New Podcast Reveals Mysteries of Shakespeare

Elsewhere in April 2005 news I read about evidence that Titus Andronicus and The Merry Widows of Windsor were staged too early for the Stratford man to have written them -- but the details of this evidence aren't disclosed in the article I saw. Can anyone fill me in?

Titus Andronicus first appeared in print in 1594 and The Merry Wives of Windsor first appeared in print in 1602. Both first editions of the plays indicate that they'd been performed previously. The years 1594 and 1602 pose no problem for the traditional theory of Shakespeare's authorship.

That said, Merry Wives in particular suggests a considerably earlier period: Set at an inn in the town of Windsor, Merry Wives is the only Shakespeare play that takes place outside a royal or aristocratic court. At age 20, in 1570, the courtly poet-playwright Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford spent a brief period away from the Elizabethan court -- recuperating from an illness at an inn in the town of Windsor. Moreover, in 1570, de Vere was wooing a young maid named Anne Cecil. (He would wed her in 1571.) Also vying for Anne's hand at the time was a nephew of the powerful Earl of Leicester, a charming young champ (whom de Vere was often spiteful toward) named Philip Sidney.

Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor presents a maid named Anne Page being courted by a charming young groom named Fenton. At the same time a doofus named Slender (at the behest of his uncle Shallow) is also suing for Anne Page's hand. The terms of Anne Page's and Slender's inheritances, as mentioned in the play, are markedly similar to those of Anne Cecil and Philip Sidney. Whoever Shakespeare was, he certainly knew something about the goings on in that inn in Windsor in 1570.

This has been going on since I was a child. The first time I read about it, it was Francis Bacon. I was about 9 years old. I'll tell you that was l950. Shakespeare has been so many people since then, including Christopher Marlowe when I was a teenager and several others whom I can't remember right now in the heat of the moment. There have been some brave souls who believe Shakespeare is who he was, so to speak. He could have educated himself by himself could he not?
I think it is snobbery to assume that a man with such insight had to be noble?, rich?, educated at the best schools? royal?. Mark Twain would have had some troube with that. Sincerely, Sharon Bunn

Thanks, Scriblerus. You present what I call strong arguments, but not proof of actual fact. I just ran
across another article which says it is now "fact" that those two plays were staged too early for the Stratford man to have written them:
http://www.exzibit.net/viewarticle.php?articleID=186#

The same article claims de Vere used "William Shake-speare" as a pseudonym during a period of his life, and sets out a bit of poetry bearing de Vere's name that resonates well with the WS sonnets. Are some of these claims reaching beyond
what has been firmly established? (I don't go along with smearing mud on scholarship; let's keep the discussion directed to the known evidence and the logical inferences to be drawn from it.)