politicworm

By his thirties, Oxford had had an assortment of encounters with the little blind sharpshooter, but so far the wounds had all been dealt to the lady.  Despite his heavy armour of Mercutian cynicism, with his classical training Oxford was well aware of the poetic tradition that only genuine passion could unlock the door to genuine eloquence and that no amount of linguistic expertise could replace the ring of true feeling.  As the years went by, he must have felt some concern over the fact that, once the thrill of the chase was over, his interest faded so quickly.  He shuddered to think of himself as shallow.  Worse, how could he write convincingly of true love when he had never really felt it himself?

With Ann Vavasor it seemed he finally knew what it was to love beyond mere juvenile dreaming or cynical dalliance.   She was the model for every witty heroine from this period: Rosaline from (a more recent version of) Love’s Labours Lost, Rosalynde from Euphues Golden Legacy, Rosalind from As You Like It. In these he invested her with an aura of romantic glamour that, for Ann, must have made up to some degree for the official loss of her virtue.  But their relationship is best portrayed in Much Ado About Nothing, which was probably written during 1580 for the Christmas holidays, 1580-’81.

That Oxford managed to separate himself into two persons: Claudio, who is faithful to his wife (to be), and Benedick, who is free to marry, is one of those emotional sleights of hand possible only for writers of fiction.  Sadly for Anne Cecil, while the Hero story may have been intended to cheer her and her family, Oxford may actually have been headed in Benedick’s direction.  One of the things he was accused of by Henry Howard was that, before the untimely arrival of Edward Jr., Oxford had been planning to run off to Spain with Ann Vavasor.  This may have been just another attempt to defame him, although it’s true that when the news got out that she had given birth, he was chased down by Elizabeth’s agents on the road to Dover.

The essential point is not so much whether Oxford actually planned to commit treason with the Howards and run away with Ann, just talked about it, or was falsely accused of it, it’s that he was simply out of control.  The Court was not a comfortable setting for anyone, much less a high-strung artist with a need for large doses of nature, solitude, and silence.  His popularity and emotional insecurity was driving him into wilder and greater extravagance in every direction.  As his friend Gilbert Talbot reported to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Oxford was “lately grown into great credit . . . if it were not for his fickle head he would pass all of them shortly” (Read 2.130).

Stimulated to outdo himself in the late 1570s by the demands of Lord Chamberlain Sussex, now, with this sudden spell of free time, he has his first quantum leap to a new level of artistry.  The plays that I believe were first composed during this period were The Spanish Tragedy, Hamlet, Richard II, King John, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet.  Of the versions of these that have come down to us, only Spanish Tragedy comes close to the original language.  The others were all rewritten (by himself) in the mid-to-late ’90s or early 17th century.