“Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom: The True History of Shakespeare and Elizabeth”, by Charles Beauclerk

448 pages, Grove Press, ISBN-13: 978-0802145383

There are, as far as I can tell, two principle claimants to the Shakespeare-Was-Not-Shakespeare Alternative Interpretation/Paranoid Delusion Historical Conspiracy Thing: 1^st is Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford and the supposed son of Elizabeth I and Lord Thomas Seymour; 2^nd is Henry Wriothesley, 3^rd Earl of Southampton and the supposed son of Elizabeth I and the afore-mentioned Earl of Oxford; thus, either of these illegitimate sons of the Queen were potential heirs to the throne. Integral to the latter “Prince Tudor Theory” is the assumption that, after the secret birth of a son in May-June 1574 by the Queen and Oxford, the baby was placed in the Southampton household as a substitute for the son known to have been born to the Southamptons in October 1573, a theory that originated with Alfred Dodd, who claimed in his book, Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story (first published in 1910) that both Sir Francis Bacon and Robert Devereux, 2^nd Earl of Essex, were the sons of Queen Elizabeth. In his article, “Occultist Influence on the Authorship Controversy” in the Spring 1998 issue of The Elizabethan Review, Roger Nyle Parisious, explained how this Baconian scenario was taken over by two British Oxfordians, Captain B. M. Ward and Percy Allen, at some time between 1930 and 1933. Since then, the “Prince Tudor Theory” has been the subject of any number of books and was even the subject of Anonymous, a feature film directed by Roland Emmerich and released in late 2011.

A wide range of historical documents decisively refutes the “Prince Tudor Theory”, a significant number of which were examined by Diana Price in “Rough Winds Do Shake: A Fresh Look at the Tudor Rose Theory” in the Autumn 1996 issue of The Elizabethan Review. Another refutation of is Christopher Paul’s article “The Prince Tudor Dilemma: Hip Thesis, Hypothesis or Old Wives’ Tale?” published in the October 2002 issue of The Oxfordian.

Readers who demand hard evidence rather than flatulent conjecture will come up empty with Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom: The True History of Shakespeare and Elizabeth. Yes, it’s true that we have very little fact about Shakespeare’s life, but the fact that he acted in at least one of his friend Ben Jonson’s plays, and that when it came time to collect Shakespeare’s work in 1623 (seven years after his death) Ben Jonson wrote an eloquent introduction in which he lauded his friend’s genius should put paid to any claim that Shakespeare the playwright was not a real person. I believe Shakespeare wrote the plays because Ben Jonson tells me he wrote them as even a cursory examination of Jonson’s career shows that he was no candidate to be part of an Elizabethan cover-up. In short, if the plays had been written by Queen Elizabeth’s love child, as Lost Kingdom posits, Jonson would have been all over that cock-up faster than you can say Da Vinci Code. I can at least thank Beauclerk for helping me to wise up, for since reading his book I have definitively removed from the list of “Shakespeare Doubters”.

The vast consensus of the academic experts on the authorship of Shakespeare’s works is that he was William Shakespeare of Stratford and that there are gaps in his biography should not be read as an invitation to conspiracy. The Shakespeare authorship controversy, as evidenced by the hilarious mélange of candidates and theories – besides Edward de Vere and Henry Wriothesley, other candidates include Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Sir William Stanley, Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, to name just a few – is a prime example of what Michael Shermer means by “smart people believing weird things”. Who was it said: “The surest sign of a theory in trouble is the vast number of versions of that theory that exist?”

“Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924”, by Philip Mansel

528 pages, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN-13: 978-0312145743

Anyone interested in Ottoman history in general and in in Istanbul’s history, social structure and architecture in particular must read Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924 by Philip Mansel. Mansel brings to light why all the great powers in the history wanted to control Constantinople and its hinterland, their motives ranging from the politic to the economic. By giving extensive quotes from contemporary diplomatic correspondence, accounts of travel writers, and history books written back in the day, Mansel is better able to explain the power struggle behind the scenes. But more than politics, strife and struggle, this book is principally a wonderful social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire, the great bugaboo of Europe for at least four centuries. Mansel provides a great deal of fascinating tidbits about all aspects of life in the city and proves to be both enlightening and entertaining, all while making an important point: this is a place where East meets West, a place where (much of the time) different religions and different cultures have been able to live more-or-less in peace side-by-side under (mostly) benevolent Muslim rulers – who also never lost an opportunity to make sure that their other, non-Muslim subjects were second-class citizens, at best. This has obviously not always been the case, but when during human history can you cover a span of 500 years and not find conflict?

If this book has a weakness it is that, perhaps, at times it tries to cover too many topics; it works best as a cultural and social history. While Mansel manages to convey an obvious comprehension of detail of one of the world’s most intriguing cities, one would be forgiven for thinking that this tome was merely a weighty collection of a researcher’s private scribblings. Stylistically, Mansel seems more intent upon recounting every fact, relevant or otherwise, that he has gathered in an effort to seemingly demonstrate his undoubtedly extensive knowledge of his subject. The reader is accordingly left with a disjointed series of statements about the formation of Constantinople, a subject worthy of a good story. For instance, over the last 200 pages or so Mansel switches gears and the book delves mostly into the murky world of politics, both national and international; thus, the reader who is looking for a social history might be bored by the last third of the book while the political scientist might not enjoy the first 300 pages or so.

With that small criticism aside, Mansel picked a very difficult story to tell and he is to be congratulated for doing a very fine job overall. While he is somewhat dismissive of Fernand Braudel (inexcusable) and Edward Said (Thank God), he presents his material cogently and intelligently. One of the most enjoyable books I read in a while.

“Robin Hood”, by J. C. Holt

266 pages, Thames & Hudson, ISBN-13: 978-0500289358

In 1982 Sir James Clarke Holt, Professor of Medieval History, published what came to be acknowledged as the definitive work on Robin Hood, with a second edition appearing in 1988 incorporating significant new research. Thus, the first important point: make sure you get the later edition as it incorporates new material and corrections from the first. The second important point is that this new evidence – which pushed the first reference to Robin Hood a century further back in time – merited a complete rewrite; instead, Holt left the main text almost unaltered and discussed the new information in a postscript, while also giving this new info a brief mention in a preface. The result is that the reader is presented with much speculation about the origin of the legend which is largely invalidated in the postscript, a confusing way to write a book and the intellectual equivalent of having the rug pulled out from under your feet.

With all that said, Holt wrote an exhaustive (if exceedingly dry) study of Robin Hood, both the man (what little remains of him in the ballads) and the legend. He discussed the five earliest surviving ballads – A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin Hood’s Death, Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, and Robin Hood and the Potter – and extrapolated from them details all that can be inferred of the original Hood and of the transmission of the legend in the 200 years before the songs were first written down. Even after they began to be preserved on paper new elements in the legend continued to emerge (for instance, Maid Marian and Friar Tuck only joined Robin’s Merry Men in the 15^th Century). Although today we commonly think of Robin Hood as hanging around in Nottingham and Sherwood Forest (both to be found in Nottinghamshire), the early ballads most strongly connect him with Barnesdale, in South Yorkshire. Holt details the physical setting in which Robin Hood and his legend traversed, and also the type of people who were his original audience.

So just who was Robin Hood? Holt answers, “There were more than one”. Many outlaws later called themselves Hood, and some elements of the legends were possibly added on because a storyteller confused one Hood with our Robin Hood – this may explain why an actual march of Edward II’s in 1322 is incorporated into the life of a bandit who probably lived a hundred years earlier. Holt does think there was an original Robin Hood who inspired the legend and believes that he lived in the first half of the 13^th Century. He is possibly identical with a certain outlaw named Robert Hod, aka Hobbehod, who is mentioned in records from 1225-26. Although there are many uncertainties, of all the suggested candidates for the “real” Robin Hood, based on the existing evidence Robert Hod is the most plausible. Holt also states that the reason there are so many buildings and places associated with Hood is that these are later confusions from people who mistook actors and performers who played the outlaw with the actual outlaw himself.

Robin Hood, for all its flaws, remains a fact-packed, authoritative guide to England’s unlikely national hero (well, a thief who may or may not have existed seems an unlikely hero to me). Holt points the reader toward the earliest ballads, and I strongly recommend that you read these in parallel with the earliest chapters of this book. If you can find a copy of the Child Ballads that would be best. These are a collection of 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19^th Century. Their lyrics and Child’s studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, a work of some 2500 pages. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s. FYI.