From 1586 – two years before the Spanish Armada – to his death in 1604, Edward de Vere received a thousand pound annuity from the Elizabethan state. After the death of Elizabeth I in April, 1603, James I renewed the grant.
Edward de Vere’s thousand pound annuity and Shakespeare
Does the annuity have any connection to the theory of de Vere as Shakespeare?
What about Dromio of Ephesus: “I buy a thousand pound a year: I buy a rope!” (Errors 4.1).
What about Hamlet: “O good Horatio! I’ll take the ghost’s word for a thousand pounds! Didst perceive?” (3.2)
What about Falstaff: “Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?” (2 Hen. IV 1.2).
Are we starting to get the picture?
Edward de Vere’s thousand pound annuity may a be key element of the Oxfordian fact pattern.
There is no better introduction to the important of the annuity than this 2016 lecture by Bonner Cutting.
Coming up in a future post: Edward de Vere’s thousand Pound Annuity and the de Vere Geneva Bible.
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