The Shakespeare Mystery

out out brief candle life but a walking shadow the most treasured writings in the english language bear the name of william shakespeare how could anybody have thought that a man who could barely sign his name was the greatest writer in the english language who was the real shakespeare the son of a stratfor glove maker or was he a forgotten nobleman the 17th earl of oxford it is the greatest detective story there ever was tonight on frontline the shakespeare mystery from the network of public television stations a presentation of kcts seattle wnet new york wpbt miami wtvs detroit and wgbh boston this is frontline with judy woodruff good evening a century ago the british poet and critic ac swinburne wrote there is but one book in the world of which it might be argued that it would be better for the world to lose all others and keep this one that book is best known by the simple english name of its author shakespeare but behind that name lies a mystery this is the folger shakespeare library here in washington dc it is a monument to the most studied writer ever but while the centuries of scholarship collected here have certified his genius they have not erased the doubts about who william shakespeare really was in fact since his death in 1616 over 4 000 books have been written about the so-called authorship question it's a complicated and passionate debate that has engaged people as diverse as sigmund freud charles dickens and supreme court justice harry blackman an unusual front line an investigation into the past into the doubt that still shrouds shakespeare's identity in the intriguing case of the latest pretender to literature's most brilliant crown our program was produced and directed by kevin sim and reported by al austin it is called the shakespeare mystery horatio i am dead thou list report me and my calls are right to the unsatisfied o god horatio what a wounded name things standing thus unknown shall live behind me if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absentee from felicity a while and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story hamlet the prince of denmark knew that the dead must rely on the living to tell their stories this film is about the man who wrote hamlet but whose story are we supposed to tell is it the story of the great nobleman born here more than 400 years ago brilliant powerful and now forgotten or is it the story of a genius born here in this small country town a glove maker's son a nobody whose fame has spread throughout the world this is stratford-on-avon hometown of william shakespeare and world center of the shakespeare industry every april 23rd stratford celebrates his birthday nations from all over the world nations that don't even speak shakespeare's language send their ambassadors to pay their respects and to parade through his town every year a million tourists come here and the good people of stratford on avon rejoice at this happy union of commerce and great literature the march from shakespeare's birthplace along the streets he walked 400 years ago grows larger every year i bid you welcome to the church of the holy and undivided trinity the pilgrimage to his grave is a custom hallowed by history consecrated by tradition and blessed by the church exalted figures of the past look on forgotten as year after year the endless tributes flow in the direction of the commoner shakespeare is buried in the church floor on the wall nearby is a monument to him he wrote four poems 154 sonnets and 37 plays and many believe he told us more about ambition and royal intrigue and suffering and about love and death and human nature than anyone before or since but why did the man who told us so much about who we are tell us so little about himself there's always been a question and among the countless millions who have stood gazing at the bust of shakespeare there have been some who came not to praise him but to bury him mark twain was one the bus too there in the stratford church the precious bust the priceless bust the calm bust the serene bust the emotionalist bust that face with a deep deep deep subtle shuttle shuttle expression of a bladder it was at the wheel of a mississippi riverboat more than 130 years ago that mark twain began to have doubts about shakespeare of stratford twain learned the language of shakespeare while he was learning the language of the river from a riverboat captain who kept mixing the poetry and his commands together what man there hi there approach now there she goes meet her meet her didn't you know she smelled the reef of your crowded in like that come ahead on the starboard straighten up and go along never tremble are we alive a damn nation can't you keep away from that greasy water snatcher that's her ball headed with my sword it was the captain's jargon that set twain thinking only a river boater could handle riverboat slang like that there are some things you just have to experience where would shakespeare the country boy have learned the lawyer slang court slang soldier slang and all the other jargon that fills the plays for twain it wasn't possible maybe skepticism was in the american air other americans shared twain's doubts emerson whitman henry james even charlie chaplin have left a trail of disbelief that today stretches to beaufort south carolina for 50 years author charlton ogbern and his parents before him have led the battle against william shakespeare of stratford i think it's the shame of the english-speaking people british and americans that they have taken these plays incomparable and literate you are of whom the german point heinrich hines said of course god comes first but surely shakespeare comes next this man who is next to god as a creator we've taken his work and we vested it on this miserable unattractive stratford man whom nothing good was ever said except that he was a natural wit the doubts are getting closer to shakespeare's home this is a rare visit to stratford for former british cabinet minister enoch powell whose study of shakespeare's plays convinced him that the town was built on a lie at that time i'd been a member of a cabinet and i'd been in politics for 20 years and i had some idea of what it's like in the kitchen and my astonishment was to discover that these were the works of somebody who'd been in the kitchen they're written by someone who has lived the life who has been part of a life of politics and power who knows what people feel when they are near to the center of power near to the heat of a kitchen it's not something which can be transferred it's not something on which an author just an author can be briefed oh this is how it happens it comes straight out of experience straight out of personal observation straight out of personal feeling that's the difference which comes over you when you read shakespeare detached from the stratfordian fantasy for powell the british politician justice for twain the american riverboater the stratford man had failed the crucial test of experience the real shakespeare was at home in worlds they believed the glovemaker's son could not have known and the stratford fantasy had made a bard out of a bumpkin transforming a common duck into the swan of avon but stratford's guardians of tradition haven't allowed these doubts to alter the official story the early life of shakespeare would certainly have been spent in henley street here as you visit the birthplace you'll find that it's really a very interesting building the birthplace is where the visitor picks up the first threads of shakespeare's biography but he hears few facts there's no record for instance that shakespeare was born in this house instead the visitor hears what may have happened and is given a choice of possibilities what does intrigue um scholars is what he actually did for work some theories are that he may have become a school master other theories that he was in fact a lawyer's clerk an actor there are several possibilities in fact of these theories the tour is so skillful a visitor may not notice that nothing here can actually be traced to shakespeare himself but sadly none of the furnishings in this room belong to the family they have subsequently been brought into the house by the shakespeare trust to furnish it in a manner that the shakespeares probably would have had and the family always maintained that he was born in the room directly above us in the main bedroom this has become known as the birth room in england today one of the most prominent authorities on stratford's william shakespeare is historian a.l rouse well it might really rather surprise you but i'm so used to living in the elizabethan age having spent most of my life researching into it that i feel rather at home and you suppose the doubts about william shakespeare of stratford being the true author have persisted all these years well nearly all the rot uh that's really spoken uh by people who don't really should shut up i had a letter only a month or two ago from some silly woman who wanted to know didn't i think dr rouse that william shakespeare must have been a woman and then shortly after i got another nonsense letter didn't i think that elizabeth the first math queen elizabeth must have been a man why don't they get down and read the books that can really tell them what is absolutely straight history your own books my own bush and then the whining school boy with his satchel and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to school with those lines from as you like it shakespeare scholars like to flesh out their picture of the poet's school days in this very classroom we are told young william and his classmates learned enough latin and greek enough of the classical scholars enough about the writing of prose and verse all the skills necessary to furnish the intellectual background for the great works to come it was early in the reign of queen elizabeth the lord's prayer had only freshly been translated into protestant english and stratford's grammar school was nurturing its most famous people but there is a problem there is absolutely no documentary evidence that william shakespeare of stratford ever went to school at all yay from the table of my memory i'll wipe away all trivial fond records all sorts of books all forms all precious past that youth and observation copies there no books no records only supposition a shadow of a glove maker and alderman's son who may have gone to school here one by one all the fine stories of shakespeare from the young scamp arrested for deer poaching to the lovesick youth cording anne hathaway all turn out to be the inventive recollections of people who had never seen shakespeare who were born long after he died what is there to be learned for sure about him he was born in 1564 was married at 18 had three children died in 1616. what other hard facts are there practically every document that's been found tracing shakespeare's life after he left stratford for london is here in london's public record office a william shakespeare owned some shares in london's globe theater several documents show shakespeare delinquent in his taxes a tax collector couldn't find him he's named in some minor lawsuits the accuracy of this 1595 document the first and only record of william shakespeare ever being paid as an actor has been disputed by scholars eight years later in 1603 king james authorized several actors including shakespeare to start performing plays again after the plague had closed the theaters but by then he bought a house back in stratford and was dealing in real estate and grain not a single letter in shakespeare's own hand has ever been found in fact the only examples of his handwriting yet discovered the only examples generally accepted are six signatures each one spelled differently three of the signatures are in his will the most famous shakespeare document of all one of the most famous documents in existence period in it he divides his property down to a silver bull and a sword but he makes no mention of any books manuscripts plays poems or any shares in the london theater he leaves his wife just one thing his second best bed written between the lines of the will is a bequeathal of some money for rings to my fellows john heming richard burbidge and henry condell who were actors that's about it after centuries of the most intensive literary treasure hunt of all time these are the nuggets the leavings of a man who seems to have been interested in little except money doubters look at this meager collection and see no trace of the creator of hamlet macbeth lear othello and the sonnets they see only a very ordinary man but in washington's folger shakespeare library the high temple of american shakespearean studies professor sam schoenbaum believes that the very ordinary man of the documentary evidence is no barrier to greatness shakespeare as people have noted the author of these plays was also a man among men a genius is not a an occupation that that takes up every moment of one's day the genius has sweet he procreates children the occasionally he sleeps he occasionally uses the bathroom and so it's hard for us uh to accommodate ourselves to the dual of the multi-various nature of the uh of the person who is uh as we all recognize a genius the stratfordians would argue that it's like uh it's like spontaneous generation they like the christian fundamentalists who believe that life was created bang like that overnight all complete as it is just the way the plays of shakespeare were completed bang in his brain without any background at all how could anybody have thought that a man who could barely sign his name was the greatest writer in the english language whom nobody while he was alive ever to the best of our knowledge ever identified as the drama to shakespeare dramatist of any kind or any kind of writer but the name william shakespeare was linked to the poems and plays during the stratford man's lifetime it was there on two poems published in 1593 venus and adonis and the rape of lucrece the name william shakespeare was on the sonnets when they appeared in 1609 it was on some of the unofficial publications of the plays the quartos but the name wasn't spelled the way the stratfor man spelled his shakspur without an e after the k and often it was hyphenated an indication according to andy stratfordians that people knew it was a pseudonym while he lived the definite link with the stratford man was missing and when he died in 1616 no one seemed to notice until seven years later 1623 then the monument was erected in the church and almost simultaneously the first folio appeared this was the first publication of all shakespeare's plays here was the missing link to the stratford man in this book ben johnson who was second only to shakespeare as a dramatist wrote a poem to shakespeare calling him sweet swan of avon the name stratford is also mentioned in the introduction and there was one more definite link to stratford in the first polio its editors were listed as john heming and henry condell those are the same two actors the stratford man had mentioned in his will heming and condole his um friends and colleagues during his lifetime who were able to perform this service for him after his death well we have shakespeare's will and in his will as it happens he remembered heming and condor but unfortunately and that is one of the accidents which keep happening to william shakespeare of stratford-on-haven the references to heming and condor in the will are interliniations by another hand isn't that an unfortunate accident that the link between the actors who are the editors or purport to be the editors of this massive new material never released before have apparently been introduced into his will that by the way and having mentioned shakespeare's will that is a will in which this great spirit this man of a man of immense learning and vision not only bequeathed no books that can be perhaps explained away but he bequeathed not even the most valuable thing which he had to bequeath the remaining manuscripts of his plays which would which were eventually to be published seven years after his death trouble is there's a puzzle with which one's confronted it doesn't run right nothing's right enoch began as a classical scholar and i think he would do better really to confine himself to what he knows about there's no problem whatever about the first folio except that it was a tremendous big undertaking um which in itself shows you um how much heming and condor and all the other people in the company really valued their chief dramatist the best known the most popular dramatist of the age and people really rushed to buy um quarters of the place that they could get hold of but the remaining plays of course were in the archives of the company there's no problem about that at all and i think we might really allow poor mr powell really to retire open politics though there too i gather he's lost his seat i don't want to bother about his appeals whatsoever doesn't qualify to have an opinion about it but nothing about shakespeare is that simple no one even knows for sure what he looked like this portrait hung in a place of honor in washington's folger shakespeare library until a close examination showed that it was the portrait of another man who'd been partly painted over this portrait was owned by king william iv and was once called shakespeare it has now been retitled portrait of an unknown man one by one the portraits of shakespeare have proved to be as fanciful as the anecdotes about his life art experts now doubt that he posed for a single one of them what do you make of the frontis piece the engraving the first picture of shakespeare if you have to have a face and everybody has a face there is a face and that is the face of the same design as the face of a monument the stratford monument to which this book for the first time refers the first connection between these phrase and stratfor uneven and how convenient that there was a stratford monument somebody fixed it and to me in its wording in its aspect in everything about it that is a fix it is a fix which was arranged to go with the first folio the one spoof goes with the other spoof and it's all part of the spoof of william shakespeare it's shocking isn't it it's an absolute shocker somebody took it into the workshop and said here this is what it's to look like it absolutely stinks you don't think that's the face of a man who would uh write the sonnets i don't think it's the face of a man at all i think it's the face of anonymous of somebody who isn't a man of a mask somebody invented where there has to be somebody to conceal an identity i can't put up with it when remedies are passed the griefs are ended by seeing the worst which late on hopes depended to mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on what i hope will happen is that the true author will will be recognized it is the greatest detective story there ever laws it's the greatest story in literature in my mind and uh you can't help getting absorbed in it and excited about it and furthermore you can't help feeling its importance you want the man who conferred the greatest glory on english letters to get his recognition it's a matter of simple justice just after world war one an english school master named jay thomas loney set out to find the real william shakespeare by constructing an exact profile of his man the way a detective might there had been many candidates in the past christopher marlowe francis bacon even queen elizabeth but loney was looking for someone new a man of superb education and recognized genius a man close to the royal court and a man who had written under his own name before becoming shakespeare the search lasted several years he came across this little volume of poetry here in the british library and in it he found some poems which seemed remarkably similar to the works of shakespeare framed in the front of forlorn hope past all recovery i stayless stand to abide the shock of shame and infamy my life through lingering long is lodged in layer of loathsome ways my death delayed to keep from life the harm of hapless days my sprites my heart my wit and force in deep distress are drowned the only loss of my good name is of these griefs the ground the poems were by edward de vere the 17th earl of oxford at first it seemed that he had written only a few youthful poems then stopped writing and yet literary critics of the period called devere one of the greatest elizabethan poets and the best for comedy if he did write comedies and great poems what happened to them one of loney's disciples came across a possible answer in another old book this one the art of english poesy written in 1589 13 years after de vere supposedly put down his pen it says i know very many notable gentlemen in the court that have written commendably and suppressed it again or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it of which number is first that noble gentleman edward earl of oxford edward de vere or else suffered it to be published without their own names to it for lonely's disciples this was a vital clue here they saw a noble man who couldn't admit he was also a playwright whose station in life meant that someone else would get the credit for the finest plays and poems in the language or i shall live your epitaph to make or you survive when i in earth am rotten from hence your memory death cannot take although in me each part will be forgotten your name from hence immortal life shall have though i once gone to all the world must die the earth can yield me but a common grave when you in two median men's eyes shall lie your monument shall be my gentle verse which eyes not yet created shallower reed and tongues to be your being shall rehearse all the breathers of this world are dead you still shall live such virtue hath my pen where breath most breathes even in the mouths of men at headingham castle northeast of london the earls of oxford the de beers had been celebrated in the mouths of men for over 400 years and earl of oxford had signed magna carta they had fought with richard the lionheart with henry v and henry vi oxford's fought on the lancastrian side in the wars of the roses it was into this famous old family of warriors and power brokers that edward de vere was born in 1550 he took on his father's easy familiarity with hunting writing and falconry aristocratic pastimes which furnish so much of the imagery of the plays and poems in 1561 when he was 11 he watched as queen elizabeth was entertained in this great hall by his father's own group of players and a year later when his father died the twelve-year-old earl now a ward of court took another step toward the center of the elizabethan stage his new guardian was william cecil lord burley the most powerful man in england it was the beginning of a tense and difficult relationship that some believe provides the key to the shakespeare mystery this is where the elizabethan age began in hatfield on the outskirts of london it was here that elizabeth first received the news that she had become queen of england in the years to come she would become gloriana the virgin queen a goddess presiding over a golden age and always behind the throne there was her chief minister william cecil lord burley who had now taken edward de vere into his care burley a sly and consummate politician who controlled the affairs of state for forty years also kept a meticulous account of his own household and this four hundred year old record of his family life is still preserved here at hatfield these are the diaries of lord burley and some of the letters he received quite a few of them written by his ward edward de vere letters so well preserved they might have arrived in today's mail neat confident handwriting these diaries and letters give us glimpses into the life of edward de vere they reveal a passionate headstrong thrill-seeking young man a playboy a favorite of queen elizabeth but a man who despite his noble upbringing hangs around with all sorts of strange characters and a man who is constantly in trouble for example burley's diary for july 1567 says about this time when de vere was just 17 an undercook was hurt by the earl of oxford de vere whereof he died the cook died burley goes on to say that the cook ran on to devere's sword and it was the cook's fault but years later in a letter to queen elizabeth burleigh hints that it may have been murder he says he tried to persuade the jury that the death was say de fendendo self-defense be thou familiar but by no means vulgar the friends thou hast many shakespeare scholars believe that lord burley was the model for the devious character polonius in hamlet whose most famous speech is his list of rules for a successful life fledged comrade beware of entrance to a quarrel but being in bet that the opposed may beware of thee give every man thy like polonius lord burley had composed his own list of rules for a prudent life for his family's use this was before hamlet was written oxfordians argued that only someone in burley's household like de beer could have seen the rules and used them as satire on stage this was one of burley's rules he that payeth another man's debt seeketh his own decay neither a borrower nor a linderby loses both itself and friend and borrowing dowels the edge of husbandry this above all to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man farewell my blessing season this believed that lord burley provided de vere with exactly the environment and education the author of the plays must have had de vir's tutor was england's greatest latin scholar he received degrees from both oxford and cambridge and then studied law he became a favorite at court and even married lord burley's daughter this picture of parliament shows queen elizabeth on her throne burly at her right hand and de vere holding the wand of office of the lord great chamberlain oxfordians also say shakespeare was a natural pen name for de vere they point to the fact that he was once saluted at court with the toast thy countenance shakes a spear and to de beers coat of de arms the deveer society charity ball from both sides of the atlantic the colorful champions of de vere have converged on london to support the cause their leader is a 23 year old descendant of the oxford line charles veer the earl of burford and despite appearances the business of the evening is a literary revolution it's very easy to say shakespeare is shakespeare and then to laugh at anyone who said otherwise but the issue is a lot more complicated i would like to say something of the earl of oxford he was a great and maverick intelligence he was a law unto himself yes he fell on hard times but he was a cousin of the queen and he also had a claim to the throne after her he believed that he would become edward vii he signed his signature with seven little dashes underneath which he dropped once james the first came to the throne of course to some extent um these ignorant people are really motivated a bit by snobbery you see they think that only an earl or a duke could really write plays like that when you and i know what roth that is it's always the clever grammar school boys who write the plays you know like christopher marlowe or ben johnson or nash or robert greene or any of them the plays are never written by an earl when looking for who shakespeare was you're already dealing with a very small section of society and those inevitably a nobleman who were had the best tutors of the day who were edu well educated and so on and the earl of oxford has all the academic and intellectual qualifications for being shakespeare if it was de vere if it was edward de vere why wouldn't he he have owned up to it um people don't seem to understand that if the earl of oxford died knowing that he would be recognized as shakespeare in his time he would have considered that a slur on his name and he would have known that his family would have been dishonored oxfordians believed that although their man couldn't acknowledge that he was the author he left clues throughout the works more than a hundred of the sonnets are written to the earl of southampton stratfordians say southampton would shakespeare's patron but de vere had a more definite tie southampton was also a ward of lord burley and at one point almost married devere's daughter sonnet 125 word ought to me i bore the canopy to oxfordians the line makes sense because de vere did bear a golden canopy over queen elizabeth during celebration of the victory over the spanish armada several sonnets speak of old age and imminent depth de vere was nearing death at the time the sonnets were written shakespeare was still in his 30s sonnet 76 every word dot almost tell my name a possible pun on the name ever for centuries biographers have used the sonnets to light the dim past of the stratford man now they're being used by oxfordians to reveal an entirely different person the earl of oxford was quite talented he knew italian been to italy and he wrote just a few poems he never wrote a single play and he really became a most frightful lightweight he was married to the daughter of the great lord treasurer whom he treated awfully badly because in point of fact he was a roaring homo as marlo was and as bacon was um i mean it's perfectly obvious william shakespeare's plays are absolutely full um of a passionate uh appreciation and feeling for women well the hell of oxford had none neither had christopher marlowe christopher marlowe was only interested in the boys and francis bacon had no interest he was also another homo and william shakespeare you might say was almost abnormally heterosexual he was only interested in the girls that's quite obvious from all his plays and all that we know about his life but the sonnets themselves you think are addressed to the earl of southampton even though they appear to be some of them love poems yes of course but uh there it's really a platonic love you see william shakespeare makes it perfectly clear that he wasn't interested in southampton sexually at all southampton was rather beautiful and rather a feminine young man we know a great deal about him uh and william shakespeare says in the sonnet um and for a woman were thou first created till nature as she wrought thee fell a doting and added one thing to my purpose nothing and since she pricked thee out for women's pleasure mine be thy love and thy loves use their treasure they can have you sexually i'm not interested in that he was interested in the young man's uh nature he had a golden nature his real passion and infatuation was for the dark lady the dark lady is the subject of shakespeare's most anguished sonnets her identity has always been a mystery but there was a dark lady in oxford's life too her name was anne vavisor she was 17 when she came to court at the time when de vere was estranged from his wife when anne bore his child devere found himself jailed in the tower of london was this raw material for the bitter sonnet 147 my love is as a fever longing still for that which longer nurses the disease feeding on that which doth preserve the ill the uncertain sickly appetite to please past cure i am now reason is past care and frantic mad with ever more unrest my thoughts and my discourse as madman's are at random from the truth vainly expressed for i have sworn thee fair and fought thee bright who art as black as hell as dark as night lord burley had put up with his son-in-law's indiscretions but oxfordians believe he could not allow the public to learn that plays full of political intrigue and satire were being written by one of the family so according to this theory in 1598 burly and queen elizabeth compelled devere to hide behind the pseudonym he had used earlier for two poems and that somehow this conspiracy of silence has lasted for four hundred years i suppose if one is drawn to conspiracy theories uh one will come up with a uh with a conspiracy uh and find that that answers certain issues and so on uh i'm not myself uh given conspiratorial thinking i don't find any grassy knowledge shakespeare but i think in a way it's as an attempt to come to terms with the essential incomprehensible of genius how could anyone have written these plays if genius has its mystery if it is in essence incomprehensible people many of them will do the best they can to come up with some sort of answer i think hamlet was oxford and i don't see how anybody who knows anything about literary creativity can fail to say that the author whoever he was has given his picture as hamlet this is written from the inside uh things happen in hamlet not according to a preconceived plot but as they do in life and i think hamlet's death was very much what oxford had in mind for himself as he drew towards the end horatio i am dead thou lift report me and my cause are right to the unsatisfied o god her issue what a wounded name things standing thus unknown shall live behind me if thou did ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity a while and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story i think that oxford wanted his cousin horace or horatio to explain what his situation in life was to explain that he wasn't the wastrel that he appeared on the surface the spin strip then spin thrift the betrayer of his wife he wasn't all the things that he's gone down as being which were marginal with him he wants horatio to explain what he really was your name from hence immortal life shall have though i once gone to all the world must die i know what it cost him to write these plays i know what it cost him to have to give up any hope of being acknowledged as the writer guys you read the sonnets and you see it the i once gone to all the world must die that's a tragic cry from a man he saw himself as leah i'm sure not that his kingdom was lost not that his kingdom was made over to his daughters his literal kingdom but that the kingdom in which he lived his works were being alienated from him he felt as leah did and for the first time in his life i think oxford this really quite haughty pier in some ways was brought to feel the humanity the common humanity with mankind that king leo was brought to field and yes i would like very much to see this man get the credit that says due as a person i do feel that his presence as a person yes but i think he had a hell of a raw deal are there any particular lines in the poems or plays that you always look at in order to call this feeling of loss and sadness most clearly to mind well i suppose the lines that do that make me realize that he had looked on he had felt with utter despair that he knew utter despair as probably no other human being who wrote as eloquently had ever felt and those are the lines that macbeth uttered when the news is brought to him of his queen's death i don't think you need having them recited you know what they are and uh but they do they they affect me terribly when i hear them can you try to tell me what they are i'll try to tell you what they are if my emotions don't get the better of me please remember i've been awfully sick but the line saw tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yes all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death out out brief candle life but a walking shadow a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing nothing yes i feel that very strongly excuse me but i know how the man felt who wrote that we all know how he felt black utter despair that's never been so eloquently expressed before and probably never will again i like to turn to that to other things he wrote i don't like to dwell on it too much but i i can imagine how he felt as hamlet felt as he was dying pleading to his cousin to put his cause a right to the unsatisfied i'd like to help do that the earl of oxford died of the plague in 1604 stratfordians say that means he could not have been the author because at least one of the plays was written years later de vere was buried here at hackney cemetery in north london but his tomb has disappeared the earth can yield me but a common grave when you entombed in men's eyes shall lie your monument shall be my gentle verse which eyes not yet created shall or read and tongues to be your being shall rehearse when all the breathers oxfordians remain convinced that all the plays had been written by the time devere died and members of his family were sure his body was moved from hackney and reburied secretly in westminster abbey amongst the tombs of england's greatest statesmen and writers this is the davier term that's right this is the tomb of francis here um who was the earl of oxford's first cousin um together with horus horatio and he died fighting in the netherlands and was brought back to england and buried here with great ceremony there's an inscription in the slab next to the monument that says stone coffin underneath do you know what do you make of that well i think my hunch is that it may well be that the 17th of oxford was reburied there was moved from hackney church and buried here it would be unthinkable for the earl of oxford eight have no two just because of the sort of person he was his station he the 17th earl of oxford that says it all uh lord great chamberlain of england and of course if he was shakespeare um if he gave the world that that's incredible achievement then it would only be fitting that that he should lie here in westminster abbey i think what one one feels above all is a rather eerie sense of something mysterious or even untoward here so i think one gets a very much a sense of of history in the present of you and i taking part in it as as much as back in the 17th century when when this was erected our part is just as significant and i think it was probably intended to be this resolution was left for future generations so here we have these greatest works literary works of man why had they vanished and their disappearance down to the last line of manuscript is an enormous mystery an enormous mystery this february technology gamma ray photography joined the search for shakespeare's secrets the monument in the church in stratford uh is the most peculiar monument that i've ever seen why does it say read if thou cast well if he can't read how is he going to read this injunction whom envious death hath placed within this monument shakespeare shaq spear actually well obviously death nor anybody else has placed anybody in the monument because it's too small to me it it can only be explained as saying that death hath placed shakespeare meaning shakespeare's works within this monument now i don't know whether the manuscripts are in the monument god knows i have no way of knowing all i say is that if someone else has an explanation of what this inscription means let him come forward and say so nobody else ever has all they say is it's just poetry i felt that it was worth anything to look in this monument if there's only one chance in ten one chance in 50 to see if the manuscripts are there and i'd like to see the monument explored please nothing if you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not speak then to me touching this vision here it is an honest ghost that let me tell you there are more things in heaven and earth horatio than are dreamt of what a wounded name things standing thus unknown shall live behind me if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from felicity a while and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story the mystery persists in part because both the stratfor and oxford cases are built on circumstantial evidence a single clear document a smoking gun that would irrefutably link any one person to shakespeare's works has eluded scholars for almost four centuries while a mystery this old may never be resolved it is clear that the search will continue the doubters and defenders united by their reverence for the man they seek thank you for joining us i'm judy woodruff good night

Channel: NorthropN156

Views: 172,736

Keywords: William Shakespeare (Author), Judy Woodruff (Author), Fontline, Stratford-upon-Avon (City/Town/Village), Mark Twain (Author), Walt Whitman (Author), Ralph Waldo Emerson (Author), Edward De Vere 17th Earl Of Oxford (Noble Person), Hamlet (Book), Charlton Ogburn, Enoch Powell, A.L Rowse, Oxfordian, Stratfordian, Phillip Marlowe, Kit Marlowe, William Cecil 1st Baron Burghley (Author), Francis Bacon (Author), Westminster Abby, Theatre (TV Genre)

Id: wkqcLJZ9I3s

Length: 56min 28sec (3388 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 25 2014