"Shakespeare" and Cervantes, paths crossed

(Creative Commons images by inicioutil and fdrca'n'dave)

As blogged about last month, the recently completed Spanish movie Miguel and William (IMDB reports no U.S.
release date yet) rewrites history in order for Shakespeare
and Cervantes to meet.

The supposition is pretty outlandish, if the conventional story of Shakespeare holds. But here's yet another amazing curio of de Vere's life: There are threads of biographical evidence that do in fact put de Vere and Cervantes in approximately the same place at the same time.

In the summer of 1575, de Vere was 25 years old traveling through Italy, while the still obscure and unpublished Cervantes was a soldier garrisoned in Naples. Record exists of de Vere taking out a loan that summer in Naples. And when de Vere returned to England the following year, he allegedly bragged about the valor he demonstrated on the battlefield with Cervantes' commanding officer, Don John.



Cervantes's juvenile poetry is known to have impressed another commanding officer, in Palermo, the Duke of Sessa. De Vere is known to have passed through Palermo -- and as a visiting foreign dignitary, would likely have met Sessa.

So the route for Cervantes in the late summer of 1575 was Naples to Palermo to a ship bound for Spain. (Turks overtook that ship, and instead Cervantes spent the next five hellish years as a slave.) The most likely route for de Vere during that same period was Palermo to Naples and onward to Milan.

I certainly wouldn't claim this constitutes proof of the two figures meeting. But it does bring their worlds tantalizingly close to colliding at a formative moment in both of their lives. Miguel y William filmmaker Inés Paris appears to be closer to the historical truth than she may realize. She's just going to need to recast the role of the man who was the Bard.

Miguel and William and lots-upon-LOTS of speculation

The Manchester Guardian/Observer ran an article today alerting their readers to a new movie due to be released (in English-language markets, at least) later this year. The movie, Miguel y William is based upon the (completely groundless) supposition that Will Shakspere slipped on his cloak of invisibility and hung out in Spain with Miguel de Cervantes sometime during the 1580s.

Wouldn't that be nice to hang one's hat on?

The article points out

'We did a lot of research during the screenwriting and there is very strong evidence that Shakespeare was well-versed in Cervantes' work,' said producer Antonio Sauro. ...

Competing theories that Shakespeare spent his time working in schools in Lancashire or Wales, or with a troupe of theatrical players, are based largely on a network of textual references. The truth of his missing years may never be known, and perhaps in this case hard proof does not matter. As the tag line of William and Miguel has it, 'In art and love everything is possible.'

Here's the thing: The Bard may indeed have known Cervantes work—and perhaps even Cervantes himself. But the likely solution to the puzzle comes, once again, when the lens is re-focused upon the life and times of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

Stay tuned to this space later this month, when evidence will be discussed that points to Edward de Vere crossing Cervantes' path at least once in his life.

In real-life biography, of course, not everything is possible. But in de Vere's biography, the face of "Shakespeare" shines through more and more.