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The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare

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The authors argue that Sir Henry Neville was Shakespeare based on two types of argument. First is alleged documentary evidence, consisting apparently of three documents. The first is the Tower Notebook dated 1602 consisting apparently of exerpts copied from documents kept in the Tower of London. The authors concentrate particularly on sections dealing with the coronation of Anne Bolyn, linking it to scenes and stage directions in Shakespeare's play Henry VIII. They pay particular attention to annotations in the Notebook that they claim might have been made by Neville. They, however, fudge completely the question of whether this is actually in Neville's handwriting or just looks like it might be Neville's hand when considered by someone who is not a handwriting expert. It is possible that the notebook actually was in Neville's possession at some time, that it was produced at Neville's instructions, and that the annotations are in Neville's hand, but these are all in the realm of possibility -- not in any way established fact, and least not by the authors. Furthermore, the play, Henry VIII, is believed to have been co-authored by John Fletcher, and appeared in the records and apparently was written in the form we now have at a time when Shakespeare -- whoever he actually was -- seems to have moved away from play-writing. Even if the above possibilities could be established, it could still be the case that Flethcher -- who knew Neville apparently -- got the information from Neville, without establishing any presumption of authorship for Neville. The second documentary source is an annoted version of Halle's chronicles which might -- or might not -- have been in Neville's possession and might -- or might not -- have been annotated by him. How relevant the annotations are to matters that Shakespeare used in his plays is not considered. Again the handwriting question is fudged. Thirdly, the enigmatic Northumberland Manuscript is supposed to establish the connection, though again the question of handwriting is not dealt with, while the significance seems to be largely in the eye of the beholder.

The other major line of argument comes from parallels from Neville's life to things in the plays and (possibly) the poems. This is in the "must have" school or argument. Shakespeare must have done certain things or had ceretain experiences. E.g. Shakespeare "must have" travelled for substantial periods in northern Italy, he "must have" had military experience, he "must have" had naval experience, he "must have" had legal training, he "must have" had access to an extensive library, etc., etc., etc. One wishes that someone would make a list of these "must have"s, so that one could easily check how many have been covered. There are many coincidences of this sort that do fit Sir Henry Neville, but they also fit any number of other Elizabethans. Of course, these "must have"s have also been used to try to flesh out "biographies" of William Shakespeare of Stratford about whom so little is really known.

The case for Neville being Shakespeare is not furthered by the authors rush to conclusion. For instance, the tower notebook, which might have been Neville's by Chapter 11 has become "Sir Henry Neville's Notebook." The straightforward telling of Neville's life is marred by repeated claims that Will Shakespeare did not have these experiences -- as far as we know.

I didn't find the reasons given for Neville's using a pseudonym very plausible. Similarly, the alleged contempory remarks that can be taken as indicating that Neville was the Shakespeare, are not very convincing, especially an attempt to interpret a passage where Ben Jonson claims that he (Jonson) is a poet to mean that Neville was a poet.

Finally, the scholarship is often poorly done -- facts are alluded to without reference to their source, and there is no bibliography or list of sources published or unpublished that were consulted.

All this doesn't mean that it is not an interesting book. I just wish that it were better done, documented more carefully and argued more cogently. It certainly didn't move Neville into the lead in my personal cogitations about who really wrote Shakespeare.

I think you have to be a little new at the authorship question to fall in love with this book. Not that I'm an expert, just a very interested amateur. This one has about the highest proportion of "obviously"s, "undoubtedly"s and "it cannot be denied"s, etc., of anything I've read yet on the subject. The thesis is that Henry Neville wrote the plays, but the evidence is thin, and we end up with some wonderfully contorted logic.

My favorite example is on page 185 about the dedication of the sonnets, printed in 1609. The dedication is signed "T.T." and there's general agreement that T.T. was Thomas Thorpe, the book's publisher. Why isn't it signed "H.N." for Henry Neville? Because, according to The Truth Will Out, dedications are never written by publishers but by authors. So Henry Neville concealed his identity by initialing his dedication as the publisher (who never write dedications). Okay, hmm, scratch, scratch,...?

Still, I'm glad to have read this book, for questions it reminds me to keep in mind as I read about more likely possibilities.

Interestingly, John Lyly's Sapho and Phao which predates and resembles A Midsummer Night's Dream in an intriguing number of ways....Take Me With You When You Go

For many years, I have been interested in the "authorship question." I have become quite convinced that the body of Shakespeare works could not very likely have been written by the Stratford bloke. As Dr. Peter Sammartino wrote (in 1972), that would have required "a miracle." Yet I was uneasy with the Oxfordian hypothesis, because all the identifiable works by Oxford just didn't seem to me to read like Shakespeare. Also, Oxford's dates are not right.

The book at hand may turn out to be a real landmark in the history of literature. It provides a Shakespeare candidate with the necessary education, with the necessary travel experience (completely lacking for Stratford's Shakespeare), the connections (familial and political), the personal chronology, and even a number of strongly indicative documents.

Now what will the established experts say? The ones with whom I have spoken have been disdainful, but admit that they have not bothered to follow the authorship question, assuming that it was all settled. I urge anyone interested to stand back and look at the evidence anew: forget the endless repetitions of the accepted story, and look at the facts as if you were coming upon them for the first time. This is one of those situations where it is crucial to make a clean start. Make a list, perhaps a table of the evidence. By all mean, be skeptical: but be skeptical evenly.

I think that the authorship question is a good example of the inertia which takes hold in the humanities. My own experience as a scientist leads me to think that we in the sciences are much more willing to change ideas in the face of new evidence. After all, plate tectonics was largely accepted within five years, or at most a decade. Geologists were not afraid to abandon the thinking of a professional lifetime, when new facts and interpretations came to the fore. It was an exhilarating time. Will the literary specialists be adaptable, or will they be too stodgy to change? Here we will be able to witness a good test of the academic culture.

For a layman like me, this book is a great find. It is exciting to find a treasure like this, and nobody can take away the sheer pleasure of sharing in discovery.

If you are the type that likes to try and judge the importance of coincidences, this is a book for you.

There are several hundred coincidences that suggest that Sir Henry Neville wrote the works of Shakespeare. The probability is several orders of magnitude greater than for any of the other contenders, including Will Shakespeare from Stratford. The list goes on an on - and what is fun, from my point of view - is that any member of the public can do their own research - easily, using the net. For instance, go to [...]. Find Sir Henry Neville, born about 1564. Click on his father, and on his father - and so on about 18 times till you get to Maldred, Lord of Allerdale. The entry for him says "He died in 1045, killed in action, while attempting to avenge the murder of his brother by Macbeth" Good fun! A lot more to be had. An old Penguin book of mine, of Seneca's plays says that the first translation of Oedipus into English was by an A. Neville in 1563. Look him up. He went to Merton College in Oxford, as did Sir Henry Neville 13 years after the translation. Who was Henry Neville's tutor at Oxford? Saville - who was put in charge of translating the King James Bible. No one knows who edited this famous version of the bible. Google King James Psalm 46. Count down 46 words - you find the word shake. Now count up 46 words from the bottom - you get spear! This does not occur in any other translation - I have checked 19.

The other night I was cycling through the City of London at about 3 am and got lost. I found I was in Lothbury street (where Neville stayed for about 6 months of the year - he was an MP all his life) That turns into Gresham Street - where Ben Jonson lived for a year while he put together and edited the First Folio - the first complete collection of Shakespeare's works. Look up the next generation of the people who also lived in the Lothbury house - (Killigrews) - half of them turned into playwrights! One went into partnership with Will Shakespeare's illegitimate son. Lothbury Street is only a couple of hundred yards from London Bridge - on the other side of which was the Globe. Of course London was full of little theatres at that time.

None of the coincidences mean anything on their own, but there are several hundred. He was in the Tower with Southampton. Cousin to Cecil and Bacon. He had the languages, the travel experience, the contacts, the education, the knowledge of nature, maths, science, metal working - and so on and so on. James I went to him for writing lessons. His life fits. His life circumstances fit unbelievably well. He had very powerful reasons not to be known as the real author. He was connected to William Shakespeare. He lived in the right places at the right times. He was an ambassador to France. His grandfather was executed for treason by Henry VIII. His mother's family had very important mercantile connections. His wife's family were very interesting - legalised pirates in Cornwall, full of stories. One of them, a woman (!), was sentenced to death for piracy when Henry was about 21 - but let off. Neville lived very close to Windsor, and was the neighbour and close friend of a character thought to be connected with the Merry Wives of Windsor.

It goes on and on, and on and on!

What facinates me is that he was one of the most important people in Parliament (speaker of the House of Commons, and leader of the Freedom party, I think) at a very important time - the very beginning of two party democracy. Neville tried (he risked and badly damaged his career trying) and ultimately failed - to get important changes to the system of government. However his ideas took hold. Unfortunately it took the civil war he feared, and another 50 years - to come to the funny, tolerant, complicated system the British still have today - and which continues, more or less peacefully, as Neville would have wished, to evolve.

Neville's grandson supported Cromwell at first, and was put in the Tower when he could no longer support him. Neville's house, Billingsbear, was used for Charles IIs restoration party - given by another grandson.

It looks like Neville was a key person in the setting up of the 2nd London Virginia Company. Look that up on the internet. It had HUNDREDS of subscribers from all over the UK (Henry Neville's name is followed by Cromwell's - uncle to Oliver Cromwell!) - one of the first large scale shareholder based capitalist ventures - and the beginning of the USA as we know it today - politics, capitalism, religion and all!

Shakespeare - Sir Henry Neville - is THE PIVOT - of the last 1000 years of western anglo american history. Now there is a subject for a 1000 phds! An important subject - with space for a lot of original research to be done.

The very first line of Ben Jonson's dedicatory poem to Shakespeare in the First Folio goes

"To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name"

That can also be written thus

"To draw no NV, Shakespeare, on thy name"

Neville called himself NV. or Ne Ville.

This is a must have book for any student of Shakespeare, English, and English History. Brenda James deserves a Nobel Prize, and a Knighthood!

Shake a spear for shake-speare - founder of the modern, complex, democratic, mercantile, freedom based, western way of life - secret revolutionary - but one who believed in evolution rather than revolution - a christian humanist - the most honorable man, in the most difficult of circumstances.

For many years I have enjoyed the sleuthing of scholars to find the real author of those mighty works with the Shakespeare label. Whether it was Oxford or someone else is perhaps never going to be settled, anymore than who was Jack the Ripper. However, my annoyance at the arrogant certainty expressed by many in academe that the author was the Bard from Avon has been longstanding.

This book brings a plausible new name to the lists: Sir Henry Neville. The authors deserve an A for effort. While the paperback edition's print is too small and the authors' writing style could perhaps have been somewhat tighted, the points these authors make are better tied to the life of Neville than to the Earl of Oxford who has for some years had my fealty.

Neville's imprisionmment in the Tower of London (where he had time to write) for his part in the Essex uprising until the death of Elizabeth came out persuasively in the plays and sonnets cited by the authors. Oxford died in 1604, Neville 1615. There is general agreement among traditional scholars that much of the work was written after Oxford's death.

I really love the enthusiasm of all these writers who have the interst and drive to debunk the Bard. And this effort is as logical and plausible as any I have read so far, but perhaps others will take up where prior research has been done to identify exactly the sophisticated, worldly, well connected, multilingual person (could it have been a woman?) who William Shakespeare never was. Researchers in archeology go back eons, so why not expect to find the absolute truth from the 16th and 17th Centuries??

I have only ever heard of his father who translated Machiavelli's works; this is truly an amazing insightful masterpiece of research into the life of a man that has virtually gone unnoticed by many. If you claim to know 'William Shake-speare', then read this book.

Brenda James, in her impeccably researched and written book, seems at last to have solved the greatest mystery in literature: Who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare? William Shakespeare, the ill-educated actor, simply could not have written these erudite and profound plays and poetry which are attributed to him, but Sir Henry Neville, a Lancaster, Parlimentarian, secret democrat, scholar,ambassador, and businessman, could. I won't rehearse James' argument--that's the whole fun of reading her book! Suffice it to say, the truth at last is out: It's Sir Henry Neville, one of the greatest men of his age, who is the world's greatest bard, without doubt. James deserves unbounded credit for her doggedness and courage in pursuing this mystery; for as we all know, the least open-minded people are all too often in Academia itself. And, predictably, they have responded, not with argument but with hostility. But inspite of their opposition, and opprobrium, James persevered in her beliefs...and we,lovers of the Bard, are forever in her debt. May history give her the accolades--and I believe it will--that she so richly deserves. Now, buy the book, learn about Sir Henry Neville; feel that for the first time this person seems right--and then begin to read Neville's work anew. It won't be the same experience, I guarantee! Knowing about Neville's life, his triumphs and hardships and deep suffering, enables us then to appreciate the plays and poetry more deeply and poigantly. He is the universal poet because he experienced life as deeply as is humanly possible, and then wrote about it. Shakespeare, by contrast, is as superficial as one can get. (Shakespeare was not well liked, by the way, while Neville was adored, exactly what we would expect from such a deep, multi-faceted, quick-witted, sensitive, intelligent person.)
One final word. Though a minor point with James, it is a major one with me. Shakespeare came from two illiterate parents, married an illiterate wife, and raised two illiterate children!--and died without a book to his name. Would the world's greatest bard be such and do such? Neville, on the other hand, was Oxford-educated, had highly literate parents, married a literate woman, and had highly literate children, just as we would expect from our Bard. James puts little emphasis on this, to her, "minor" point--but it all makes sense, doesn't it? Nothing comes from nothing--and, birds of a feather flock together.
Thank you, Brenda James, for bringing to us our true "Shakespeare", Sir Henry Neville.

[Update, August 15, 2009: after reading Gillingham's "The War of the Roses," the question is settled for me. Brenda James is correct.]

The question is no longer whether the Shakespeare from Stratford wrote the works ascribed to him, but rather: who was the "real" Shakespearian writer?

I won't get into that debate; Ms James' argument does that well enough.

But her writing is so delightful, you won't put the book down once you have started.

Here is just one short selection:

"Shakespeare had the largest vocabulary of any writer who ever lived.

His works employ nearly 18,000 different and separate words, about twice as many as Milton used (although Milton was one of the most accomplished graduates of his time at Cambridge University) and perhaps five times as many as the average educated person today.

Shakespeare also coined more new words than any other writer in the history of the English language, about 1,500 in all, among them not merely archaisms but dozens of common words in everyday use today, such as `addiction', `assassination', `birthplace', `circumstantial', `cold-blooded', `courtship', `dawn', `denote', `dialogue', `discontent', `divest', `downstairs' and `dwindle', to cite only those words he coined which begin with the letters A to D, to say nothing of `alligator', amazement' and `bandit'.

Further along the alphabet there is, if one prefers, `embrace', `employer', `eventful', all the way down to `well behaved', `widen', `worthless' and `zany', while along the way there is everything from `eyeball' to `outbreak', `hurry', `luggage' and `retirement'. It may well be that no educated English-speaking person goes more than (at most) a few hours without using one or more words coined by Shakespeare, almost certainly without knowing it. It is quite possible that no book, newspaper or magazine published in English in the past century or more fails to contain at least one word coined by Shakespeare, and probably a great many.

Then there are the innumerable common phrases coined by Shakespeare, which most people would assume to be proverbial, but which first occurred in Shakespeare's works: `into thin air', `time-honoured', `be-all and end-all', `pith and marrow', `shooting star', `the dogs of war' and literally dozens of others."

As a reminder: Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. Sir Henry Neville, b. 1564; d. 1615.

The only other possible contendor for the Shakespeare title is Edward De Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, 1550 - 1604. The last Shakespearian play, wholly written by "Shakespeare," The Tempest, was written in 1611. De Vere must have written that one from the grave.

This book proposes Henry Neville as Shakespeare. It is well researched and offers interesting new information in support of its thesis. I also recommend "Sweet Swan of Avon," by Robin Williams. She proposes Mary Sidney Herbert, and much of the evidence discussed in both books could apply to either candidate, as they were related and knew each other.

Anyone interested in the Authorship Question would enjoy this book!

This is an outstanding book that deserves the widest possible audience. My hat goes off to its authors, especially Brenda James.

I think this book makes a convincing case, particularly when you consider that until the First Folio was published no one could see all of the plays and the sonnets at the same time and understand just how remarkable a body of work they were. To quote from the book (page 206):

"..... Neville had no real reason to suppose that his plays would be performed or even remembered ten years after his death. Dozens of new plays were premiered every year in London, and talented new authors were appearing constantly."

I also liked this quote in the Afterword on pgs 254-55, which is applicable to many issues beyond the question of who wrote the 'Shakespeare' plays and sonnets:

"...it is therefore now explicable why the main previous authorship candidates all arose before the Second World War and before the mass media was underway. In those days, society had fewer national 'norms' to which to conform, and less need to appear totally cohesive. Controversy was a healthy sign of a secure, diverse community and balanced humanity."

Or to put it another way, 'political correctness' had not yet stifled public discourse the way it does today, at least as far as academia and Big media are concerned. It's no wonder this book has been ignored by the 'Establishment' today.