Three passages from the de Vere letters are of special interest not only on account of their repeated manifestation in Shakespeare but also because of their thematic implications and their illustration of concepts drawn from or related to the Bible. Here we will consider the first of these three.

In his January, 1602, Fourth Danvers Escheat Letter (Fowler 652-681). Oxford uses the Latin proverb finis coronat opus/The end crowns the work (Figure 1).

Earl of Oxford's Danvers Escheat letter, p. 2, dated Jan., 1602.
Figure 1: Page 2 of the 17th Earl of Oxford’s 4th Danvers Escheat Letter, showing Latin proverb finis coronat opus. Reproduced with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House, and with thanks to Lisa and Laura Wilson at 1604 Productions.

[I fear now to be left] in medio rerum omnium certamine et discrimine [“in the midst of contest and crisis in all things”], which if it so fall out, I shall bear it by the grace of god, with an equal mind, sith time and experience have given me sufficient understanding of worldly frailty, but I hope better, though I cast the worst, how so ever for finis coronat opus, and then everything will be laid open, every doubt resolved into a plain sense. . . .

This “finis coronat opus” proverb exists in several variations in Shakespeare, as William P. Fowler first noted: “This Latin phrase supplies, at the eleventh hour of Oxford’s life (less than two and half years before his death) the missing Latin chord to a tri-lingual trilogy, in Latin, French, and English” (654), viz.:

La fin couronne les oeuvres. (1 Henry VI 5.2.28)  

The end crowns all. (Troilus & Cressida 4.5.224)  

The conclusion shall be crowned with your enjoying her. (Merry Wives 3.5.120)
 
All’s well that ends well.  Still, the fine’s[1] the crown. 
Whate’er the course, the end is the renown. (All’s Well 4.4.35-36)

[1] A macaronic pun on the French words  finis or fin.

Tilley E116, “the end crowns all,” is also quite close to de Vere’s variant.
"Crown" or "coronet" signature on 4th Danvers Escheat letter.
Figure 2: Edward Oxenford “Crown” or “Coronet” Signature on the 1602 Danvers Escheat Letter. Whether the top icon represents a “crown” or a “coronet” has been disputed. Those who favor the coronet point out that the horizontal line can equal a ten, which with the addition of the seven vertical slashes yields a 17, so that the entire signature would read “Edward 17th Earl of Oxenford.”
Reproduced with permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House.

A distinct parallel to finis coronat opus occurs in a Biblical idiom in the annotations of de Vere’s Bible in chapter 11 of the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus (Figure 3):

Figure 3: Ecclus. 11.21-27 showing marginal note “continue.”
The reader who “continues” discovers that while “The adversitie of an hour maketh one to forget pleasure,” yet “in a mans end, his works are discovered.”
Although the idiom is different, the concept “revelatory ending” is common to both Ecclesiasticus and the proverb “the end crowns the work.”

From this text come two further examples:

Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let time try.
(As You Like It 4.1.197)[2]

And Naseeb Shaheen (1989 161) adds, citing a reference to Ecclus.  11.27:

Let the end try the man (2 Henry IV 2.2.47)

Triangulation assessment is a key element of forensic method. Here we have seen that two separate lines of evidence (the de Vere letters and the de Vere Bible annotations) confirm the salience of the eschatological motif as a central factor in Oxford’s psychology. We have also seen that this same emphasis occurs in Shakespeare, who rings a series of English, French, and Franglish variations on the proverb that appears in Latin in the de Vere letter.

The larger fact pattern in the Oxfordian case abounds with similar instances of robust triangulation of evidence, as future blog entries will show.

In this instance the comparison not only furnishes a sign for the intellect but also lesson for living. Continue. Finis coronat opus. The end crowns the work.

[2] Carter (333) cites Ecclus. 12.27 and Acts 5.38, 39.