Candidates for Shakespeare

Mary Sidney Herbert

Mary Sidney Herbert, 2nd Countess of Pembroke (1561-1621) was aged 60 when she died). From around 1580 she worked to make her home Wilton House in Wiltshire a leading cultural centre, which when flourishing reminded one visiting poet “of the Court of Urbino in Italy”.

She was well educated and high-minded, and in her achievements the equal of Elizabeth, also a poet talent, who found her pleasing.

The Countess, besides bringing up a family in what is described as a contented marriage, encouraged writers and poets - and ‘occasional’ playmakers’ efforts ( though this endeavour was not held in any great literary esteem?) - in an academy environment “of courtliness and piety” that Shakespeare may have known, or must have known about.

Wilton’s archives were said to have long held Mary’s letter to her son, sent in 1606, saying “We have the man Shakespeare here – bring King James!” And that Heminges received thirty pounds (a huge amount) for the King’s Men’s performance of “As You Like It” played at Wilton.

It is presumption that the man Shakspere/Shakespeare prior to all this might have visited Wilton and participated with literary contemporaries – there is no proof, but that now missing letter would be a strong and acceptable indication.

However, many ‘University wits’ and the poet, Warwickshire-born Michael Drayton, a possible friend of Shakspere, WERE regular attenders at the Wilton ‘seminars’ and ‘workshops’. Philip Sidney of course attended - “breadth, flexibility, originality of his diction scarcely surpassed even by Shakespeare” - as did particular ‘luminaries’ Spenser and Ralegh, Kyd, Marlowe and Jonson. This group in its achievement has been described as the “pride of the Golden Age.”

It was after her beloved brother Philip Sidney’s death in 1586 (she was 25 and married nine years) that her own literary talents were more seriously expressed. This was centred on finishing and publishing his Psalms, in which he attempted ‘divine poems’.

Her own verse and literary translations (not mere reproductions – the aim being ‘a true contemporary equivalent’ of classic originals)) were remarkable for, among other quality attributes, their intensity and vividness and technical strivings to recapture the eloquence and wisdom of the past – and all her accomplishments were praised by Elizabeth.

She (Mary) is said to have had “a good life of the mind”, even as Elizabeth, some say, had not (what heresy! treason! ... being of ‘high mindedness’ was perhaps seen as above that of a bright mind?) With this particular literary slant, it seems improbable this gifted Countess needed to write any “Shakespeare” – poetry, Psalms, ‘fine’ writing was her aim?

The question is whether she could have participated in (the esoteric theory of) “a group of writers” said to be behind Shakespeare? She could well have seen early drafts of Shakspere’s Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece by 1586-1594... but probably not his sketches of the early plays (as they, Philip and Mary, poetic purists each, would surely have been off-hand, somewhat offended; Sidney felt strongly about the new ‘stage poets’ who were really ‘poet-apes’).

Additional notable points

• The Countess, who wanted her son the young Earl William Herbert to marry, may well have commissioned ‘Shakespeare’ to use subtle persuasion by writing Sonnets (eventually mentioning ‘W.H’)
   
• It is no proof that The Countess approved of or liked plays, but she is said to have translated the neo-classical French play “Marc-Antoine”
   
• During Mary’s early lifetime, women “were strongly discouraged from literary activity, even any public self-assertion”. As with some Shakespeare heroines, her poetic skills and her powers of creative synthesis allowed her, through say the Psalms male voices, “to speak most for herself when speaking as another”.
   
• Mary Sidney Herbert was connected with Marlowe – in rumourous legend anyway: Marlowe, after he ‘died’, lived secretly under a cloak of secrecy, at Wilton House, protected by the Countess.