Other Candidates

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Amelia Bassano Lanyer, 1569-1645

Background
Brought up opposite the theatre district in a family of Venetian Jews of Moroccan ancestry, at the age of 7 she was given to be educated by Countess Susan Bertie, in the family headed by Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby. At the age of 13 she became mistress to Lord Hunsdon, the man in charge of the English theatre. When she got pregnant a decade later she was expelled from court and married off to a minstrel. She was one of the first women to own and operate a school and the first woman to publish a book of original poetry Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). She died in poverty.

Literary Evidence

The dying swans to music in the Shakespearean plays---the standard symbol for the great poet-- are associated with her four names Aemelia (in Othello), John-son (King John), Willough(by) (Othello) and Bassanio (Merchant of Venice);
Salve Deus includes a masque sequence resembling the one in The Tempest
Salve Deus uses rare words and word clusters only found in the Shakespearean plays;
Not only is she a major experimental poet, Salve Deus is a 1600 line satirical crucifixion parody resembling the anti-Christian satires detected in the plays eg. in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Biographical fit

Her maternal cousin was Robert Johnson who composed most of the music for the plays, and her 15 closest male relatives were professional musicians. This explains the 2,000 musical references in the plays which are 300% more musical than any others of the time;
Coming from a Jewish family explains the Jews and the Moors in the plays, and also their use of Hebrew texts such as the Mishnah (identified by Altimont), and odd nonsense phrases in AWW that turn out to be Hebrew (identified by Amit), and their Jewish allegories;
Her life with Lord Hunsdon equipped her with knowledge of the court, rare plants, military and legal terminology;
Her life with the Willoughbies explains the references to Denmark, and the expertise shown in Bible translation.

The Case
She has long been identified as the 'dark lady' of the Sonnets. Her candidacy was announced in March 2007 in a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution as part of the Washington Shakespeare Festival by John Hudson, artistic director of the Dark Lady Players, a New York company who perform the underlying Jewish allegories in the plays. A 5000 word major article on her appears in the Summer/Fall 2009 special issue of The Oxfordian dedicated to the top authorship candidates. The first volume of her biography The Dark Lady; the Woman Who Wrote Shakespeare (1587-1593) is available online. A 15 page review by Michael Posner in The Queen's Quarterly concluded that the case for Lanier is as plausible as that for Shakespeare. A 15 minute tv documentary made by Mitchell Riggs of Stony Brook University Drama Department is available on the web. For more information, visit:
www.darkladyplayers.com or contact DarkLadyPlayers@aol.com

References
John Hudson (2009) 'Amelia Bassano Lanier: a new paradigm for the Shakespearean Authorship' The Oxfordian special issue on the top authorship candidates, Summer/Fall
John Hudson (2008) 'Shakespeare's Plays Were Written By A Jewish Woman'
www.jewcy.com/post/shakespeares_plays_were_written
_jewish_woman
John Hudson (2008) Midsummer Night's Dream; An Experiment in Allegorical Staging, The Shakespeare Institute/University of Birmingham thesis
www.scribd.com/doc/15262132/A-Midsummer-Nights
-Dream-An-Experiment-in-Allegorical-Staging
John Hudson and Joseph Atwill, (2009) The Dark Lady; the Woman Who Wrote Shakespeare (volume one, 1587-1593) www.scribd.com/doc/16441192/The-Dark-Lady-the-Woman
-who-wrote-Shakespeare-Vol-1
Michael Posner 'Rethinking Shakespeare' (2008) The Queen's Quarterly (Canada) summer issue , vol. 115, no. 2, pgs 1-15
Mitchell Riggs (2008) The Dark Lady Discovery
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyn-3GNOd7w

Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, 1554-1628

Background:
Aristocrat, courtier, statesman, sailor, soldier, spymaster, literary patron, dramatist, historian and poet and Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon. Educated at Shrewsbury and Jesus College, Cambridge. After leaving university travelled abroad. Worked for Sir Francis Walsingham as an 'intelligencer' and 'recruiter' and travelled all over Europe. A great favourite of Elizabeth I. Clerk to the Council of Wales. Treasurer of the Navy. Chancellor of the Exchequer. Murdered in 1628.

Famous for:

His friendship with Sir Philip Sidney.
His long love affair with Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.
His close relationship with Queen Elizabeth.
His patronage of Bacon, Marlowe, Nashe, Daniel, Florio and three Poets Laureate; Spenser, Jonson and Davenant.
His claim to have been the 'Master of Shakespeare'.
His claim to have written Antony and Cleopatra.

The Case:
The 'Grevillian Theory' was first advanced in The Master of Shakespeare, Volume 1, The Sonnets, by AWL Saunders (2007), which showed the results of a study which compared 354 biographical, source and stylistic profiles of Greville and the man of Stratford as claimed by the Stratfordian theory. The profiles showed a 100% match. The most powerful evidence is shown by comparison of Recorder Greville and the man clearly described in the First Folio poems by Jonson and Digges:

Greville was the Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon.
He had a house in Henley Street, Stratford.
He closely resembles the Droushout engraving.
He was the friend and patron of Ben Jonson.
He was 'one of the finest sonneteers of his day' (Lisle Cecil John) and 'one of the two great masters of the short poem in the Renaissance' (Winters).
He was a world-class intellectual and artistic genius (Bullough, Buxton, Rees, Rebholz, Ward & Waller, Lucas, Winters, Shelling, Holmes, Groshart, Lucas, Sampson, Cowley).
He built a 'monument without a tomb'.
He lived by the River Avon.
His crest was a swan.

In the case of the Sonnets, the profiles showed conclusively that Fulke Greville is a mirror image of the author of the Sonnets who had a 'quadrilateral affair' with three people: a beautiful fair friend, a mistress, the 'Dark Lady', and a 'Rival Poet':

Greville was deeply in love with a fair friend to whom he wrote poems.
He did have a tempestuous affair with a 'Dark Lady' to whom he wrote poems.
He did have a famous rival poet to whom he wrote poems.
He did have literary works stolen from Kings Place, Hackney and piratically published in 1609.

Links
www.masterofshakespeare.com

Books
The Master of Shakespeare, Volume 1: The Sonnets
A W L Saunders, MoS Publishing, 2007

Sir Walter Ralegh/Raleigh, 1554-1618

Brief Background:
Education: Oriel College, Oxford. Middle Temple, Inns of Court, London.
Languages: Fluent French, Latin and Italian.
Born in a comparatively humble Devonshire farmhouse but related to the oldest and most influential families in the West Country. Half-brother to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, great-nephew to Katherine (Kat) Astley, governess, then First Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth 1st. Rose to become a favourite of Elizabeth but fell foul of King James 1st, was arrested on a trumped-up charge of treason, tried and sentenced to death but imprisoned in the Tower and regarded as 'Civilly dead' for twelve years. Released to sail to Guiana in search of gold, failed, and was executed on previous charge.

Ralegh was much more than a mere courtier who received monopolies and titles from his Queen. He was also a soldier, sailor, explorer, scholar, politician, philosopher, scientist, chemist, historian and student of astronomy. (Knowledge of all these pursuits is to be found in the Shakespeare plays). He read voraciously, even making room for a trunk-full of books on his sea voyages, and wrote at every stage of his eventful life - pamphlets, essays, poetry, a best-selling travel book, verse petitions, commendatory verses, epitaphs, a vast history book (also a best-seller) and innumerable letters.

A Taste Of The Case:
Ralegh had a connection to Shakespeare of Stratford - his wife's cousin Mary married Edward Arden of Park Hall.
He was close to Christopher Marlowe, replying jokingly in verse to Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd to his Love.
He was close to Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. She begged her younger son to plead with King James for Ralegh's life, while her older son introduced Carew Ralegh (Sir Walter's heir) at court after his father's death. Both Herbert brothers were, of course, dedicatees of the First Folio.
Many of the sonnets mirror Ralegh's life experiences, his philosophy and his (often despondent) moods.
Events in his life tarry surprisingly well with the accepted dates and spirit of the plays.
Several unusual phrases in the plays are used by him in his letters.
References to his voyages are to be found in: The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Love's Labours lost, All's Well That Ends Well and The Tempest.
Adaptations of his poems occur in Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice.
Ben Jonson, who must have known the true author, tutored Ralegh's son Wat for a while and wrote a poem to accompany the front-piece of Ralegh's History of the World.

Reason for hiding identity
Throughout his adult life, Ralegh sought to become a Privy Councillor. Even while in the Tower, he hoped and worked for release and eventual advancement. Writing for the public stage would hardly have improved his career while Elizabeth was on the throne. When James came to power he hated Ralegh 'above all others' - had he discovered him as author he would certainly have banned performance of the plays, as he attempted to ban Ralegh's History of the World.

Angela McGarry is completing the final stage of a novel citing Ralegh as 'Shakespeare' and currently researching for her non-fiction book on the same subject.

Links
www.luminarium.org/renlit/raleghessay.htm

Books
Shakespeare and Sir Walter Ralegh
Henry Pemberton, Haskell House, June 1980
Sir Walter Raleigh
Raleigh Trevelyan, Allen Lane-Penguin, 2002
Sir Walter Ralegh
Robert Lacey, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973
The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh
Edited by Agnes Latham and Joyce Youings, University of Exeter Press, 1999

Candidates