For centuries scholars have debated the true identity of the author of the magnificent body of poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare, the actor and co-owner of a successful theater company who hailed from Stratford-upon-Avon. And yet many credible voices -- Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and Walt Whitman, to name a few -- have challenged conventional wisdom, proposing alternative candidates from rival playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe to Queen Elizabeth herself, in what has become a centuries-old parlor game.
In this provocative and convincing new book, historian and attorney Bertram Fields presents a stunning, and highly plausible, new theory of the case. Mastering four centuries of evidence and argument, Fields revisits all the critical facts and unanswered questions. Could there have been a single man in the English theater with such breadth and range of knowledge, a man who knew Latin and Greek, the etiquette and practices of nobility, the workings of the law, and the tactics of the military and navy? Or -- as Fields asks in his tantalizing conclusion -- was this not one man at all, but a magnificent collaboration between two very different men, a partnership born in the roiling culture of Elizabethan England, and protected for centuries by the greatest conspiracy in literary history?
Blending biography and historical investigation with vibrant scholarship and storytelling, Players revolutionizes our understanding of the greatest writer -- or writers -- in our history.
Players
The Mysterious Identity of William ShakespeareBy Bertram FieldsHarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Bertram Fields
All right reserved.ISBN: 006083417XChapter One
Tudors and Stuarts
Many lines, scenes, and characters in Shakespeare's works are, or at least are claimed to be, references to actual characters and events of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and, to a lesser extent, her successor, James I. An understanding of those characters and events may be a useful tool in attempting to solve the riddle of Shakespeare's identity.
Many such examples exist. Polonius, the ponderous royal councilor in Hamlet, may have been patterned after Elizabeth's key advisor, William Cecil, whom she made Lord Burghley. Some commentators have seen Hamlet himself in the mercurial but indecisive earl of Essex. Others, viewing Essex in a different light, see him in the noble conspirator Brutus, in Julius Caesar.
We may find clues to the Bard's true identity in the attitudes of Elizabeth and James toward the Catholic minority, in the charges of heresy and blasphemy leveled against Christopher Marlowe, and in Marlowe's strange "death" once those terrifying charges were brought. Other clues may be found in Bacon's prosecution of Essex for treason and in the queen's violent reaction to a performance of Richard II.
Sir Walter Raleigh's adventures in the New World; the English defeat of the armada; Essex's Irish campaign; a famous shipwreck near Bermuda, the Catholic "gunpowder plot," designed to blow up Parliament and kill the king; and other events of the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages may be useful in establishing the dates on which the plays were written and thus in including or eliminating particular candidates. Even such intimate matters as the bedroom proclivities of the earl of Southampton, King James's homosexuality, and the possibility that Queen Elizabeth had an incorrectable sexual infirmity may assist us in exploring the evidence of the sonnets and the First Folio.
Moreover, each of the candidates for the Shakespeare authorship lived during Elizabeth's reign and was significantly affected by it. Most also survived into the reign of James I, who, among other things, sponsored the company of actors partly owned by the Stratford man.
A brief summary of the lives and characters of these two monarchs and of the principal events of their reigns may be a helpful key to analyzing the issues before us. Readers already familiar with the reigns of Elizabeth and James may wish to skip to chapter 2.
On a summer day in 1485, the Wars of the Roses -- the longrunning series of vicious battles between the great houses of York and Lancaster?finally came to an end. Betrayed by the peers on whom he had counted, the reigning king, Richard III, was defeated by Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field, significantly altering the history of England and the Western world. Richard, the last Plantagenet, died while fighting ferociously against overwhelming odds. Now, Henry Tudor, whose claim to the throne was exceedingly weak, took the throne as Henry VII, founding the Tudor dynasty.
Henry became a shrewd and practical king. Seeking to bolster his tenuous claim, he married Richard's niece, the daughter of his deceased older brother, Edward IV. At least initially, Henry was reluctant to give his wife the public respect customary for a queen, probably because he realized that her claim to the throne was far better than his own.
As Henry grew older, it seemed that the kingdom would be secure in the hands of his oldest son, Arthur, who had married the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. But Arthur died prematurely, and the heir to the throne became his younger brother. This was the handsome, athletic Henry, who married his brother's widow soon after becoming king and went on to become the legendary Henry VIII.
Henry and Catherine had a daughter, Mary, who later became queen. But Catherine's inability to produce a male heir and Henry's obsession with the sensual Anne Boleyn led the king to seek a divorce from Catherine in order to marry Anne. When the Pope refused his support, Henry brought about the English reformation. Severing ties between England -- until then a Catholic country -- and the Church of Rome, Henry placed himself, as "defender of the faith," at the head of the new Protestant Church of England.
He divorced Catherine and married Anne, the second of his six wives. Like Catherine, however, Anne produced no male heir. She did give birth in 1533 to a daughter, Elizabeth, who was to become perhaps the greatest of all English monarchs. Englishmen were delighted at the birth of this Protestant princess, who was English on both sides, in contrast to her half sister Mary, who was staunchly Catholic and half Spanish to boot.
But Elizabeth's prospects declined significantly in 1536. In that year, when Elizabeth was only three, her mother was beheaded. The charge was committing adultery with her own brother, a claim almost certainly false, and of committing the same offense with a young music teacher, a claim that was probably false as well.
Still Elizabeth survived. She was placed in country manors under the supervision of a governess. She received a superb education and excelled as a student. At an early age, she acquired fluency in several languages, as well as a thorough grasp of classical and medieval history.
Henry VIII's third marriage, to Jane Seymour, finally produced the male heir for whom he had yearned, albeit a physically weak one. Later, when Henry finally married the kindly and caring Catherine Parr, Elizabeth and Mary were often brought to court, along with their half brother Edward. Elizabeth's education was furthered under Catherine Parr's guidance, and she added dancing, riding, and musicianship to her accomplishments.
The Act of Succession provided that Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, in that order, would succeed to the throne on Henry's death. This order was confirmed in Henry's will.
Henry's death in 1547 began a series of difficulties and dangers for Elizabeth. At first, she resided peacefully enough in Chelsea with the widowed queen, Catherine Parr ...
Continues...Excerpted from Playersby Bertram Fields Copyright © 2006 by Bertram Fields. Excerpted by permission.
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