Cairncross, Prof. T. W. Baldwin and others opine, The
Merry Wives of Windsor was produced as a part of the colorful Garter
festival of April 23, 1593, this date would fit the realistic Oxfordian
chronology very aptly indeed. For at that time the chief candidate for
the high honor of installation in the Order of the Garter was Lord Oxford's
friend and fellow patron of theatrical enterprise, Edward Somerset Earl
of Worcester.
The two groups of players who wore the liveries of Worcester and Oxford
were among the ablest in the realm. Privy Council records show that
in March, 1602, a special request from the Counsellors was addressed
to the Lord Mayor of London to lift a previously enforced ban and allow
a joint company of actors patronized by both of these Earls to continue
to give public performances at the Boar's Head Tavern, "the place
they have especially used and do like best of." It seems superfluous
to point out that the old Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap—about
two minutes' walk across Candlewick Street from Lord Oxford's ancestral
city residence, Oxford Court—is also the scene of the bohemian
revels of Falstaff and Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays.
Also significant is the fact that Philip Henslowe, the theatrical manager,
lists in his famous Diary the names of William Kemp and John
Lowin as actors lately included in this Worcester-Oxford group in 1602.
Both Kemp and Lowin are permanently identified with the presentation
of Shakespearean works. In the introductory pages to the First Folio
of 1623, they are mentioned among "the Principall Actors in all
these Playes."
The editor of the Tudor Edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor suggests
that William Kemp may have been the original creator of the clownish
figure of Sir John Oldcastle (later renamed Falstaff) in the Windsor
comedy.
Such testimony argues circumstantially for Lord Oxford's personal connection
with Shakespearean theatrical affairs. His friend and co-patron of well
known Shakespearean actors, Lord Worcester, seems to have been one of
the inner circle of aristocratic intellectuals who knew the facts behind
the authorship of The Merry Wives of Windsor and most of the
other First Folio plays. If the personal papers and correspondence of
Edward Somerset Earl of Worcester are still in existence and happen
to survive the present blitzkreig, they may provide some interesting
corroborative sidelights on the great authorship mystery.
Worcester was the nephew of Sir Thomas North whose English version
of Plutarch's Lives was used so extensively by Shakespeare in
writing Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus.
Oxford himself owned a copy of Plutarch. We learn this from an account
book still on file at Hatfield House which lists the Earl's personal
expenses in 1569. Among various other items which bear witness to the
young nobleman's literary proclivities is the notation of a payment
to William Seres, the London stationer, for "Plutarch's works in
French, with other books and papers."
This was the excellent and readable French translation of the Roman
biographer that had been made by Jacques Amyot. It should be noted that
Sir Thomas North utilized Amyot's work for his English edition, instead
of going back to Plutarch's original Latin.
Everybody knows that Shakespeare follows the Amyot-North treatment
of the Roman Lives very closely, particularly in Coriolanus.
Oxfordians also know that Edward de Vere possessed colloquial command
of both Latin and French. Moreover, if we consider the playwriting Earl
as the real Shakespeare, it is a reasonable possibility that he may
have taken an active hand with Sir Thomas North in rendering Amyot's
Plutarch into English during the 1569-79 decade, just as he can be shown
to have collaborated with other popular translators of his day, such
as Thomas Bedingfield, Bartholomew Clerke and Anthony Munday.
Incidentally, no Stratfordian authority has ever been able to bring
William Shakspere within documentary hailing distance of this particular
literary circle.
And though the Nazi hordes, bent on the destruction of English-French
civilization, may with the same tragic stupidity that characterizes
the rest of their "intellectual" effort, "spare"
Stratford-on-Avon, their loudly trumpeted purpose to "rehabilitate"
the Bard as a true German prophet remains as ridiculous as it is impertinent.
We may well imagine what type of "Shakespeare" might emerge
from the colossal sausage-machines of Goebbels' propaganda portfolio.
The early butcher's apprentice of Stratfordia would come into his own
with a vengeance.
But over and beyond such a ghastly harlequinade—too terrible to
contemplate—the voice of the true Shakespeare, speaking to all
lovers of justice, truth and courage throughout the world will continue
to inspire unfettered men in their grapple to the death with the forces
of soul-destroying slavery now menacing those civilizations which .the
Bard in his own lifetime wished to see joined in amity and enlightened
progress.
Charles Wisner Barrell
