Shakespeare’s best (or worst) villains

History Extra

Tamora – Titus Andronicus
Tamora, Queen of the Goths, is a cruel and brutal central player in Shakespeare’s ultimate revenge tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Her ruthless, bloody-minded scheming leads to a gore-fest worthy of Game of Thrones.

We are introduced to Tamora as a conquered queen, begging the general of Rome, Titus Andronicus, to show her captured sons mercy. When Titus refuses and instead executes her sons he unleashes a maelstrom of vengeance, as Tamora becomes fuelled by the need to wreak revenge on Titus and his family.

Tamora is patient in her quest for vengeance. She secures herself a powerful position by marrying the weak-willed emperor Saturninus, who she manipulates as a political pawn while conducting an illicit relationship with Aaron, her equally scheming lover.

Tamora’s villainy reaches a shocking peak when she orders her two surviving sons to rape and mutilate Titus’s daughter Lavinia, cruelly ignoring the innocent girl’s pleas for mercy and mocking her distress. In one of Shakespeare’s most shocking and disturbing moments, Lavinia emerges with her hands cut off and her tongue removed. In a 2014 production at London’s Globe Theatre the gore was so overwhelming that during the course of the 51-show run 100 audience members reportedly either fainted (including the reviewer from The Independent) or had to leave.

Tamora gets her comeuppance in one of Shakespeare’s most outrageously blood-soaked finales: Titus murders her two sons and serves them to her baked in a pie. After unwittingly eating the pie Tamora is stabbed to death, as the final scene descends into a bloodbath.

Angelo – Measure for Measure
At first glance Angelo appears quite unlike any of Shakespeare’s other villains: a puritanical moral crusader whose righteousness (and name) seems almost otherworldly. He appears immune to sins of the flesh, described in Act I as “a man whose blood/ is very snow-broth; one who never feels/ the wanton stings and motions of the sense.” However, we quickly come to discover that the upright Angelo is not as virtuous as he first seems.

As temporary leader of Vienna, Angelo proves harsh and unforgiving. He takes a malevolent delight in dishing out severe justice, proclaiming in one scene: “hoping you’ll find good cause to whip them all”.

One way in which Angelo asserts his authority is by cracking down on the city’s sexual immorality, sentencing the young Claudio to death for impregnating his lover. But when Claudio’s virtuous sister Isabella comes to beg for mercy for her brother, Angelo’s intense hypocrisy is revealed. Consumed by lust for Isabella he propositions her, claiming he will reprieve Claudio if she agrees – and if not, her brother’s death is guaranteed to be slow and tortuous.

Revelations from Angelo’s past highlight further his cruel nature, as the audience learns that he abandoned his fiancée when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck.

However, Angelo is not entirely incorrigible. He is willing to confess his sins and expresses guilt, stating in Act V, Scene I “I crave death more willingly than mercy”. Furthermore, none of his immoral plans come to fruition; Isabella is not seduced and Claudio is not executed. Despite his corrupt lust and serious hypocrisy, he is one of Shakespeare’s few villains to be granted forgiveness. The Duke of Vienna pardons his crimes and repeals his death sentence, on the condition that he marries the mistress he abandoned.

1603-4 engraving of a scene from Measure For Measure. (Archive photos/ Getty images)

Richard III – Richard III
Despite having little grounding in historical fact, Shakespeare’s depiction of Richard III as a Machiavellian villain who had a physical deformity, lusted after his niece and lost his “kingdom for a horse” has had real sticking power.

A malicious, deceptive and bitter usurper who seizes England’s throne by nefarious means, Shakespeare’s Richard takes delight in his own villainy. He is unabashed in his evil motives, shamelessly proclaiming in his famous “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech: “I am determined to prove a villain”. However, Richard is also an undeniably charming and complex figure who sucks in the audience with his immoral logic and dazzling wordplay.

But Richard’s sins come back to haunt him – quite literally. Shakespeare provides us a long list of Richard’s murder victims, in a roll call of ghosts that visit him on the last night of his life. Edward of Westminster; Henry VI; George, Duke of Clarence; Earl Rivers; Richard Grey; Thomas Vaughan; Lord Hastings; the princes in the Tower; the Duke of Buckingham and Queen Anne Neville are all claimed to have been murdered by the king.

Writing for History Extra, John Ashdown-Hill suggests that Shakespeare’s claims here are both unfair and untrue. He suggests that some of Richard’s alleged victims (Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan and Buckingham) were legitimately and legally executed, while “there is no evidence that Edward of Westminster, Henry VI, the princes in the Tower or Anne Neville were murdered by anyone”.

Immediately after his visitation by spirits – the evening before his downfall and death – Richard appears to be suddenly struck by doubt. Despite the glee he formerly took in his wrongdoing, he suddenly lacks conviction about his actions: “O no, alas, I rather hate myself/ For hateful deeds committed by myself/ I am a villain”.

Goneril and Regan – King Lear
Described by their own father as “unnatural hags”, Goneril and Regan are two grasping, self-interested and power-hungry daughters of King Lear. Their willingness to betray their father and their honest sister Cordelia causes the collapse of a kingdom and ultimately leads to Lear’s descent into madness.

In the play’s opening scene the elderly Lear declares his intention to step down as king and divide his realm between his three daughters. In response to this, Goneril and Regan cleverly charm their father, hoping to grasp all they can from his inheritance. Falling for their superficial flattery, Lear divides his kingdom between the two of them, disinheriting Cordelia, who claims she cannot express her love for her father in words. This proves to be a fatal mistake, as Goneril and Regan’s feigned loyalty dissolves rapidly and their willingness to betray their father quickly becomes clear.

 By Act III the sisters’ ruthless political manoeuvrings have descended into outright violence. Regan and husband, the Duke of Cornwall, torture her father’s supporter Gloucester, plucking out his eyes and turning him out to wander blindly in the wild. Cornwall’s gruesome exclamation of “Out, vile jelly!” as he rips out the old man’s eyes, is one of the play’s most memorable – and horrifying – moments.

Goneril and Regan’s malevolence eventually turns inwards and rips them apart. Fuelled by jealousy at her sister’s supposed relationship with Edmund (another central villain of the play), Goneril poisons Regan and then kills herself.

 Lady Macbeth – Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s most fascinating female characters. Driven towards evil by a deep ambition and a ruthless appetite for power, she uses her sexuality and powers of manipulation to exert a corrosive influence over her husband, Macbeth.

Arguably a more compelling character than her husband, Lady Macbeth is generally viewed as the driving force behind Macbeth’s lust for power. While he is plagued by uncertainty about killing those who stand in his way, his wife is altogether stronger in her immoral convictions. She persuades him to pursue the Scottish throne by violent and deceptive means, telling him to “look like th' innocent flower/ but be the serpent under't”.

Lady Macbeth encourages her husband’s wrongdoing by portraying murder as both the logical and brave course of action, telling him to “Screw your courage to the sticking place/and we’ll not fail”. After Macbeth murders King Duncan (to claim his throne) she reassures him that “what’s done, is done” and cleans up the murder scene when Macbeth is too afraid to do so. At other points in the play Lady Macbeth’s manipulation of her husband descends into outright bullying. In an intriguing reversal of gender roles she dismisses her husband’s anxiety as feminine weakness, mockingly asking “are you a man?” in response to his hesitation.

Like many of Shakespeare’s villains, Lady Macbeth is eventually consumed by her guilty conscience and driven mad by her murderous actions. Plagued by episodes of sleepwalking, she wanders through the castle, unable to rid the image of her bloodstained hands from her mind, muttering: “Out damn’d spot… who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” This is our last image of Lady Macbeth – in the play’s final act she becomes disappointingly absent, eventually committing suicide offstage.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, in a 1906 painting by John Singer Sargent. (Print Collector/Getty Images)

Claudius – Hamlet
In the first act of Hamlet, Shakespeare tells his audience “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. We quickly discover that this is a reference to Denmark’s usurper king – and Hamlet’s uncle – Claudius.

A crafty politician determined to maintain his grasp over his kingdom, Claudius is guilty of the ultimate sin – fratricide. He has secretly murdered his brother, the king (Hamlet’s father), pouring poison into his ear as he slept, in order to claim his throne and steal his wife.

 But, like Macbeth and Richard III, Claudius too is plagued by the vengeful ghost of his victim. The spirit of the dead king appears to Hamlet, demanding to be avenged and exposing Claudius as “that incestuous, that adulterate beast/ with witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts...”.

Shakespeare has crafted a particularly intriguing villain in Claudius by giving him a conscience. Unlike Iago, Tamora or Richard III, Claudius takes no pleasure in his wrongdoing. In Act III he expresses his guilt when he confesses his sins in prayer: “O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven”.

King Claudius ultimately falls victim to his own conniving nature, as his wife, Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother, who many critics suggest Claudius genuinely loves), accidentally drinks from a poisoned chalice Claudius had intended for Hamlet. Claudius, too, meets his bitter end in classic bloody Shakespearean form: Hamlet stabs Claudius with a poisoned sword before forcing him to drink from the poisoned chalice.

Iago – Othello
 Many scholars see Iago as the most inherently evil of all Shakespeare’s villains. He spends the course of the play relentlessly plotting Othello’s downfall and his malicious scheming drives the storyline towards its tragic finale.

What proves so compelling about Iago is that his motivations for such insidious and calculated scheming seem unclear – his only desire appears to be Othello’s destruction. He accomplishes this by planting the seed of jealousy in Othello’s mind. He plots to “pour pestilence into his ear” in order to turn him against his wife, Desdemona. Skillfully concealing his nefarious intentions while winning Othello’s trust, Iago constructs a web of lies to make Othello believe in Desdemona’s sexual infidelity.

The consequences of Iago’s insidious influence are devastating. Enraged by jealousy, Othello eventually murders Desdemona and then kills himself. Although Iago’s schemes are eventually revealed and he is sentenced to execution, it is too little, too late, as his plans have already reached their disastrous conclusion.

Shakespeare does provide some reasons for Iago’s actions: that Othello passed him over for a military promotion and may have slept with his wife. However, it is generally agreed that none of these explanations are really fleshed out enough to provide a convincing motive for Iago’s scheming and profound hatred of Othello. Instead, Iago seems to have an intense enjoyment of manipulation and maliciousness for its own sake, perhaps making him the most essentially evil of all Shakespeare’s villains.

Shakespeare: 7 burning questions about his life

History Extra

The Cobbe portrait, which dates from c1610. This image’s “provenance and claim to be painted from life make a compelling case” for it being an accurate likeness of William Shakespeare, says Paul Edmondson. © Getty

1) How do we know when he was born?

It seems that England’s greatest poet first appeared on the world’s stage on the feast day of England’s patron saint: St George’s Day, Sunday 23 April 1564.
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon records Shakespeare’s baptism on 26 April. According to the Book of Common Prayer, babies had to be baptised either on the next saint’s day after their birth or on the following Sunday. In baby Shakespeare’s case, the next saint’s day was St Mark’s Day, the stolen patron saint of Venice, just two days after his birth. However, Elizabethan folk superstition considered this day to be unlucky, so Shakespeare was baptised after morning or evening prayer on the following day.
For corroborative evidence that Shakespeare was born on 23 April we can look to his monument on the north chancel wall of Holy Trinity Church. This tells us that he died on 23 April 1616, aged 53 – that is at the beginning of his 53rd year. Hence the assumption that he was born and died on the same date.
Shakespeare’s baptismal entry tells us that he is “Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare”: William, the son of John Shakespeare. Only one person of that name lived in the town.
The master bedroom of the house now presented as Shakespeare’s Birthplace was upstairs, overlooking the street – the same room that people have been visiting in homage to Shakespeare since the 18th century.

_{William Shakespeare was born on the site of this Stratford-upon-Avon building on St George’s Day, 1564. © Alamy}
On John’s death in 1601, William inherited the whole of his estate (John had left no will). William allowed his sister, Joan Hart, and her family to live in part of the building (as her descendants did until 1806) and leased another part to become a pub, the Swan and Maidenhead.
The house today is a Victorian renovation of the site and buildings purchased by public subscription in 1847. The Birthplace and four other houses associated with Shakespeare’s life are cared for and conserved by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

2) Where did young Shakespeare learn to read and write?

From the ages of 8 to 15, William Shakespeare would have found himself at Stratford-upon-Avon’s grammar school, which had been established under Edward VI to offer a free education to all of the town’s boys.
Founded in 1553 and based on Humanist ideals, Tudor grammar schools were a key element of the government’s stated aim of ensuring that “good literature and discipline might be diffused and propagated throughout all parts of our kingdom, as wherein the best government and administration of affairs consists”.

_{Shakespeare the schoolboy would have done his studies using a hornbook like this. © Topfoto}
These were establishments that took education very seriously indeed. Shakespeare would have gone to school six days a week throughout the year, starting at 6am in the summer and 7am in winter, and staying until dusk (though there were half days on Thursdays and Saturdays). The major Christian festivals provided the few annual holidays.
There was little respite, even in the playground, where the boys were expected to talk to each other in Latin. The emphasis of the whole educational enterprise, in light of the teachings of the 16th-century Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469–1536), was on the development of eloquence in speech and writing. A key textbook was William Lily’s Short Introduction of Grammar (1540), through which Shakespeare became familiar with a vast range of rhetorical devices.
The curriculum was highly demanding. The pupils studied Terence, Virgil, Tully, Sallust, Palingenius, Mantuanus, Cicero, Susenbrotus, Erasmus, Quintilian, Horace, Juvenal and Ovid in their original Latin. The latter’s Metamorphoses seems to have been Shakespeare’s favourite book from his school days, and he alluded to it many times in his work. The only writing in Greek to feature on the syllabus was the New Testament. Shakespeare’s grammar-school education is writ large across the whole body of his work. Above all, it taught him eloquence. As an education it was rigorous but limited and did not, for example, include numeracy.

3) Was he trapped in a loveless marriage?

Questions about Shakespeare’s marriage and sexuality have divided generations of scholars and critics, and continue to do so.
When he was just 18, William married Anne or Agnes Hathaway (those first names were interchangeable). She was 26 and already pregnant. It has been estimated that around a quarter of late 16th-century women were pregnant before marriage.
Another illuminating statistic has been deduced by local historian Jeanne Jones from records curated by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. Between 1570 and 1630 the average age for men to marry in Stratford-upon-Avon was 24. In that 60-year period, and out of 106 cases, there were only three men who married under the age of 20. Of those three, Shakespeare was the youngest and the only one whose wife was already pregnant. They had three children: Susanna (born 1582) and then boy-and-girl twins Hamnet and Judith (born 1585; Hamnet died in 1596).

_{We don’t know what Anne Shakespeare looked like, but here is an 18th-century artist’s impression. © Topfoto} 
But were William and Anne happily married? Katherine Duncan-Jones thinks not. In her Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from His Life (2001), she presents a Shakespeare who is trapped in his marriage. In Shakespeare’s Wife (2007), Germaine Greer describes the Shakespeares’ relationship as “a demanding and difficult way of life”. Certainly Shakespeare spent long periods of time in London, but that does not mean that he never saw his wife and children. Townsmen frequently travelled between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. The commute took three days by horseback.
Some commentators have pounced upon Shakespeare’s decision to leave Anne his “second best bed with the furniture” to question the state of his marriage. True, this bequest could have been a put-down. But it could also have been a romantic souvenir, or even, perhaps, a codified permit for Anne to remain resident in the family home, New Place.
Most of the speculation on Shakespeare’s sexuality has been based on his works – for example, the same-sex relationships in his plays. Evidence from his life reveals little. In fact, the only surviving contemporary anecdote of Shakespeare’s personal life is to be found in the diary of John Manningham, a trainee lawyer at Middle Temple. The diary relates how Shakespeare arranged to meet a woman with his fellow actor Richard Burbage, yet got there early to have sex with her before Burbage arrived: “Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.”

4) Of the numerous portraits of Shakespeare, which is the most accurate?

Two images are widely accepted as being accurate depictions of Shakespeare, both of them posthumous: the engraving by the artist Martin Droeshout on the title-page of Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies of 1623, and the memorial bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. This was installed some time between 1616, when Shakespeare died, and 1623, when it is first mentioned in Leonard Digges’s commendatory verse in a collected edition of Shakespeare’s work.

_{Shakespeare’s memorial bust in Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church. © Alamy}
It is possible that both the engraving and the bust were approved by Shakespeare’s widow, family and friends. The playwright Ben Jonson, in his verse printed opposite the engraving, describes it as a good likeness. The bust was made by Gerard Janssen who, in 1614, had also carved the Stratford-upon-Avon tomb effigy for Shakespeare’s friend John Coombe. Janssen’s workshop was in Southwark, near the Globe, so he too probably knew what Shakespeare looked like.
Two portraits of Shakespeare have good provenance and may have been painted from life. One is the Chandos portrait; the other is the Cobbe portrait, which won the support of the world’s leading Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, in 2009.
It has been suggested that the Chandos portrait was painted by John Taylor (an actor from Shakespeare’s period), and was bequeathed to William Davenant, who liked to say he was Shakespeare’s illegitimate son. From here it eventually came into the possession of the Duke of Chandos.

_{The Chandos portrait may have been painted from life, perhaps by the actor John Taylor. © National Portrait Gallery}
The Cobbe portrait passed through the descendants of Shakespeare’s only known literary patron, Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. It spawned a succession of near-contemporary copies, the majority of which independently identify the sitter as Shakespeare.
The Cobbe portrait has compositional similarities to the Droeshout engraving and may have been its source, possibly through one of the early copies. X-ray analysis has shown that the earliest of these copies is the one now in the possession of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC has another early copy but does not accept that the sitter is Shakespeare. Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones is among those who have suggested that the portrait represents Sir Thomas Overbury, based on a perceived visual resemblance. Yet none of the many versions and copies of the Cobbe portrait has ever carried an Overbury identification.
What’s more, research at Cambridge University has established that the Cobbe portrait and the undoubted Overbury portrait are unrelated and unlikely to depict the same sitter.
Of all the portraits that might represent Shakespeare, the Cobbe portrait is the most intimate and its provenance and claim to be painted from life make a compelling case.

5) How did a humble writer grow so rich?

Shakespeare’s will includes numerous bequests that show that he died a wealthy man. But he cannot have owed his riches simply to his plays. A theatre company would pay a freelance writer a few pounds for a new play, but that wasn’t enough to support and sustain a wife and family.
A writer could boost his income by acting as well – and  Shakespeare, Ben Jonson (early in his career) and a handful of others appear to have done just that. Yet, all the same, none of the other playwrights of the period were able to invest in the way Shakespeare did.
Shakespeare was wealthy because he was, from 1594, a shareholder in the theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in which he was also the leading dramatist. Their patron was the lord chamberlain and they performed at court as well as at the Inns of Court, for which they were paid handsomely.

_{A c1600 portrait of Shakespeare’s benefactor Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. © Bridgeman Art Library}
Shakespeare was rich enough to buy a house in 1597, which it has been estimated probably cost him around £120. In 1599, he invested in a tripartite lease on the new Globe Theatre. This meant he would receive a share of the box-office takings which, partly because of the popularity of his plays, were high.
He carried on investing heavily in Stratford-upon-Avon. He bought a massive 107 acres of land for £320 in 1602. Only three years later, he spent £440 on a 50 per cent share in the annual tithes payable to the church. This brought him back around £60 a year. In 1613 he bought a gatehouse at Blackfriars for £140.
A story from William Davenant first published in Nicholas Rowe’s biographical account of 1709 suggests that Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, gave Shakespeare £1,000 “to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to”. We’ll probably never know whether he did or not, but it would explain how Shakespeare could afford the shares in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and how he was able to buy his grand residence, New Place. And all this at a time when a local schoolmaster’s salary was £20 a year.

6) Where did Shakespeare call home?

When he was first married, Shakespeare would have had little choice but to live in the family home on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon. He saved money by lodging in London at various places including (in order of residence): the parishes of St Giles Cripplegate; St Helen’s Bishopgate (where he was fined for defaulting on his taxes in 1597 and 1598); St Saviour’s near the Clink, Southwark; and with the Mountjoy family on the corner of Monkswell and Silver Streets, again in the Cripplegate ward.

_{The site that was occupied by Shakespeare’s New Place until 1759. © Alamy}
Shakespeare’s family home from 1597 was New Place, the largest house in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon. The theatres were closed during Lent and Advent, which would have given him plenty of time to spend at home with his family and to get some writing done in relative peace and quiet.
Between 2010 and 2013, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust commissioned an archaeological dig of the site (New Place was demolished in 1759), which confirmed it to be a grand manor house, designed for someone of considerable means and social status.
Shakespeare was a commuter who lodged in London and whose grandest living space was in Stratford-upon-Avon.

7) Did he agonise over his plays or dash them off?

Defining the way in which Shakespeare went about his work is no easy task because canons of literary work develop over time, as do an author’s mode of writing. What complicates matters is the fact that much of Shakespeare’s writings were published after his death. The Sonnets, a few occasional poems and about half of his plays first appeared during his lifetime. The rest (with the exception of Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen) appeared for the first time in a collected edition of his work in 1623.
In 1986, The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works attempted to cast some light on the issue by putting forward two of the most radical theories to emerge in the past 30 years. The first was that Shakespeare regularly revised what he wrote because of practical theatrical considerations. The second suggested that he collaborated on several plays, most significantly at the beginning and end of his career.

_{A catalogue page from a 1623 listing of all the plays of William Shakespeare. © Getty}
Collaboration was absolutely a standard practice among playwrights of Shakespeare’s time. In 2013 Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen published William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays, a collection of little-known works in which Shakespeare may or may not have had a hand. There are also some apparently lost plays including Love’s Labour’s Won and Cardenio.
Collaboration alone should be enough to put paid to any theory that suggests the plays were the handiwork of a lone aristocrat or an alternative single author operating undercover. The way in which the plays are written shows that Shakespeare had a profound knowledge of theatrical practice and knew the actors for whom he was writing.

He didn’t dash off his plays, as the film Shakespeare in Love might like us to believe. Instead, he adapted the sources and stories on which he based his work, reading extensively before putting quill to paper.
Dr Paul Edmondson is head of research and knowledge, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Have we completely misinterpreted Shakespeare’s Richard III?

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King Richard speaks to James Tyrrell (portrayed by Shakespeare as the man who organises the murder of the princes in the Tower) in Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’. From ‘The Illustrated Library Shakespeare’, published in London in 1890. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of King Richard the Third is a masterpiece: the depiction of evil that dares us to like the villain and question, as we laugh along with his jokes, why we find such a man attractive.
The play is believed to have been written in around 1593 and its political context gives it a wider meaning. Queen Elizabeth I was ageing and obviously not going to produce an heir. The question of the succession grew like a weed, untended by all (at least in public), yet the identity of the next monarch was of huge importance to the entire country. Religious tensions ran high and the swings between the Protestant Edward VI, the Catholic Mary I and the Protestant Elizabeth I were still causing turmoil 60 years after Henry VIII’s reformation.

_{Portrait of Elizabeth I of England c1593. Found in the collection of Elizabethan Gardens, Manteo. Artist anonymous. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)}
Shakespeare is believed by some to have been a devout Catholic all of his life, hiding his faith and working for sponsors such as the earls of Essex and Southampton, whose sympathies were also with the old faith. Opposed to those keen for a return to Catholicism was the powerful Cecil family. William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, had been Elizabeth’s constant supporter and advisor throughout her reign and was, by the early 1590s, as old age crept up on him, paving the way for his son to take on the same role. The Cecils favoured a Protestant succession by James VI of Scotland. It is against this backdrop that Shakespeare wrote his play and his real villain may have been a very contemporary player.
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third is replete with demonstrable errors of fact, chronology and geography. The first edition reversed the locations of Northampton and Stony Stratford to allow Richard to ambush the party of Edward V (one of the princes in the Tower) party rather than have them travel beyond the meeting place. Early in the play Richard tells his audience “I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter./ What, though I kill’d her husband and her father?’” Accounts of both the battles of Barnet (April 1471) and Tewkesbury (May 1471) make it almost certain neither Warwick nor Edward of Westminster was killed by Richard.
The ending of the play is also misinterpreted. The infamous “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” is often mistaken for a cowardly plea to flee the field. Read in context, it is in fact Richard demanding a fresh horse to re-enter the fray and seek out Richmond (Henry Tudor). Even Shakespeare did not deny Richard his valiant end.

_{Illumination of the 1471 battle of Tewkesbury, dated 15th century. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)}
Shakespeare’s Richard delights in arranging the murder of his brother Clarence by their other brother Edward IV through trickery when in fact Edward’s execution of Clarence was believed by contemporaries to have driven a wedge between them that kept Richard away from Edward’s court. The seed of this misdirection is sown much earlier in the cycle of history plays too. In Henry VI, Part II Richard kills the Duke of Somerset at the battle of St Albans in 1455, when in fact he was just two-and-a-half years old.
The revelation at the beginning of the play that King Edward fears a prophesy that ‘G’ will disinherit his sons is perhaps another signpost to misdirection. Edward and Richard’s brother George, Duke of Clarence tells Richard “He hearkens after prophecies and dreams./ And from the cross-row plucks the letter G./ And says a wizard told him that by G/ His issue disinherited should be./ And, for my name of George begins with G./ It follows in his thought that I am he.”
George is therefore assumed to be the threat, ignoring the fact the Richard’s title, Duke of Gloucester, also marks him as a ‘G’. Before Clarence arrives, Richard appears to know of the prophesy and that George will be the target of Edward’s fear, suggesting that he had a hand in the trick and that a thin veil is being drawn over the obvious within the play. The true villain is slipping past unseen as signs are misread or ignored.
The language of the play’s famous opening soliloquy is interesting in the context of when it was written. In autumn 1592, Thomas Nashe’s play Summer’s Last Will and Testament was first performed in Croydon. Narrated by the ghost of Will Summer, Henry VIII’s famous court jester, it tells the story of the seasons and their adherents. Summer is king but lacks an heir, lamenting “Had I some issue to sit on my throne,/ My grief would die, death should not hear me grone”. Summer adopts Autumn as his heir but Winter will then follow – and his rule is not to be looked forward to. When Richard tells us “Now is the winter of our discontent/ Made glorious summer by this sun of York” it is perhaps not, at least not only, a clever reference to Edward IV’s badge of the sunne in splendour.
Elizabeth I, great-granddaughter of Edward IV, could be the “sun of York”, and this might explain the use of “sun” rather than “son”. Using Nashe’s allegory, Elizabeth is made summer by her lack of an heir that allows winter, his real villain, in during the autumn of her reign. The very first word of the play might be a hint that Shakespeare expected his audience to understand that the relevance of the play is very much “Now”.
Richard was able to perform this role for Shakespeare because of his unique position as a figure who could be abused but who also provided the moral tale and political parallels the playwright needed. The Yorkist family of Edward IV were direct ancestors of Elizabeth I and attacking them would have been a very bad move. Richard stood outside this protection. By imbuing Richard with the deeds of his father at St Albans, there is a link between the actions and sins of father and son, the son eventually causing the catastrophic downfall of his house. Here, Shakespeare returns to the father and son team now leading England toward a disaster – the Cecils.
I suspect that Shakespeare meant his audience to recognise, in the play’s Richard III character, Robert Cecil, William’s son – and that in the 1590s they would very clearly have done so. Motley’s History of the Netherlands (published in 1888) described Robert’s appearance in 1588 as “A slight, crooked, hump-backed young gentleman, dwarfish in stature” and later remarked on the “massive dissimulation” that would “constitute a portion of his own character”. Robert Cecil had kyphosis – in Shakespeare’s crude parlance, a hunchback – and a reputation for dissimulation. I imagine Shakespeare’s first audience nudging each other as Richard hobbled onto the stage and whispering that it was plainly Robert Cecil.

_{Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563–1612). (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)}
The warnings of the play are clear: Richard upturns the natural order, supplanting a rightful heir for his own gain, and Shakespeare’s Catholic sponsors may well have viewed Cecil in the same light as he planned a Protestant succession. We almost like Richard, and we are supposed to. Elizabeth called Robert Cecil her “little imp” and showed him great favour. Richard tells us that he is “determined to prove a villain” and Shakespeare was warning his audience that Robert Cecil similarly used a veil of amiability to hide his dangerous intentions.

Robert Cecil got his Protestant succession. William Shakespeare became a legend. Richard III entered the collective consciousness as a villain. Perhaps it was by accident and the time has come to look more closely at the man rather than the myth.
Matthew Lewis is the author of Richard, Duke of York: King by Right (Amberley Publishing, 2016). 

The 7 most romantic moments in history

History Extra

Wallis and Edward, 1939. (Keystone-France\Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Marie Curie dedicates her life to the work she began with her husband 

Perhaps science’s greatest power couple, Pierre Curie and Marie Sklodowska

met in 1894 at the Physics department of the Sorbonne University. Both idealists determined to dedicate their lives to science, they quickly discovered an intellectual like-mindedness. Pierre and Marie were married only a year later and together they embarked on groundbreaking work investigating radioactivity. In 1898 they announced their discovery of two new elements, radium and polonium, and went on to win a joint Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

 

The Curie’s married life was dominated by their scientific study and laboratory work, which was often physically as well as mentally exhausting. Their constant exposure to radiation also saw them suffer significant health problems, from fatigue to skin scarring. Outside work, Marie and Pierre enjoyed long, adventurous cycling trips and had two daughters, Irene and Eve.

 

The relationship was brought to a shocking and tragic end in 1906 when Pierre was killed unexpectedly, falling under a heavy horse-drawn cart after slipping in the street. After a period of intense mourning, Marie dedicated her life to pursuing the work they had begun together. She took over Pierre’s position at the Sorbonne, becoming the first woman ever to teach there, and went on to win a second Nobel Prize, for chemistry, in 1911. 

 

Through the First World War Marie continued to develop the work she had begun with her husband, as head of the International Red Cross radiology service. She worked tirelessly training medical orderlies and even driving ambulances with X-ray equipment to the front lines. 

 

After Marie’s death from aplastic anaemia [deficiency of blood cells caused by failure of bone marrow development] in 1934, brought on by the years of exposure to radioactive substances, she was buried alongside Pierre. Their remains were later moved to Paris’s Pantheon, in recognition of the groundbreaking discoveries they made together.

 

^{Pierre and Marie Curie in their laboratory, 1898. (Photo12/UIG via Getty Images)}

 

Queen Victoria mourns Prince Albert

One of history’s most popular royal partnerships, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert reigned together for 21 years. Married in 1840, the couple had nine children together and shared the daily duties of royal life. However, the family’s domestic and political stability was shattered on 14 December 1861 when Albert died unexpectedly. 

 

A generally healthy man of 42, the prince’s sudden death from typhoid caught both the queen and the nation off-guard. Historian Helen Rappaport suggests that Albert’s death was “nothing less than a national calamity”. Over the years Albert had assumed many of the functions of a reigning monarch, sharing Victoria’s mountain of royal duties and masterminding popular projects such the 1851 Great Exhibition and South Kensington museums complex. 

 

Victoria quickly descended into what Rappaport calls a “crippling state of unrelenting grief”. She had not only been reliant on Albert’s help dealing with royal and business affairs, but was intensely dependent on him emotionally. According to Rappaport, “Albert had been all in all to Victoria: husband, friend, confidant, wise counsel, unofficial secretary and government minister. There was not a single aspect of her life on which she had not deferred to his advice and greater wisdom”. She suggests that “Albert had been her one great, abiding obsession in life. Without him Victoria felt rudderless”.

 

This intense grieving quickly created serious problems. Victoria began to take up rigorous and ritualistic observances of bereavement, which lasted far longer than the two-year mourning period conventional at the time. Her reluctance to appear in public and decision to wear black for the rest of her life earned her the nickname the ‘Widow of Windsor’. Helen Rappaport suggests that through these actions, Victoria was “turning her grieving into performance art, retreating into a state of pathological grief which nobody could penetrate and few understood”. Over time, the queen’s sombre retreat from public life significantly impacted on her popularity, with growing complaints that she did nothing to justify her income.

 

Victoria never fully recovered from Albert’s death. She commissioned several monuments in his honour, including the Royal Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, which was completed in 1876. She remained in mourning for 40 years, until her own death aged 81.

 

^{Queen Victoria in mourning shortly after the death of her husband Albert, 1862. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

Shakespeare writes sonnets to the Dark Lady

Some of the most acclaimed romantic poetry of all time, Shakespeare’s sonnets 127–154 celebrate the beauty of a Dark Lady. These sonnets have gone down in history as some of the Bard’s most romantic and erotic, with oft-quoted lines such as “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun/Coral is far more red, than her lips red… And yet by heaven I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare”. However, the identity of the Dark Lady addressed in the poems remains unknown, and has proved to be one of literature’s greatest mysteries. 

 

What does Shakespeare reveal to readers about his mysterious mistress? He portrays her as an erotic temptress: sonnet 144 addresses her as “my female evil” and “my bad angel”. Other sonnets tell us of her black hair and “raven black” eyes, and celebrate her dark complexion: “Thy black is fairest in my judgement’s place”, “beauty herself is black”. 

 

Shakespeare’s relationship with the Dark Lady has intrigued scholars for centuries, and there are a multitude of theories about her identity. Dr Aubrey Burl has recently argued that the Dark Lady is Aline Florio, the wife of an Italian translator. Meanwhile, Dr Duncan Salkeld has identified her as Lucy Morgan, a Clerkenwell prostitute also known as ‘Black Luce’. Other possible candidates for the Dark Lady have included a courtesan, a landlady, a wigmaker’s wife and even a lady-in-waiting of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary Fitton. However, it’s unlikely that we will ever know for certain the identity of the alluring lady who inspired such remarkable poetry, or the extent of Shakespeare’s relationship with her.

 

Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal

Constructed between 1632 and 1653, the Taj Mahal in India is recognised across the world. However, as well as being an architectural marvel, it is also one of history’s greatest romantic gestures, from India’s Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan.

 

In 1612 Shah Jahan married the Persian princess Arjumand Banu Begum. Mughal court poets claimed Arjumand’s beauty was so great that the moon hid its face in shame before her, and she reportedly enthralled the future emperor at first sight. Despite the fact that Shah Jahan had two other wives, Arjumand is generally acknowledged as being the love of his life. He even gave her the name “Mumtaz Mahal”, meaning ‘jewel of the palace’. A loyal and devoted wife, Begum accompanied her husband on various military campaigns, and the couple rarely spent time apart. 

 

In 1631, after 19 years of marriage, Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to her 14th child. According to legend, distraught at his powerlessness to help her, Shah Jahan made a deathbed promise to build his wife the greatest tomb the world had ever seen. After a period of intense grieving, as promised he began work on an extraordinarily elaborate mausoleum to honour Mumtaz Mahal – the Taj Mahal. 

 

The Shah threw himself into the project, summoning the best dome-builders, masons, painters, calligraphers and other artisans from as far as Turkey and Iraq to work on it. No expense or painstaking detail was spared. Overall it took 22,000 labourers more than 21 years to complete the epic monument. Mumtaz Mahal’s cenotaph stands at the perfect centre of the symmetrical Taj, and upon his death Shah Jahan was placed alongside her. The Shah’s memorial to his beloved wife is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, attracting millions of visitors every year. 

 

^{Emperor Shah Jahan and his wife Mumtaz Mahal in a split picture from around 1640. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

 

Edward VIII abdicates the throne in the name of love

Sparking a crisis that rocked the British monarchy, Edward VIII’s decision in 1936 to give up the throne for a woman he loved undoubtedly deserves a place among history’s most romantic moments. 

 

Edward met Wallis Simpson, a chic, charismatic American socialite, in 1931 at a party hosted by his then-mistress, Thelma Furness. Despite Wallis being a married woman, by 1934 she and Edward had become lovers, to the immense disapproval of Edward’s family. The prince was no angel – he had a playboy reputation and had had several affairs. However, while his family tolerated a casual affair with Wallis, any suggestion of marriage was categorically ruled out. As a married woman seeking a second divorce, Wallis was an impossible consort for a future king and head of the Church of England. 

 

The couple came under intense pressure from all sides to end the affair. The king’s ministers, the Church of England and the royal family pleaded with Edward to terminate the relationship. Meanwhile, Wallis received death threats and was forced to retreat to France to escape her vilification in the British press as a “Yankee harlot”. Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Mother, famously refused to acknowledge Wallis, referring to her only as “a certain person” or “that woman”.

 

Despite all this, on 10 December 1936 Edward abdicated after only 325 days as king. His unexpected and unprecedented decision left his shy, stammering younger brother George VI to reluctantly assume the throne. Edward made his motives perfectly clear, declaring to the public “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” 

 

Following Edward’s abdication and Wallis’s divorce, the couple married in a private ceremony in France. They embarked on a jet-setting lifestyle, living abroad together until Edward’s death in Paris in 1972. 

 

Heloise and Abelard exchange love letters

Immortalised through a series of intimate love letters, the doomed affair of Abelard and Heloise is one of the medieval period’s most compelling love stories. 

 

The tale began in 12th-century Paris, where Peter Abelard, a notable philosopher, was employed as a tutor. His pupil was Heloise d’Argenteuil, a brilliant student and the niece of a Parisian canon named Fulbert. Teacher and pupil became lovers and the unmarried Heloise found herself pregnant. Heloise’s age at the time is unclear, but some academics such as Constant Mews suggest she may have been as old as 27, with a significant scholarly reputation.

 

Upon discovering the pregnancy Abelard proposed marriage, but Heloise was reluctant, in the knowledge that having a wife and family would jeopardise Abelard’s scholarship. According to her letters, she “never sought anything in you except yourself… looked for no marriage bond." Despite this reluctance, a wedding went ahead in secret, to avoid any damage to Abelard’s career. Heloise reportedly gave birth to a son, Astrolabe, but is not known what happened to him in later life. 

 

Things quickly fell disastrously apart. Angered by the affair’s damage to his reputation, Heloise’s uncle Fulbert spread news of the secret wedding and Abelard consequently placed Heloise in the convent of Argenteuil. Fulbert was so enraged by this that he had Abelard castrated in vengeance for his actions. 

 

Following the shame and trauma of his castration, Abelard became a monk at Paris’s Abbey of St Denis. Following his insistence that she do the same, Heloise too took holy orders and the couple retreated to a lifetime of celibacy in separate monasteries. However, they continued to correspond with each other through a series of letters, which document their earlier affair. The intimate and erotic content of these taboo-busting letters have for years intrigued academics. Heloise’s letters suggest that despite everything she did not regret the affair, reflecting “I should be groaning over the sins I have committed, but I can only sigh for what I have lost”.

 

^{A depiction of lovers Heloise and Abelard from a 13th century bible. (Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)}

 

Henry VIII gets excommunicated in order to re-marry

Henry VIII’s tempestuous relationship with Anne Boleyn is infamous for both its dramatic political consequences and its horrifying, bloody end. However, when Anne first joined the royal court in 1522, few could have anticipated the turbulence that would follow. Henry was not only married at the time, but also having an affair with Anne’s sister, Mary. What’s more, Historian Suzannah Lipscomb suggests that Anne was not an obvious choice for Henry’s future wife or even mistress, as he “wouldn’t have been bowled over by her good looks. The surprising thing about Anne is that she wasn’t considered to be a great beauty.” 

 

Instead, it was Anne’s wit, charm and continental sophistication that apparently infatuated the king, who became ardent in his pursuit of her. In a 1527 letter to Anne, Henry declared himself “struck by the dart of love” and asked her to “give herself body and heart to him”. 

 

The consequences of Henry’s infatuation were huge. As the Pope refused to annul his existing marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry broke with the Catholic Church and was subsequently excommunicated. He went on to form the Church of England, irrevocably changing the entire religious landscape of the nation. Following Henry’s break with Rome, he and Anne were married in January 1533. Anne was already pregnant at the time, with the future Queen Elizabeth I. Anne was crowned queen of England in an extravagant coronation ceremony later that year. 

 

The royal couple’s happiness was short-lived. Anne’s inability to produce a male heir, along with Henry’s growing infatuation with Jane Seymour, meant that the king was soon looking for a way out of the marriage for which he had sacrificed so much. Trumped-up adultery charges against Anne, her brother and three other men provided Henry with a way to be rid of his wife. After one of the men, Mark Smeaton, confessed under torture, the marriage was annulled and Anne’s fate sealed. 

 

The relationship reached its bitter and bloody end on 19 May 1536, with Anne’s execution on her husband’s orders.

History Trivia - First Eddystone Lighthouse destroyed in Great Storm

November 27

8 BC, Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) the great Roman lyric poet, died at Venusia, in Apulia at age 56. 

1582 William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. 

1703 The first Eddystone Lighthouse (south west of Rame Head, UK) was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703

Stoner Shakespeare? Scientists say pipes from playwright's garden contain cannabis

 

This engraving of a man identified as William Shakespeare appears on the front of a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays dating from the early 17th century (Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University)

Fox News

Did the greatest playwright the world has ever known have a taste for the wacky tobaccy? Did William Shakespeare have a case of the munchies while penning "Macbeth"?
The answer may very well be "yes" after a group of South African scientists found that clay pipes recovered from the garden of the Bard's home contain traces of cannabis.
The researchers examined fragments of 24 clay pipes that were recovered from the garden of Shakespeare's home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, as well as from surrounding houses. After examining the fragments using a gas chromatography technique, the scientists found that eight of the pipes contained traces of cannabis, one contained nicotine, and two contained traces of cocaine derived from Peruvian coca leaves. Four of the pipes containing cannabis came from Shakespeare's property.
Professor Francis Thackeray of the University of Witwatersrand, who headed the study, writes that several kinds of tobacco were known to early 17th-century Englishmen. The earliest specimens of nicotine and coca leaves may have been imported by explorers Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake, respectively.
Thackeray has a longstanding interest in Shakespeare's possible use of drugs. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that in 1999, he wrote an academic paper titled "Hemp as a source of inspiration for Shakespearean literature?"
This may all be much ado about nothing, as there's no conclusive evidence that Shakespeare ever used cannabis himself. However, Thackeray notes that early performances of Shakespeare's works likely took place in smoke-filled rooms full of puffing members of the Elizabethan gentry.

"One can well imagine the scenario in which Shakespeare performed his plays in the court of Queen Elizabeth, in the company of Drake, Raleigh and others who smoked clay pipes filled with 'tobacco'," he writes.
A case of smoke them if you've got them, perhaps?

History Trivia - Romeo & Juliet's wedding day

March 11

222  Emperor Elagabalus was assassinated, along with his mother, Julia Soaemias, by the Praetorian Guard during a revolt. Their mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets of Rome before thrown into the Tiber.

1302 Romeo & Juliet's wedding day, according to Shakespeare.

1669 Mount Etna (Sicily) erupted. 990,000,000 cubic yards of lava were thrown out over four months, destroying a dozen villages. Ashes formed a double cone more than 150 ft high, now called Monti Rossi.

Has the mystery of Shakespeare’s Sonnets finally been solved?

New evidence points to identity of enigmatic ‘Mr WH’ to whom the poems are dedicated

 

 

 A portrait of William Shakespeare from around 1610. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

Dalya Alberge
The Guardian

Some of the finest, most quoted verses in the English language were dedicated to him, and for centuries literary scholars have tried to establish his identity.
Now fresh research suggests that the mysterious Mr WH, to whom Shakespeare’s sonnets were dedicated, was not, as had been thought, a contemporary English nobleman, but a recently deceased associate of the Sonnets’ publisher, Thomas Thorpe, which would explain the dedication’s strangely funereal form.
Geoffrey Caveney, an American researcher, has unearthed possible evidence to link the initials with William Holme, who had both personal and professional connections to Thorpe. Both came from prominent Chester families, were publishing apprentices in 1580s London and had strong connections with theatres through publishing major playwrights such as Ben Jonson and George Chapman.

The Sonnets’ dedication reads: “To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr WH. All happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth. TT [Thorpe].”
Some argue that WH was also the “fair youth” to whom many of the 154 sonnets are addressed, or that he was someone thanked for bringing the manuscript to Thorpe. Candidates have included Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, a noted patron, and William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, with whom Shakespeare is believed to have had some link.
But as aristocrats they would never have been addressed as “Mr”, Caveney said. “It would be an insult. Some people have even said that WH is just a misprint for William Shakespeare and it should have been a WSH.”
He now believes the dedication’s printed page was designed to resemble an inscription on a Roman funerary monument – a memorial tribute to Holme. Caveney discovered that Holme died in 1607, two years before the Sonnets were published. He concludes that Holme had previously been overlooked because he was confused with a stationer, William Holmes, who was known to be publishing up to 1615.
“Nobody was aware that there was [also] a publisher of that name who had died in 1607,” said Caveney. “Seeing the dedication as a memorial makes a lot of sense.” His research will be published this month by Oxford University Press in its academic journal, Notes & Queries.

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Professor Stanley Wells, the leading British Shakespeare scholar, said: “If it were agreed by scholars, this would be pretty momentous. People have spilled an enormous quantity of ink trying to identify this figure.”
He described the theory as “better than any other suggestion so far. It’s very interesting.” That it is nobody well known, he added, is “one of the strengths”.
“That it’s not an aristocrat fits in with the fact that it’s Mr WH. That has always been a stumbling block for the attempts to identify him with [aristocrats],” said Wells. He agrees that the fact that it’s a person who was in the publishing trade, linked with Thorpe, and who had recently died all helps to explain the dedication’s funerary form, “which has always also been a mystery”.
But he commented that it will be “less attractive to some people if it’s not an aristocrat”. Those who challenge Shakespeare’s authorship argue that only an aristocrat would have been knowledgeable enough to write his plays, although Wells is among those who dismiss such snobbery, which ignores Elizabethan education and Shakespeare’s background in general.
He added: “It’s also less attractive if it’s not somebody whom we could associate possibly with the substance of the sonnets” – particularly the love poems to that person.
Caveney also finds Holme interesting because he published major playwrights of the day, including Jonson’s Every Man out of His Humour in 1600, and Chapman’s Monsieur D’Olive in 1606. Caveney’s research shows that Holme had a London bookshop and was a close colleague of the printer Adam Islip, who printed Every Man out of His Humour and worked with George Eld, who printed the Sonnets for Thorpe.
Thorpe and Holme both had close relatives who were sheriffs and mayors of Chester. Caveney has discovered evidence that both seem to have had links with prominent Catholic sympathisers of the period and were further connected with supporters of the Earl of Essex’s rebellion in 1601. He said that following the rebellion, and the gunpowder plot four years later, “it was a controversial time for people to be associated with such circles”.
Caveney revealed that Holme had crucial connections to royal circles through his brother, Randle, an antiquarian and authority on heraldry, who was in the service of Prince Henry, giving him close connections with “the elite circles in which Shakespeare’s sonnets would have circulated”.
In Caveney’s essay, he speculates on why Thorpe referred to Holme as the sonnets’ “begetter”. “As a colleague and friend of Holme, Thorpe could have found the manuscript of the Sonnets among Holme’s belongings after his death … Thorpe and his printer, Eld, registered a flurry of plays just nine days after Holme’s burial … How Holme had obtained a copy of the Sonnets cannot be precisely determined, but he had the connections to literary figures.”
Whether supporters of other explanations will be silenced remains to be seen

History Trivia - first Shakespearian actress appears on an English stage as Desdemona

December 8

65 BC Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) was born.  He was one of the most familiar and admired of the Roman poets.

877 Louis II, the Stammerer, was crowned King of France.

1542 Mary, Queen of Scots was born.

1609 Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milan Italy) opened its reading room, the second public library of Europe.

1660 The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (believed to be a Ms. Norris) made her debut as Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello.

History Trivia - Commodus becomes Supreme Commander of the Roman legions

November 27

176 Emperor Marcus Aurelius granted his son Commodus the rank of Imperator and made him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions. 

511 Clovis, King of the Franks (Merovingian Dynasty) died.

1095 Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade to reclaim sacred Christian sites from Islamic hands at the Council of Clermont. 

1295 the first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament".

1582 William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway.

1703 The first Eddystone Lighthouse (south west of Rame Head, UK) was destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.

History Trivia -

April 26

121 Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor 161-180) was born. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.

757 Paolo Orsini replaced his brother Pope Stephen II, as Paul I.

1220 German king Frederick II granted bishops sovereign rights.

1467 The miraculous image in Our Lady of Good Counsel appeared in Genazzano, Italy.

1478 Pazzi conspirators attacked Lorenzo and killed Giuliano de'Medici.

1514 Copernicus made his first observations of Saturn.

1564 William Shakespeare was baptized.