Bard Lovers Lend Me Your Ears
by Timothy Burns Watson
The Oxfordian school of Shakespeare criticism has been gaining strength recently. Oxfordians have quite an illustrious history actually. Among their supporters is Sigmund Freud, who found the Earl of Oxford to be a perfect psychological match for the bard. Indeed in his youth, his adopting father, the 16th Earl of Oxford, died and his mother married with such unseemly haste that the young earl seems not to have thought terribly highly of her. Later, this Hamlet-like story would receive another layering from the behavior of his secret biological mother, the Queen. The Queen it seems desired to marry Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, so desperately in fact that she was not about to allow his wife, Amy Robsart, to stand in the way. The Queen and her lover arranged a little accident for her as it were. The rumor seems to have had wings for it traveled widely throughout Europe. So widespread was the rumor that the Queen was actually prevented from making her marriage official. Instead, the marriage took place secretly in the country. Her consort would become the Lord Chancellor rather than the king. He would, however, share an adjoining room in the castle for late night liaisons. Gertrude would be a composite figure based on the bard’s biological and adopting mothers. One could imagine the discomfort the Queen and the Earl of Leicester would feel watching their murder parodied on the stage in a performance fit for a king and queen. “The play is the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the king.” The bard sees his role in society as political and ethical. His role is to restore some semblance of order and righteousness to society. He would naturally quip under the circumstances, “The times are out of joint/ Oh cursed spite that e’er I was born to set things right.”
Far-fetched as it will seem to skeptics, Oxford was a British agent who received an annual fee from the Queen of one thousand pounds, a sum paid to him by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was the Lord Chamberlain, which placed him in charge of all theatrical productions staged for the Queen. His theater company would hold regular rehearsals at Blackfriar’s Theater in London. Unfortunately, the author would lose caste in the Elizabethan Court due to a scandalous love affair with the Queen’s handmaiden, Anne Vavasor. The scandal erupted when the Queen learned that the maid was carrying the Earl’s child. This so incensed the Queen that she had the Earl and the maid confined to the Tower for a brief period. The maid’s uncle, Thomas Knavet, saw it as his duty to defend the honor of his niece. He would arrive at the Blackfriar’s Theater with a contingent of men and challenge the earl to a duel. The warring clansmen would stage their sword fight along the banks of the River Thames. The duel between the Earl and Anne’s uncle would inflict a wound that would stay with the earl for the rest of his life, one he would later refer to in his sonnets. This provided much of the biographical fodder for Romeo and Juliet, a classic Italian tale that somehow imitated life, his in particular.
The earl might have some motivation to get his own back on the Queen after being disciplined by his mother so severely. Being the secret prince and her son, he knows she will spare him the rod and the rack. He also knows that she cannot punish him publicly for something written in his plays because his status as a playwright is a state secret. A play affords him the best option for revenge. The hidden import of Romeo’s balcony scene speech may be clearer in this light:
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
Among occultists like Sir John Dee, the Queen’s occult status was that of Diana, Cynthia or Virginia, the goddess of the moon. She was the virgin queen, Diana, the huntress. She was therefore the moon, who being middle-aged was wan and pale when set against the youthful visage of her maidservant, who wore the Tudor vestal which was in fact green. Juliet meanwhile alludes to Romeo’s secret name, “What’s in a name? That which is called a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Indeed so, especially if that rose was a Tudor rose. His pedigree would smell so sweet that even if he were called by another name, the pollen of his royal pedigree would bear a fragrance so heady in its perfume as to overwhelm the senses of a young maiden.
As for the bard’s real name, Edward de Vere, even that was a stage name for the man for whom all the world was a stage, since he was a changeling child raised in the de Vere home. His other alias, his code name as a British agent, William Shakespeare, was derived from Pallas Athena, Hasti-Vibrans, the Spear-shaker, who always shook her spear at the serpents of ignorance and vice. As with all “the invisibles” that joined Sir Francis Bacon’s secret writing societies Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet, de Vere wore Pallas’s helmet of invisibility. He was one of Francis’s invisibles writing under a pen name or anonymously. One reason Freemasons have attributed the authorship of the plays to Bacon is because he left his ciphers and codes on many of the Shakespeare plays and we can see him planning and titling the Shakespeare plays in his Northumberland Manuscript. He would naturally, since according to Freemason Alfred Dodd, author of Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story, he is a Freemason Grand Master and Rosicrucian and the head of Elizabeth’s secret propaganda ministries Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet. He was also, according to Dodd, the state censor in charge of all books published in England in his day. In fact, many of the books that would have been in “Shakespeare’s” library, from which he gathered much of the fodder for his plays, were being translated into English by Bacon’s “team of good pens” at this time.
According to Baconian scholars, A Comedy of Errors was first staged in the dining hall of Gray’s Inn law school and an inn of court in London. The idea that a commoner, however talented, would be let in the front door, let alone stage a play there is patently absurd. The caste system of the time was so rigid that aristocrats were virtually racist in terms of the discrimination they meted out on commoners. Anyone familiar with life in England will know that the class system remains a serious social impediment to this day.
There were only a handful of books in the backward provincial town of Stratford at the time and most of them were in the hands of a local rector. The idea that a commoner could have mastered his own tongue to the degree to which the bard obviously did, let alone master several European tongues is patently absurd. He would not have found the opportunity. Anyone challenging this notion is simply ignorant, probably due to their own position of status and privilege within society, to understand the difficulties attending someone attempting to climb the social ladder in that day. It was only after the Great War in the 20th century that commoners were admitted to university academies in the U.K. How pray tell could a commoner have achieved such a thing in Elizabethan times? It is clear the bard is versed in legal terminology and concepts that only a law student would be familiar with. Where would he have got such an education when only those of noble peerage were admitted to law school? Despite being a graduate of Gray’s Inn and a conferred barrister, Bacon did not practice law and derived no income from the practice of law. He was often in debt due to a chronic shortage of funds. Oxford, on the other hand, did practice law and had gained a reputation for himself within the profession.
Finally, for those who insist on the Bacon authorship, let me say that there is no evidence he possessed a poet’s ear. He would have his ciphers on the plays because he is coordinating the propaganda ministry and is the chief censor of the realm, placing his personal seal or watermark on everything published in England in his day. In the Druidic system of initiation, the Ovates is the highest position and the Bard is very much secondary. The man we know as Shakespeare is referred to as “the bard”. There is no mistaking his position in the Druidic hierarchy. There is an Ovates presiding above him and overseeing all that he does. It is clear that Bacon is not a Bard. He is the overseer of higher degree. In the feudal degree system Freemasonry upholds, those of higher degree take credit for the work of those of lower degree. This is the nature of the feudal system as it was in that day practically worldwide, even in locales as far flung as Japan and Korea. Interesting to note also is that, at this time it was considered beneath the dignity of a nobleman to lower himself by performing in the theater, writing plays or poetry or involving himself in the arts. This was as true of England as it was of places as far away as Japan and Korea. Interestingly, Korea and Japan also have a history of nobles writing under pen names and anonymously. In Korea, two operatic works, Chung Hyang Chon and Shim Chang Chon, were composed by an anonymous author of noble rank.
The caste system was really quite rigid at this time and did not allow much wiggle room for those who wished to break caste. Will Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon is unlikely to have been granted much wiggle room. He was however a convenient front man for an intelligence operation that required that the author’s true identity remain hidden. Indeed, Will Shaksper would have been in it on it as it were, initiated into Freemasonry, oaths and obligations administered, sworn to secrecy on pain of death, and forced to keep mum for the balance of his life. All the world is indeed a stage and for the Elizabethan one had to be a player. The idea that freedom of speech existed at this time is patently ridiculous. England was under siege by France and Spain and was a virtual police state not terribly different from North Korea today in terms of its hermit status. Commoners were not permitted to travel to the Continent and could never obtain a passport. Nobles could only travel to Europe after receiving special permission from the Queen. How could the bard show such familiarity with the geography of France and Italy that he practically paints the landscape for us had he not been there to bear witness to it in his own eyes? Will Shaksper wouldn’t have been permitted on the boat.
The man we know as Shakespeare had no freedom of speech. He was forced to fulfill his role as a propagandist of the Queen’s court. All one has to do is look at modern day Hollywood to see that it functions as the propaganda ministry of the American government. The CIA is known to have had a longstanding relationship with several Hollywood studios including Columbia Pictures. For artists who are part of the establishment upward mobility is a piece of cake. For artists who inveigh against the establishment, it is an uphill climb. Anyone who debates this has not had the experience. The bard was a supporter of caste. Just look at Troilus and Cressida and the early plays and you see an ardent supporter of caste before you. Why would a commoner support the caste system when it surely would have stood in his way at every leg of his journey through life?
The poet would eventually lose caste however. Acting in plays was not a luxury noblemen were allowed, and there is ample evidence that Oxford broke caste to be in his own cast. In addition, he had offended the Queen by having a love affair with her handmaiden. Having lost his standing in court and with no love lost between himself and his peers, Oxford would naturally gravitate to the company of commoners, most particularly members of his own acting company. This explains why we see him discarding the Italian renaissance courtier dress of his flamboyant youth and adopting the commoner’s dress of later life. In the portrait painting comparison featured in my last article (
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/160141.php) the middle-aged bard shown on the right in commoner’s dress has lost his hair due to aging, and has adopted a bohemian look replete with long hair, earring, scruffy beard and commoner’s dress. His later plays – Hamlet, King Lear, Richard II – correspondingly reject caste. We have an author who accepts the fact we are all accorded the same fate as poor Yorick in the end, a lawyer in life relegated to the level earth and the trowel in death.
