Adapted from Peter Dickson, author of Bardgate: Shake-speare and the Royalists who Stole the Bard, who originally posted something like this to Phaeton (and elsewhere) on December 24, 2011:In his two-volume work Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters (1986),1,2 William Plumer Fowler (1900-1993) examines five letters from the hand of William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, using the same approach he applied to the letters of Oxford. He cites research and publication of Derby advocates--French scholars Abel Lefranc and Georges Lambin and British scholar A. W. Titherley--noting they'd made compelling arguments in favor of Derby input into three dramas: Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Love's Labour's Lost.3
Fowler also cites Gilbert Slater from his book . .
'If we had to assume a single Shakespeare, and if there were no valid evidence in support, Derby must be taken into serious consideration as a possible contributor to Shakespearean drama.'4Fowler himself concluded:
'In summary, these five letters of Oxford's son-in-law Will Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby resolve, perhaps, the conflicting claims of the Oxfordians and Derbians to Shakespeare's sole authorship. They afford definite evidence of collaboration between Oxford and Derby in certain plays, and/or of Derby's editorial touch as one of the 'Grand Possessors' of the Shakespearean dramatic productions during the nineteen years between the date of Oxford's death in 1604 and the publication of the Folio in 1623. Derby himself lived another 19 years until 1642 when he died at the age of 81.'5Fowler found parallels with Stanley's letters and other Shakespeare plays.6 The Henry VI series and Richard III stand out precisely because of what Lefranc spotted so long ago: the strong pro-Derby slant or bias contained in certain parts of these plays, to the point of outright historical falsification, to make the Stanley family come off so well.
Had the Earl of Oxford a reason to ingratiate himself to the Stanley family? If these dramas pre-date the Stanley-de Vere marriage in 1595, then this question becomes even more relevant.7
Bardgate: Shake-speare and the Royalists Who Stole the Bard essentially reaches the conclusion that the three Oxfordians--Looney, Slater, and Fowler--found hard to avoid: some kind of intertwining of Oxford's literary legacy with the Stanleys.8,9 This pattern of evidence over a quarter century, coupled with other evidence that swayed prominent Oxfordians,10 lends weight to a more complex Oxford-Derby or Oxford-Stanley family symbiosis over a mono-Oxfordian theory.11
NOTES:
1. Fowler was a graduate of Roxbury Latin School, Dartmouth College, and Harvard Law School; served as president, Shakespeare Club of Boston (1972-1984); was known for writing sonnets, some 141 during his lifetime.
2. A section in Appendix A to the second volume; pages 826-858.
3. The interplay between the words 'strange' and 'truth' in the final act of Measure for Measure is impressive.
4. The Seven Shakespeares (1931; p. 172). Slater's book, in which he reviews arguments on behalf of various alternative Bards, needs to be checked.
5. Final paragraph, p. 858. No hint from Fowler he was aware of the extent to which Looney abandoned the idea of a mono-Oxfordian theory in his own book 'Shakespeare' Identified in 1920 and in favor of some Oxford-Derby symbiosis in his debate with MacDonald Lucas in The National Review in 1922-1923.
5. Which recently have been the focus of Stratfordians--both Orthodox and Catholic Bard advocates--along with Richard III, who link the composition of such dramas directly to and for Lord Strange's Men, the acting company of Derby's older brother, Fernando Stanley.
6. i.e., Henry VI Parts One, Two and Three, Richard III, Henry VIII, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, King John, King Lear, The Winter's Tale. There is not much overlap between these dramas that caught Fowler's attention and the Shakespearean plays set in Italy where Oxford lived and traveled. See Richard Roe's new book The Shakespeare Guide to Italy (2011).
7. Especially taking into account what these Oxfordians failed to, that Fernando's acting company (not Oxford's Men) provided the core group of actors in 1594 that became known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and whose names dominate the top of the list of actors known as the King's Men (as given in the First Folio of 1623).
8. This is pre-First Folio evidence which the Stratfordians cannot match and neither can anyone find anything as impressive and conclusive for Bacon, Neville, etc.
9. To say little more about the Derby advocates, LeFranc and Lambin.
10. Above all the silence surrounding the dramatic release of Oxford's son from death row in the Tower just as his father's alleged dramas went on sale as the First Folio.
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