This little number is going to throw the argument as to who actually
wrote those plays, still Will will still have the handle, wonder, what
he had on him?
Study team uncovers 'real Bard'
October 06, 2005
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16825259%255E2703,00.html
LONDON: The real author of the works that have been attributed to
William Shakespeare for more than 400 years has been unmasked,
according to research.
A book to be published this month by a leading academic publisher, with
a foreword by Mark Rylance, the artistic director of the Globe theatre,
will claim that the greatest plays and verse in the English language
were written by Sir Henry Neville (c1562-1615). He was a leading
Elizabethan figure, though a minor character in today's history books.
Whether Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon birthplace will be consigned
to a tourists' backwater and the vast publishing industry devoted to
him condemned to pulp remains to be seen. But the authors, the
academics Brenda James and William Rubinstein, are in no doubt that
they have finally uncovered the "real Bard".
They say that Neville, a rotund man nicknamed "Falstaff" by close
friends, had the virtue - unlike Shakespeare, who lacked an appropriate
background - of being an educated man of culture, a courtier and a
well-travelled linguist.
A wealthy landowner, he was a member of parliament for most of his life
and an ambassador to France, belonging to one of England's great
families and related to many monarchs depicted in Shakespeare's plays.
His life has been found to mirror the evolution of the Bard's works so
precisely that the authors believe that it cannot be dismissed as
coincidence. In the history plays, Neville's ancestors - for instance,
Richard Nevil, the Earl of Warwick in Henry VI, Part II - are described
with an accuracy that could have been written only by someone with
Neville's knowledge. His ancestors, such as John of Gaunt, in Richard
II, are always mentioned sympathetically.
The authors have unearthed in Lincolnshire's public records office a
notebook of 1602 belonging to Neville while he was imprisoned in the
Tower of London. Crucially, they say, it includes background notes for
the procession in Henry VIII some 11 years before the play was
produced.
They also discovered that, as a director of the London Virginia
Company, a trading venture, Neville had access to a 20,000-word letter
detailing the Bermuda shipwreck of 1609, "a base" for The Tempest two
years later.
Shakespeare could not have known of this letter, they say, as releasing
it might have devalued shares in the company. Such evidence was
strengthened by Neville's letters, which they found to be
"Shakespearean" in tone and vocabulary.
Ms James, a former English lecturer at Portsmouth University, stumbled
across Neville after cracking the secret of the mysterious dedication
to Shakespeare's sonnets. She claims that hidden in the text is a clue
that points to Neville, on which she will elaborate in her next book.
Professor Rubinstein of University College Wales said: "The
coincidences of Neville's dates and the chronology of the plays are so
overwhelming, they are compelling in themselves - there are no awkward
bits."
Shakespeare had no royal court experience and did not apparently ever
visit continental Europe - yet his writings show him deeply familiar
with court life, Elizabethan high politics and Italy and France.
In contrast, Neville, an almost exact contemporary of Shakespeare
(1564-1616), travelled extensively to the Continent, visiting various
places that featured in the plays.
From 1601-03, Neville was imprisoned in the Tower for his part in an
attempt to overthrow the Queen. Professor Rubinstein said that the
trauma - "his head was almost chopped off" - would explain the seminal
change in the plays, when he moved from comedies and histories to
tragedies and problem plays; a break unexplained in Shakespeare's life.
The Times
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