A detailed forensic study, forthcoming in the Journal of Forensic Document Examination, of the annotations of six books at Audley End in Essex shows that that they are not made, as sometimes supposed, by Sir Henry Neville, but by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
The work is discussed in this lecture, recorded at the Fall 2023 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference in New Orleans.
September 27, 2024 at 6:08 pm
I recently read your insightful article (several times) analyzng the annotations in several texts at Audrey End and watched your interview on the article on The Blue Boar. Your comments on the many marginalia in the Audley End copy of a work by Cassius Dio, the handwriting of which appears to be that of Oxford. I think you also mention work by Appian. As I read and listened to your research I remembered the following quote from A.D. Nuttall’s “Shakespeare the Thinker” and wondered whether there is a copy of Suetonius at Audley End and if so, is there any marginalia that connects to Oxford.
“At the point of the assassination , Shakespeare famously leaves his native English for Latin….’Et tu, Brute”…(III.i.77). The sudden gravity of the ancient language suggests that this is some sort of marker. But Shakespeare does not explain. Again the answer is not in Shakespeare’s principal source, Plutarch, but in Suetonius. For Suetonius also switches at this point, from his native language Latin, into Greek. The alien letters jump out from the page: “Kai su, teknon.’ …. PhilemonHolland’s translation of Suetonius did not appear until 1606, some 7 years after Julius Caesar…..The fact that Et tu, Brute is not in Plutarch but is in Suetonius ….places Shakespeare’s knowledge of Suetonius beyond reasonable.”pp190-91.
October 30, 2024 at 1:19 pm
Dear Jennifer,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment, and please accept my apology for the delayed response. As you might imagine, I have had my head and mind occupied by covering my teaching responsibilities and preparing several important articles for imminent publication, including the first Audley End article for an academic publication that surveys the Shakespearean associations to the Audley End annotations, mostly those in Cassius Dio. That essay is now, finally, under review.
You are quite right to emphasize the importance of language — both Latin and Greek — in Julius Caesar (where Casca will also tell Cassius that Cicero’s comment in response to an account Caesar’s fainting spell”
Cassius. Did Cicero say any thing?
Casca. Ay, he spoke Greek.
Cassius. To what effect?
Casca. Nay, an I tell you that, Ill ne’er look you i’ the
face again: but those that understood him smiled at 375
one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own
part, it was Greek to me. I could tell you more
news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs
off Caesar’s images, are put to silence. Fare you
well. There was more foolery yet, if I could 380
remember it.
Personally I feel we are more at the beginning than the end of understanding the play’s author’s relationship with antiquity, including his thinking about both the Greek and Latin languages. The Audley End annotations establish beyond reasonable doubt that he thought fluently in both languages and could switch from Latin to Greek at will and was so good at Greek that the he could correct difficult Greek texts printed by the most distinguished printers, from the house of Estienne, of 16th century editions of Greek texts.
This is a shock even to me, I must admit.
Your point about Suetonius is well argued and certainly correct, imho. Suetonius is identified as a cross-reference in the Audley End copy of Tacitus, which confirms your logic independently. I don’t think this book is now at Audley End (I’ll have to check my list of all the books before 1604 to be certain, but I don’t recall seeing one and it is a book we would have requested to view on our second trip if it had been listed (on that second trip, for example, we discovered that the Thucydides history of the Peloponnesian War has a few annotations in it).
I think the hunt is now on to discover more books annotated by Edward de Vere. I have seen several other suspects, some of them briefly mentioned in various blogs, and I believe there are probably quite a few more out there. We have over 300 books from Ben Jonson’s library, quigte a few of them annotated by Jonson and/or others. De Vere’s hand might be found among those books, or in 16th century books now scattered in various libraries and private collections. No one has really looked.