As outlined in previous pages of this essay, "Mr. William Shakespeare" can be shown to have made instinctive use of those books by Arthur Golding which the Elizabethan translator either dedicated to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, or published while personally associated with his literary nephew—"whose infancy from the beginning was ever sacred to the Muses."

This situation, touching the very well-springs of Shakespeare's creative mystery, reveals much coincidental evidence to buttress other strong documentary testimony in the Oxford-Shakespeare authorship case.

Shakespeare's Familiarity with the Routine of Choir Boys

It has already been mentioned (continues the author of Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge) that Shakespeare quoted more from the Psalter than from any other book of the Bible. ... His indebtedness to the Psalter struck Mr. Anders very forcibly when reviewing the subject in his Shakespeare's Books, and he hazarded the suggestion that perhaps he had sung the Psalms in church as a choir-boy. Certainly his knowledge of the Psalms is greater than the ordinary layman might be expected to acquire by attendance at church. . . . It would account for his acquaintance with some of the elements of vocal music.

A shrewd observation and one that coincides with Edward de Vere's recorded activities with uncanny accuracy!

For contemporary accounts of Elizabethan theatrical affairs, as published by Sir E. K. Chambers and others, tell us that beginning in 1583 and continuing for an indefinite period thereafter, Lord Oxford was the patron of a company of junior players made up from choir-boys of the Chapel Royal and St. Paul's Cathedral. As a poet, playwright and gifted musician himself, the Earl must certainly have familiarized himself with the routine of these choir singers before selecting them to appear under his patronage. John Lyly, the writer whose influence upon the comedies of Shakespeare has been remarked by hundreds of critics, acted as private secretary to Oxford at this period and also as stage manager of the "Oxford Boys." The published Quartos of all of Lyly's comedies but one state on their title-pages that they were first presented by these children from the choirs of the Queen's Chapel and St. Paul's.

Such facts not only conjure up pleasing pictures of the Earl's real associations and interests; they help supply tangible substance to the Shakespearean creative background which otherwise presents the most baffling vacuum in English literature.

The evidence that brings Arthur Golding and the Bard within the same creative orbit is too extensive to have been accidental. Just as Sir Sidney Lee and other orthodox authorities have concluded, the dramatist is mentally akin to the translator. Such being the case, it would seem not only possible but very natural to find that these two outstanding Elizabethan writers had enjoyed personal relations. But no scrap of testimony can be produced to show that the Stratford citizen ever met Golding.

On the other hand, the close relationship—both by blood and literary affinity—that existed between the playwriting, Earl of Oxford and the translator of Ovid, provides constructive evidence that Oxford was indeed the real "William Shakespeare."

Golding's Biography Points the Way

But in these comments on Louis Thorn Golding's book I do not wish to give the impression that the author is himself a proponent of the Oxfordian theory or that he sees any particular significance in the facts that Arthur Golding personally endeavored to influence the thinking and the conduct of his literary nephew, while at the same time the Golding translations are admitted by everyone to have fundamentally influenced several of the best-known works published under the name of "William Shakespeare."' As it happens, Louis Thorn Golding devotes only four or five pages to the latter subject and follows the old and mistaken notion that Edward of Oxford was permanently addicted to a "wild and spendthrift life."

I have, therefore, taken An Elizabethan Puritan as a starting point for new research which includes Lord Oxford in his lesser known character of a gifted scholar, a producer of plays and a writer whom contemporary critics declared would be recognized as the foremost among all Court poets if his "doings could be found out and made public with the rest." The fact that Dr. Gabriel Harvey in 1578 took it upon himself to admonish this nobleman that he was wasting too much of his time upon "bloodless books" and "writings that serve no useful purpose," while ending his harangue with the striking reference:

. . . thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes a spear. . .

should have given a hint to students of the Shakespearean arcana generations ago that Arthur Golding's aristocratic nephew, who lived so many years under "an unlifted shadow" in the company of bohemian writers, actors and playwrights, would repay careful investigation.

As it turns out, the Golding, Oxford-Shakespeare lead opens up so many new lines of evidence contributory to a realistic solution of the new authorship theory that its most important phases can be sketched only in barest outline here. A few more instances of "Mr. William Shakespeare's" reliance upon mental stimuli provided by Lord Oxford's uncle, and we shall have done.

Another Golding Book That Influenced the Bard

In 1578, the same year that Harvey, the Cambridge pundit, saw fit to reprove the Earl of Oxford publicly for devoting himself to the pen instead of the spear, Arthur Golding issued from the press of John Day a translation of Seneca. The title, rendered in modern English, reads:

The work of the excellent Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca concerning Benefiting, that is To say the doing, receiving, and requiting of good Turns.

Dr. Lily B. Campbell in her scholarly study of Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (1930), traces to Arthur Golding's popularization of this Senecan discourse "most of the ideas on gratitude"' that found dramatic expression in Shakespeare's age. She uses the Golding text in direct comparison with the basic structure of King Lear to show how the playwright developed his psychological theme with Seneca's observations on the good or evil results that follow wise or foolish benefactions clearly in mind.

Thus in King Lear we find that the law of benefiting is not observed by either party, for the Kim, never ceases to recount the good he has done and the gratitude that is owed him while his undutiful daughters forget altogether the benefits they have received and fail to be grateful for them.

It is a notable fact that Lord Oxford, like King Lear, was the father of three daughters. As he grew older and his estates dwindled, the nobleman experienced increasing difficulty in supporting the young ladies in accordance with their social positions. It therefore came about that his father-in-law, the great Lord Burghley, forced Oxford from time to time to sign away rights in Castle Hedingham and other ancient family properties in order to insure the economic future of these girls—though all three seem to have been Cordelias when left to their own inclinations.

The influence of Seneca as a dramatist on Shakespeare is so obvious that comment would be tedious. The Roman philosopher-playwright is mentioned by name in Hamlet and quoted or referred to more than twenty-five times in six or seven different plays. Certain important elements in Hamlet derive as directly from Senecan psychology as does the gratitude theme of Lear. Dr. John W. Cunliffe covers most of these parallels in The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy (1893).

A thorough study of Golding's version of Benefiting will, however, unquestionably reveal Shakespeare's indebtedness to the book for many turns of thought not heretofore traced in origin. Timon of Athens' remark: "We are born to do benefits"; and several direct paraphrases in the Sonnets immediately present themselves. But perhaps the most extraordinary of all appears in the philosophic motif of that charming song, in As You Like It:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen
Because it is not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

* * *
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friends remembered not.

A Murder and An Earthquake

In addition to his many translations from the Latin and French, Lord Oxford's indefatigable uncle published two English books on rather sensational contemporary happenings.

The first of these was A brief discourse of the late murder of master George Sanders, a worshipful Citizen of London (1573). This pithy recital of the snuffing out of a prosperous merchant tailor by the paramour of the tailor's wife, with special emphasis on "the secret working of Gods terrible wrathe in a guiltie and blouddie conscience," went into several editions and was later dramatized under the title of A Warning for Faire Women. In this form it was produced at the Globe Theatre during the 1590's by "Shakespeare's company." The play, though printed in 1599, bears no author's name and has been attributed by some critics to John Lyly who served so long as Lord Oxford's private secretary and stage manager.

Arthur Golding's other original work was A discourse upon the Earthquake that happened through this realm of England and other places of Christendom, the sixth of April, 1580. In mentioning this journalistic tract, the Dictionary of National Biography remarks:

Shakespeare refers to the same earthquake in Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 3.

Golding Thwarts a Crime in High Life and "Shakespeare's" Indignation Rankles

One of the most interesting portions of An Elizabethan Puritan has to do with the serious troubles that John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford, experienced as the result of a love affair with one "Mistress Dorothy," the governess or companion of his young daughter, Lady Katherine de Vere, following the death of his first wife. The Earl evidently gave a promise of marriage to this woman which she in turn admitted to the child. In some way the affair came to the ears of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who had seized power as Lord Protector in 1547, upon the accession of Henry VIII's frail heir. Greedy and unscrupulous, Somerset immediately set on foot a scheme to blackmail the Earl of Oxford into an agreement to affiance his small daughter and only heir (at that time) to one of Somerset's sons. To accomplish this, "Mistress Dorothy" was spirited away and pressure was exerted upon Oxford to make him agree to a "fine," ostensibly in earnest of his daughter's marriage to young Seymour, but really for the private enrichment of the Duke of Somerset. This "fine," as exacted from the harassed nobleman, was so worded that its provisions stripped his collateral heirs of their rights in the vast Vere estates. Certain legal authorities date the decline of the Vere family fortunes from this ill-advised love affair of the 16th Earl, coupled with Somerset's blackmailing devices; though the forced "fine" was later voided by Parliament.

This calls to mind another tell-tale "coincidence" in the Oxford-Shakespeare dossier, for it appears that in defiance of full historical warrant, the author of 1 Henry VI and 2 Henry VI makes a Duke of Somerset the outstanding villain of both plays. He is pictured as a scheming trouble-maker who causes the death of the valiant Talbot and his son by delaying re-enforcements during the battle of Bordeaux. Throughout both dramas, Somerset is referred to as "the fraud of England," "vile traitor," and characterized as one who studies to play both sides in the contention between the houses of York and Lancaster to his own advantage. At one point Richard Plantagenet exclaims:

And for those wrongs, those bitter injuries
Which Somerset hath offer'd to my House,
I doubt not but with honour to redress;
And therefore haste I to the Parliament,
Either to be restorèd to my blood,
Or make my ill th'advantage of my good.

Such expressions would come even more appropriately from the mouth of an Elizabethan Vere than from a long-dead Plantagenet. For it is a fact, here thoroughly documented, that as a direct result of John de Vere's persecution by the sixteenth century Somerset and the calling into question of the legality of the Earl's marriage to Margery Golding Edward de Vere's mother, the 17th Earl of Oxford was in 1563 put in jeopardy of losing his titles and all rights to his patrimony. Only a thirteen-year-old boy when the first of these suits affecting his legitimacy were instituted, his literary uncle undertook the "desperate study" of his case in legal rebuttal. And so well did the staunch Puritan perform these duties that the little Earl was saved the disgrace of social and economic extinction at the outset of his career. But the experience could not help but leave marks deeply etched in a mind so impressionable.

These circumstances may explain "Mr. William Shakespeare's" determination to embalm the name of Somerset in the amber of his, scorn, just as they give additional point to the Bard's appreciation of loyal uncles. Also, quite reasonably, they may indicate a personal motive behind the development of the Bastard's character in King John. For years ago Algernon Charles Swinburne, among others, remarked that this debonnaire young patriot who is branded as illegitimate at the beginning of his active life, is unquestionably the beau ideal of all Shakespeare's quasi-historical heroes.

Certainly the recovered facts of Edward de Vere's private life, his known activities and associations, provide more realistic answers to such problems in the psychology of literary creation than any conjecture that has yet emanated from the shadowy back-ground of the rustic village on the Avon.

Charles Wisner Barrell