The Moral and Spiritual Vision of Edward de Vere

“Shakespeare” & The Ornaments of Virtue Part II

by Jonathan S. Jackson

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves;

For if our virtues Did not go forth of us,

‘Twere all alike As if we had them not. [i]   

The early poems of Edward de Vere are filled with the tension of “human passions” and a thirst for “this most sacred light” that Castiglione rhapsodizes in The Book of The Courtier. Again and again, we find him wrestling with Desire and Love, and how both realities have potential virtues and vices, depending on how one relates to them. Solace or grief await the man who pursues either divine beauty or sensual desire as his ultimate aim.

We see this anguish in de Vere’s poem, “Grief of Mind”:

What plague is greater than the grief of mind?
The grief of mind that eats in every vein;
In every vein that leaves such clots behind;
Such clots behind as breed such bitter pain;
So bitter pain that none shall ever find,
What plague is greater than the grief of mind . [ii]

How could one not hear Hamlet in this lament?

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
 And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep—
 No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
 That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
 Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep (3.1.65-72)

This is affliction of the soul, the psyche—spiritual, psychological suffering. Here is a man who is internally wrestling with the most foundational questions of life, and the questions are so burning that they only increase when he is alone.

In his poem, “Care and Disappointment,” he says:

To entertain my thoughts, and there my hap to moan,
That never am less idle, lo! than when I am alone. [iii]

Should we ignore what de Vere as “Shakespeare” divulges about sacred convictions? There is often a tendency to avoid the topic, throw it off to the side and say, “Ah well, everyone was religious in those days, so it doesn’t mean very much.” On the contrary, it means even more. The people of his day cared more deeply about spiritual matters than most living today, and we learn from Edward de Vere’s letters, poetry, and annotations in his Geneva Bible how personal his feelings and convictions were.

De Vere’s Early Poems

Looking at his early poems reveals the struggle to understand Love as a virtue and “Love” as a destructive passion. He grapples with pure and impure forms of Desire:  

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,


Their wisdom by their rage of will;


Their treasure is their only trust,


And cloaked craft their store of skill.


But all the pleasure that I find,


Is to maintain a quiet mind. [viii]


Spiritual Growth in De Vere’s Poems

The confrontation between virtue and the passions continues in de Vere’s poem, Love and Wit, where vicious words are spoken about love and the havoc it causes—he alludes to Paris and the Fall of Troy to bolster his argument:

We add to this poetic litany against “Love” and “Desire” the impassioned verse titled Woman’s Changeableness and we are beginning to see a pattern, which fits perfectly into the mind and works of “Shakespeare.”

These gentle birds that fly from man to man;

Who would not scorn and shake them from the fist

And let them fly fair fools which way they list.

Yet for disport we fawn and flatter both,

To pass the time when nothing else can please,

And train them to our lure with subtle oath.

Till, weary of their wiles, ourselves we ease;

And then we say when we their fancy try,

To play with fools, O what a fool was I. [xii]

Oftentimes, those most betrayed by romantic love, in time, are drawn towards religion and philosophy. Once distressed by earthly loves, broken and in despair, they often fall into the embrace of Divine Love. We find this distinction between love and lust expressed powerfully in Venus and Adonis:

We find this distinction between love and lust expressed powerfully in Venus and Adonis:

“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But lust’s effect is tempest after sun.

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain;

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done.

Love surfeits not; lust like a glutton dies.

Love is all truth; lust full of forgèd lies.# edn15

The Cross of Anonymity

In his poem, Labour and its Reward, which he addresses “to the Reader of Bedingfield’s Cardanus’ Comfort”, de Vere reveals an early struggle with his literary labors and its rewards—a strange focus for a young poet, unless the signs of forced anonymity were already upon him, perhaps?    

So he that takes the pain to pen the book,
Reaps not the gifts of goodly golden muse;
But those gain that, who on the work shall look,
And from the sour the sweet by skill doth choose;
For he that beats the bush the bird not gets,
But who sits still and holdeth fast the nets. [xiv]

De Vere continues:  

And so it is in all other things as well as in man. Why should this man be more esteemed than that man but for his virtue, through which every man desireth to be accounted of?  Then you amongst men, I do not doubt but will aspire to follow that virtuous path, to illuster yourself with the ornaments of virtue. And in mine opinion as it beautifyeth a fair woman to be decked with pearls and precious stones, so much more it ornifyeth a gentle man to be furnished in mind with glittering virtues. [xviii]

For when all things shall else forsake us, virtue will ever abide with us, and when our bodies fall into the bowels of the earth, yet that shall mount with our minds into the highest heavens. [xix]

The philosophical insights found in “Labour and Its Reward,” along with de Vere’s letter to Bedingfield, harmonize: the one who labors, reaps not the rewards (at least in this life) however, “What doth avail the vine, unless another delighteth in the grape?”

Virtuous labors have a self-emptying quality, akin to the Great Humility, or kenosis of Christ. Virtue, in the mind of the poet, transcends moralism and bears witness to eternity: “For when all things shall else forsake us, virtue will ever abide with us, and when our bodies fall into the bowels of the earth, yet that shall mount with our minds into the highest heavens.” Not even death can destroy virtue—it has the substance of eternity within it.

A truly virtuous man undergoes an ontological transformation, beyond that of mere behavior modification or outward religiosity, his entire being is imbued with divine energy; to the extent that, although his body fall into the bowels of the earth, his mind, his psyche, his being, will ascend to the highest heaven.  

Obviously, this is a person who thinks deeply about life, perhaps at times, to an unhealthy degree, but this is not the mind of a man who would read the Scriptures, under line so many verses and not consider deeply its realities and how these “sacred letters of divinity” pertain to his own life. We are only viewing the tip of an iceberg. The more one researches, the more astonishing it becomes how the essence, spirit and moral vision of Edward de Vere and the works of “Shakespeare” are one: “Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.” Measure For Measure (III.I. 206)  

De Vere’s Inscription to his Wife

The consistency of de Vere’s spiritual vision is seen again in an inscription he wrote in the flyleaf of the gift of a Greek New Testament to his wife Anne, which Roger Stritmatter translated with modification from William Plumer Fowler’s, Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford’s Letters:  

True things teach the truth: false things are the very antithesis of truth.

Only true things endure; all other things vanish in vanity.

Therefore, true wife of a Vere, because you are both spouse and parent to a true girl,

And because you are about to give birth in hope to a true boy,

Cause your mind always to be aflame with the love of truth:

“Always a lover of truth” – – let these be your true words.

Which, so that you are more able to fulfill it, you require that

The true author shall instruct you in holy writ; that his spirit may nourish thee inwardly,

So that thus easing the true yearnings of your dear husband, you may be called true–

The true glory of your true husband. [xx]

God as Divine Author

As a poet and dramatist, de Vere sees God as “The true author” and “holy writ” as the wellspring of truth. Tormented by a search for truth, in agony over his various battles with the passions, he glimpses divine beauty and sacred love in the Scriptures; a beauty which is gloriously articulated and lauded in The Book of the Courtier. It seems to voice Edward de Vere’s deepest yearnings for the Beautiful, Good and True:  

O most sacred Love, what tongue is there that can praise you worthily? Full of beauty, goodness, and wisdom, you flow from the union of beauty, goodness and divine wisdom, there you dwell, and through it you return to it perpetually. Graciously binding the universe together, midway between celestial and earthy things, by your benign disposition you direct the heavenly powers in their government of the lower, and turning the minds of men to their source, you unite them with it. You unite the elements in harmony, inspire Nature to produce, and move all that is born to the perpetuation of life. You join together the things that are separate, give perfection to the imperfect, likeness to the unlike, friendship to the hostile, fruit to the earth, tranquillity to the sea, its life-giving light to the sky. You are the father of true pleasures, of all blessings, of peace, of gentleness and of good will, the enemy of rough savagery and vileness; the beginning and the end of every good. [xxi]

The phrase, “father of true pleasures,” could be contrasted with Christ’s words to the Pharisees in the Gospel of John, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44, italics mine).

The way to conquer the passions is not simply to deny one’s desires, but to elevate one’s spiritual vision to the highest ideal. It does not ultimately consist of blocking evil desires, but in embracing “the father of true pleasures, of all blessings, of peace, of gentleness and of good will,” this is how the passions are overcome, by encountering what is more beautiful, transcendent and pure: 

And since you delight to inhabit the flower of beautiful bodies and beautiful souls, and there sometimes consent to reveal a little of yourself to those worthy to see you, I believe that you now dwell here among us. Consent then, O Lord, to hear our prayers, pour yourself into our hearts, and with the radiance of your most sacred fire illumine our darkness and like a trusted guide show us the right path through this blind maze. Correct the falsity of our senses, and after our long delirium give us the true substance of goodness. Quicken our intellects with the incense of spirituality and make us so attuned to the celestial harmony that there is no longer room within us for any discord of passion. [xxii]

What quickens our intellects is the “incense of spirituality”—the essence of which is a living encounter with Divine Beauty Himself, as Bembo supplicates the Deity: “pour yourself into our hearts”; not an idea about God, but communion with God Himself. This is where one experiences the “radiance of your most sacred fire.”

All of this language is aligned with St. Gregory of Palamas, who in the 14th Century upheld the ancient Christian revelation that man can actually participate in the divine nature, as St. Peter declares in his second epistle: “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” (II Peter 1:3-4, italics mine)

The West began to teach that man is not capable of truly experiencing God, but only that which He creates. Palamas’ theological opponent, Barlaam of Calabria, “held that [these various experiences of supernatural light] were created effects, because no part of God, whatsoever, could be viewed by humans.” [xxiii]

Both men were Orthodox monks of Mount Athos, but while Gregory upheld the Eastern mystical tradition, Barlaam argued for a more rationalistic theology, in alignment with Western thought—one in which God is utterly transcendent and unknowable, without the corresponding poetic of the ancient mystical tradition: that He also makes himself known to His creation through His uncreated Energies. This rift led to Barlaam renouncing Eastern Christianity and becoming Roman Catholic, while Gregory of Palamas is considered a Saint in the Orthodox East.      

History rarely changes overnight, and these theological distinctions took centuries to settle into the mass consciousness of the East and West. In our times, these discrepancies have been largely obscured, even though their roots still under-gird the way in which we encounter the world.

In Eastern Christianity, grace is not something God creates, but is rather an encounter with the Uncreated energies of God Himself. Man does in fact possess the potential to “partake of the divine nature,” not symbolically, or metaphorically, but in reality. This is what the ancient fathers refer to as deification or theosis. So, where does Edward de Vere and the works of “Shakespeare” live within this spiritual divide? 

Castiglione continues:    

Inebriate our souls at the inexhaustible fountain of contentment that always delights and never satiates and that gives a taste of true blessedness to whoever drinks from its living and limpid waters. With the rays of your light cleanse our eyes of their misty ignorance, so that they may no longer prize mortal beauty but know that the things which they first thought to see are not, and that those they did not see truly are.

Accept the sacrifice of our souls; and burn them in the living flame that consumes all earthly dross, so that wholly freed from the body they may unite with divine beauty in a sweet and perpetual bond and that we, liberated from our own selves, like true lovers can be transformed into the object of our love and soar above the earth to join the feast of the angels, where, with ambrosia and immortal nectar for our food, we may at last die a most happy death in life, as did those ancient Fathers whose souls, by the searing power of contemplation, you ravished from their bodies to unite with God. (340-342, italics mine) [xxiv]

In this cosmic vision, the ultimate aim of human existence is to “unite with divine beauty,” to “be liberated from our own selves,” and be “transformed into the object of our love,” and through the “searing power of contemplation” at last, veritably, “unite with God”. We see this ecstasy expressed in St. Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros. St. Symeon died only a few decades before the Great Schism between the East and West, (949-1022 AD).  In his Hymns, we read:  

If you have not discerned that the eye of your mind has been opened,

And that it has seen the light;


If you have not perceived the sweetness of the Godhead;


If you have not been personally enlightened by the Holy Spirit. . . 

If you have not sensed that your heart has been cleansed


And has shone with luminous reflections;


If, contrary to all expectation, you have not discovered the Christ within yourself;

If you have not been stupefied, at your vision of the divine beauty;


And have not become oblivious of human nature


When you saw yourself so totally transfigured. . . 


Then tell me—how is it that you dare to make any statement at all about God?

(Italics mine) [xxv]

The reference to seeing oneself “totally transfigured” is a reference to Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. This is one of the central moments in the life of Christ, which St. Gregory of Palamas indicates as an essential reality of the Christian experience throughout the ages. According to Palamas, the Transfiguration, which Peter, James and John witnessed was the manifestation of the “Uncreated Light.” In other words, this was the energies of God appearing to them, not a created lesser-light, but a manifestation of the Light Himself.  And this “vision of divine beauty” is also what St. Symeon the New Theologian articulates in his most ecstatic moments of transcendence.  

Finis coronat opus “The end crowns the work”

Finally, the brightness unveiled in the Scriptures, the patristic Fathers, and in The Book of the Courtier, is contrasted by Edward de Vere’s contemplations on the transience of this life.  Hamlet, the most autobiographical of “Shakespeare’s” plays, is a meditation on mortality. “Shakespeare” could be called, The Prophet of the Remembrance of Death. The two extremes of glimpsing the divine light, and staring into the abyss, are both strikingly present in “the soul of the age”. [xxvi]

I first discovered this Latin proverb from Edward de Vere, (finis coronat opus) in Roger Stritmatter’s Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s Geneva Bible. It is worth quoting at length:

The practice of zealous prayer is a normative virtue for Shakespeare… Like the clown Lavache, Shakespeare holds a prophetic view of the nature of speech — namely that the consequences of speech acts are not limited to their effects on proximal audiences. As de Vere writes in his 1602 Danvers Escheat letter, “finis coronat opus, and then everything will be laid open, every doubt resolved into a plain sense” (Fowler 653). The utterance is a prophecy about prophecies: “then,’ means in the end. This emphasis on final things is characteristic of Shakespeare’s prophetic mode. Even the Latin proverb used in de Vere’s letter — “finis coronat opus” — occurs with variation at least four times in the Shakespeare canon… [xxvii]

No athlete is crowned in the middle of a competition. How absurd and strange would it be for someone to walk out on the field or on the court in the middle of a game and attempt to Crown someone a champion while the game is still being played? It is only after the game is played that a champion is crowned. It is only after the battle that a warrior is honored.

What is the end? Is it not our death? Our death is the end which crowns the work of our lives. The suffering, the struggles, the repentance, the totality of the sacrifice of the spiritual warrior is only crowned at his or her death. What did Christ say when he was on the cross? like the ultimate Suffering Artist, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, He says, “It is finished!” It is crowned, it is completed, it is done… the end crowns the work. Nothing else. And so, we look forward to our Passover, our coronation as it were, in the grace of God, when all the sacrifices and struggles and repentance in our lifetime will be fulfilled, by God’s grace and crowned in that moment, when the fight is finally over, the game has been played and the work has been accomplished.

These are convictions that no man embraces frivolously—they would have to be bolstered by a genuine belief in divine justice, mercy, and providence. Stritmatter draws our attention to Ecclesiasticus 11.27, which is underlined in the de Vere Bible: “in the end a man’s works are discovered.” This prophecy in the Old Testament is upheld in the New Testament by Christ Himself, who reminds the children of God: “Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known” (Matthew 10:26). And also, “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:3-4).

This was the vision of Edward de Vere—the end crowns the work; this world is passing, transient, fleeting. All will not be made right in this life, but in the world to come, at the dread judgment, when the books will be opened, and every secret laid bare. Then, the prophetic soul of the wide world will at last receive its consummation, and those who have labored in the mercy of God, will receive their crowns, and be adorned with the ornaments of virtue.   

“It is, therefore,” Looney explains, “as we approach the highest triumphs of his genius, which represent the whole, that his work becomes a special or synoptic self-revelation. This, however, pertains to the inward or spiritual life rather than to its external forms. [xxviii]

Copyright 2023 Jonathan Jackson

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[i] Measure For Measure by William Shakespeare, (I.I. 32-35) spoken by Vincentio the Duke.

[ii] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[iii] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[iv] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[v] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[vi] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[vii] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[viii] The Poems of Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford… and the Shakespeare Question, Volume 1: He that Takes the Pain to Pen the Book, Roger Stritmatter, General Editor, (Auburndale: Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship), 121-122.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[xi] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[xii] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[xiii] Venus and Adonis by William Shak-Speare 793-804.

[xiv] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[xv] Lucrece, 300-301.

[xvi] Ibid. Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere.

[xvii] Edward de Vere’s Bedingfield Letter, Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere,  16-17.

[xviii] Ibid. Edward de Vere’s Bedingfield Letter, Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere, 17-18.

[xix] Ibid. Edward de Vere’s Bedingfield Letter, Looney, The Poems of Edward de Vere,  20.

[xx] Ibid. Stritmatter, De Vere’s Geneva Bible, 202, To the illustrious wife Anne Vere, countess of Oxford, Her illustrious husband Edward de Vere, Count Oxford, Being occupied in overseas regions. Translation Roger Stritmatter; modified from Fowler’s Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford’s Letters (1986 194).

[xxi] Castiglione, Ibid.,  341-342.

[xxii] Castiglione, Ibid. 342.

[xxiii] orthodoxwiki.org/Barlaam_of_Calabria.

[xxiv] Ibid. Castiglione, 342.

[xxv] Symeon the New Theologian’s Hymns of Divine Eros: A Neglected Masterpiece of the Christian Mystical Tradition, by John McGuckin, Project Muse, Hymn, 21. 

[xxvi] Shakespeare’s First Folio, Poem by Ben Jonson.

[xxvii] Ibid. Stritmatter, 240

[xxviii] Ibid. Looney, Shakespeare Identified, 392.