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.

Bonner Cutting lectures on Edward de Vere’s thousand pound annuity at the 2016

Coming up in a future post: Edward de Vere’s thousand Pound Annuity and the de Vere Geneva Bible.