Cryptic Signatures That ‘Prove Shakespeare Was a Secret Catholic’

The Times (UK) ^ | 12/22/09 | Richard Owen

[marshmallow]

Three mysterious signatures on pages of parchment bound in leather and kept under lock and key may prove the theory that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who spent his “lost years” in Italy.

An exhibition at the Venerable English College, the seminary in Rome for English Catholic priests, has revealed cryptic names in its guest books for visiting pilgrims, suggesting that the playwright sought refuge there.

“Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis” signed the book in 1585, while “Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis” arrived in 1589.

According to Father Andrew Headon, vice-rector of the college and organiser of the exhibition, the names can be deciphered as “[King] Arthur’s [compatriot] from Stratford [in the diocese] of Worcester” and “William the Clerk from Stratford”.

A third entry in 1587, “Shfordus Cestriensis”, may stand for “Sh[akespeare from Strat]ford [in the diocese] of Chester”, he said.

The entries fall within the playwright’s “missing years” between 1585, when he left Stratford abruptly, and 1592, when he began his career as playwright in London.

“There are several years which are unaccounted for in Shakespeare’s life,” Father Headon said, adding that it was very likely that the playwright had visited Rome and was a covert Catholic.

The “Shakespeare” entries are being kept in the college’s archive for security reasons but have been reproduced for the exhibition, which illustrates the history of the college from its origins as a medieval pilgrims’ hospice to a refuge for persecuted Catholics during the Reformation.

Set in the college’s extensive 14th-century crypt, the exhibition conveys the clandestine atmosphere of underground Catholicism, with its spies and priests’ bolt holes. It traces the secret journeys made by Catholics to Rome and by Jesuit priests from Rome to England “to defend their faith despite the risk of being caught, tortured and martyred”.

[Tax-chick]

Oh my goodness, that explains everything! Except the crow ...

[Jewbacca]

I have no idea about his religion of choice, but his father was Jochanan Ardon, a wool dealer and money lender and his mother Miriam Ardon was a “converso” from Judiasm.

So he was Jewish, at least by Jewish law.

His Hebrew in his plays was quite good, so he had some familiarity with his ethnic origin.

[castlegreyskull]

Really, why you say it is nonsense. There is a lot of proof of this. Where is the person that is attributed to the works of Shakespeare has only 6 different signatures that can be traced to him, where as Edward Devere has hundreds of writings, educational background, travel background, and military background one would need to have to be able to write such works.

I guess it is all nonsense, and easy for you to do what Rush would call a drive-by. You must have stolen a tactic from the Democrats in just resort to saying completely unsupported statements that add nothing to the conversation. Continue with your ignorance, or you can actually intelligently debate me. Either way have a nice Christmas.

[verga]

The Quest for Shakespeare

http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Shakespeare-Joseph-Pearce/dp/1586172247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1261509515&sr=8-1 Makes an excellent case for Shakespeare being Catholic.

[Brian Kopp DPM]

Did Shakespeare study for the priesthood… in Rome?

CATEGORY: Just Too Cool — Fr. John Zuhlsdorf @ 1:32 pm

Fr. Longenecker has an interesting post about Shakespeare:

The literature on Shakespeare being a Catholic keeps mounting. Clare Asquith’s book Shadowplay along with the scholarship of Fr.Peter Milward started the ball rolling, then Joseph Pearce’s excellent, The Quest for Shakespeare gathered all the evidence together in a rollicking good read and the PBS documentary In Search of Shakespeare made it visual.

Now some mysterious evidence has emerged in the Venerable English College in Rome. You can read the article here. They have found some documents that might have Shakespeare’s name on them, indicating that during his ‘lost years’ from 1585 – 1592 he was in Rome, and if in Rome was he studying for the priesthood? [This is from The Daily Telegraph.]

A leather parchment kept by the college is signed by "Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis" in 1585, "Shfordus Cestriensis" in 1587 and "Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis" in 1589. The college believes these signatures are: "(King) Arthur’s (compatriot) from Stratford (in the diocese) of Worcester," "Sh(akespeare from Strat)ford (in the diocese) of Chester" and "William the Clerk from Stratford".

What makes the quest so intriguing is that the evidence for Shakespeare’s life is so scant, and in this particular area it is very scant indeed, but the times were dangerous. To be a Catholic in England was considered an act of treason. Catholics had to disguise their identities. If the names in the register at the English college were cryptic maybe they had to be so that real identities would not be revealed. It’s all very juicy conspiracy theory stuff, and yet that was the situation the Catholics were in. They were members of an underground church. They had to destroy or disguise evidence and ‘keep it secret keep it safe.’

As it happens, I’ve produced the outline of a screenplay called The Shakespeare Plot. In it Shakespeare is a secret Catholic in Elizabethan England and is all tied up with spies, disguised priests, torture chambers priest’s holes, executions and other juicy stuff. Think Man for All Seasons meets Shakespeare in Love. Some people in California seem to be interested.  [Intriguing!]

COMMENTS (7)

• • • • • •

[onedoug]

...where as Edward Devere has hundreds of writings, educational background, travel background, and military background one would need to have to be able to write such works.

...As well as the elitist fellow snobs to maintain such late 18th century sophistry to this day.

Ben Jonson knew Shakespeare and added his homage in Heminges' & Condell's First Folio edition. Moreover, Shakespeare was attacked - by name and by play - by numerous critics over the course of his literary output. He definitely wrote the Sonnets to which numerous stylistic, alliterative, poetic and prosaic standards can be authoritatively ascertained and compared, none of which can be said for your favorite nobleman, and for whom you too mentioned nothing as to any measure of detail in by your first post. So who was "driving-by" in this?

Oh, and by all means, Merry Christmas.

[castlegreyskull]

The one word response “nonsense” is a drive by.

[castlegreyskull]

Also, William Shakespeare has no record of any formal education. His play included dialects that come from various parts of Europe, all of which Shakespeare had no record of visiting, but Edward DeVere has. So you are basically suggestion that he Shakespeare was simply a genius at birth, and knew all this without any world experience. Very unlikely.

[AnAmericanMother]

People forget that any reasonably educated Englishman of that day was far better read than your average person today. The pool was much smaller, and the standard was much higher.

It's not only class snobbery, it's chronological snobbery as well. Many assume that because they are not fluent in languages or particularly well traveled, the average Englishman of the 17th century could not be either.

But they were, and they were also remarkably well read by today's standards. It's probable that Shakespeare travelled on the Continent, but even if he did not, men of his day devoured traveller's tales and information from far places.

The real problem with your theory, however, is that too many of Shakespeare's contemporaries and friends left a wide paper trail establishing his authorship. If Jonson, Burbage, Marlowe, Dekker, and all the rest were involved in some complicated conspiracy to falsely attribute somebody else's works to Shakespeare, and managed to succeed to the point that nobody seriously questioned his authorship until quite recently . . . then it's the most successful conspiracy in the history of the known world. Not.

Never mind all the internal evidence and textual analysis. And if you've ever read any of the Earl of Oxford's actual work, it's plainly obvious he wasn't up to the game.

[Desdemona]

Shadowplay spoiler alert!

Well, I'm not sure who should be addressed, but after reading Shadowplay I'm on the side of Shakespeare was an underground Catholic who wrote in some pretty simple code. Take my FR handle for example. While I used it more for the opera, Desdemona is pure. She's THE only pure character in all of opera. Her name is an old world sort. She is dressed, usually, as the Blessed Mother. Before she is murdered - by a husband who was tricked into believing she betrayed him, which she didn't - she prays the Hail, Mary. HELLO! Just like Bianca, Hero, Ophelia, Juliet, etc., the pure woman (the Church is always considered a "Her") is betrayed and dies. The whole explanation re Taming of the Shrew alone is worth reading the book. Oh, and the bit on the Montagues is good, too. I need to reread it. Hmmm...something to do while I'm off next week.

[Mr Rogers]

“What makes the quest so intriguing is that the evidence for Shakespeare’s life is so scant, and in this particular area it is very scant indeed, but the times were dangerous. To be a Catholic in England was considered an act of treason.”

There was some justification for the charge of treason...

“When Mary died and Elizabeth I became Queen in 1558, the religious situation in England was confused. Throughout the see-sawing religious landscape of the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary, a significant proportion of the population (especially in the rural and outlying areas of the country), are likely to have continued to hold Catholic views, at least in private. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign, however, England was clearly a Protestant country, and Catholics were a minority.

Elizabeth’s first act was to reverse her sister’s re-establishment of Catholicism, but during the first years of her reign there was relative leniency towards Catholics who were willing to keep their religion private, especially if they were prepared to continue to attend their parish churches. The wording of the official prayer book had been carefully designed to make this possible by omitting aggressively “heretical” matter, and at first many English Catholics did in fact worship with their Protestant neighbours, at least until this was formally forbidden by Pope Pius V’s 1570 bull, Regnans in Excelsis, which also declared that Elizabeth was not a rightful queen and should be deposed, and formally excommunicated her.[26]

In the setting of England’s wars with Catholic powers such as France and Spain, culminating in the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Pope’s bull unleashed a nationalistic feeling which equated Protestantism with loyalty to a highly popular monarch, rendering every Catholic a potential traitor, even in the eyes of those who were not themselves extreme Protestants. The Rising of the North, the Throckmorton plot and the Babington plot, together with other subversive activities of supporters of Mary, Queen of Scots, all reinforced the association of Catholicism and treachery in the popular mind. Elizabeth’s government declared all Catholic priests, and all those who sheltered them, to be guilty of treason. Elizabeth didn’t believe that her anti-Catholic policies constituted religious persecution, finding it hard to distinguish between those Catholics engaged in conflict with her from those Catholics with no such designs.[27] The number of English Catholics executed under Elizabeth was significant, including Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, and Margaret Clitherow. Elizabeth herself signed the death warrant that led to the beheading of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots.

Because of the persecution in England, Catholic priests in England were trained abroad at the English College at Douai. Given that Douai was located in the Spanish Netherlands, part of the dominions of Elizabethan England’s greatest enemy, they became associated in the public eye with political as well as religious subversion. It was this combination of nationalistic public opinion, sustained persecution, and the rise of a new generation which could not remember pre-Reformation times and had no pre-established loyalty to Catholicism, that reduced the number of Catholics in England during this period – although the overshadowing memory of Queen Mary I’s reign was another factor that should not be underestimated.

Stuart era

The tarring of Catholics as traitors, and harsh persecution, continued during the reign of James I (1603–1625), especially after the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy of a small group of Catholic conspirators, who aimed to blow up both King and Parliament. Ben Jonson and his wife, for example, in 1606 were summoned before the authorities for failure to take communion in the Church of England.[28] However the King did tolerate some Catholics at court, such as George Calvert, to whom he gave the title Baron Baltimore, and, of course, the Duke of Norfolk, head of the Howard family.

The reign of Charles I (1625–49) and his Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria saw a small revival of Catholicism in England, especially among the upper classes. As part of the royal marriage settlement the Queen was permitted a Catholic royal chapel and chaplain. Henrietta Maria was in fact very strict in her religious observances, and helped create a court with continental influences, where Catholicism was tolerated, even somewhat fashionable. Some anti-Catholic legislation became effectively a dead letter. The Counter-Reformation on the Continent of Europe had created a more vigorous and magnificent form of Catholicism (i.e., Baroque, notably found in the architecture and music of Austria, Italy and Germany) that attracted some converts, like the poet Richard Crashaw. Ironically, the explicitly Catholic artistic movement (i.e., Baroque) ended up “providing the blueprint, after the fire of London, for the first new Protestant churches to be built in England.”[29]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholicism_in_England_and_Wales#Tudor_era

[muawiyah]

Hey, most of the people Shakespeare wrote about were Catholics ~ and excepting the monsters, the only non-Christian was Macbeth’s wife ~ she was a Scandinavian princess. They weren’t Christianized until the late 1700s (if the truth be told).

[MarkBsnr]

Hey, most of the people Shakespeare wrote about were Catholics ~ and excepting the monsters, the only non-Christian was Macbeth’s wife

Umm Lady Macbeth had monster tendencies.

Lady Macbeth: Why did you bring these daggers from the place? They must lie there. Go carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood.

Macbeth: I'll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not.

Lady Macbeth: Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures; 'tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil.

................

Lady Macbeth: Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature, It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way.

.................

Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe topful Of direst cruelty!

........................

Lady Macbeth: How now, my lord, why do you keep alone, Of sorriest fancies your companions making, Using those thoughts which should indeed have died With them they think on? Things without all remedy Should be without regard: what's done, is done.

[muawiyah]

Yeah, that’s her.

[AnAmericanMother]

William Shakespeare has no record of any formal education

Wrong, by the way.

The King's School in Stratford provided an excellent classical education (uniform and mandated by law).

[Campion]

Elizabeth didn’t believe that her anti-Catholic policies constituted religious persecution, finding it hard to distinguish between those Catholics engaged in conflict with her from those Catholics with no such designs.

That's a nice gloss, but she didn't "find it hard to distinguish," she made no attempt at all to distinguish.

My namesake protested, under oath, at his trial that he was completely loyal to the Queen in all matters save religion, and in particular that he respectfully disagreed with the Pope that she ought to be overthrown.

He was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.

[lonestar]

Who cares?

[Mr Rogers]

Elizabeth became Queen in 1558. Looking at a list of Catholic martyrs, I counted 10 killed between 1558 and 1580 (I was in a hurry, so may have missed one or two...). After 1580, the number killed goes up dramatically - I’d guess dozens in some individual years alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_martyrs_of_the_English_Reformation

So for the first 22 years of her reign, she was, by Tudor standards, very tolerant. Compare it to Queen Mary’s executions of 300 Protestants by burning at the stake during her 5 year reign prior to Elizabeth!

There were multiple Catholic plots against Elizabeth prior to 1580. Campion died in 1581, when the persecution of Catholics started to explode. My point was NOT that Elizabeth didn’t persecute Catholics, but that she showed unusual restraint for a medieval monarch. Only after multiple plots against her did she take aggressive action.

We can look back and criticize her, but her life was in danger for years, and the Pope in 1570 encouraged her subjects to rebel against her. Mixing politics and religion can have terrible results, which is why Baptists have always been against it.

[cothrige]

The 16th Earl of Oxford Edward De Vere was a Catholic, and is most likely the person who wrote all of Shakespear.

My absolute favourite: Oxford was the real Shakespeare! We should believe that a man well attested in contemporary records as the actual writer, i.e. William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, was actually a fraud and all these plays were actually secretly written by this nobleman under a fictitious name. And why? Because there are no letters from him. No manuscripts. Too few references to him being a playwright. And there are not enough signatures with too little attention to spelling. We should ignore that contemporary writer, and rarely questioned, Christopher Marlowe never left a single manuscript or letter, left only one signature, which he mispelled (Aha!), and was never once during his lifetime referred to by another as a poet or a playwright. Who wrote his stuff? Maybe Oxford actually wrote everything published or performed during the Elizabethan age?

But, my favourite aspect of this argument is rarely discussed. We are supposed to believe that this man perpetrated the biggest cover-up this side of anything written by Dan Brown because as a nobleman he could not be associated with writing plays. It would have destroyed his reputation and so he had to use a false identity which was maintained even after his death when Ben Jonson et al brought out the First Folio. It was so important to keep up this ruse that people even secretly tore down and reconstructed the bust on Shakespeare's monument in Stratford. Under no circumstances could Oxford ever be thought to have written plays! It would be a scandal! But, one may ask just why we should think that Oxford would have ever been able to write a play? What proof is there? Simply the plays he wrote under his own name! Now, isn't that odd. Maybe it was only writing the greatest works in the history of the English language which would cause all this horrible scandal. I suppose writing forgettable trash was no big deal.

[AnAmericanMother]

Exactly. No way that anybody who perpetrated the old-fashioned (at the time), over-ornamented style of Oxford’s extant work - which C.S. Lewis called “undistinguished and verbose” - could have broken out in Shakespeare’s brilliance.