Zeitgeist watch: The casting call for "Ed Devery"

An old Broadway play opening in April is now, according to backstage.com casting for a lead character who once worked for a Supreme Court justice and was "destined for greatness" but now "they speak of his past brilliance."

This sorry old fella who's been battered around by fate is named Ed Devery.

It'd be easy to read too much into this. (The play, Born Yesterday by Garson Kanin, was written in 1946 -- six years after researcher Charles Wisner Barrell created a stir in the pages of Scientific American identifying the sitter of the "Ashbourne Portrait of Shakespeare" as Edward de Vere.)

Still, in a year that will see the first Edward de Vere biopic, this revival reminds how we may be seeing more names or characters or situations from de Vere's life story emerging in sometimes unexpected places.

After the jump, the relevant excerpts from the casting call listing.

'BORN YESTERDAY,' B'WAY

Philip Morgaman, Frankie J. Grande, Anne & Vincent Caruso & James P. MacGilvray (prods.) are casting the Broadway production of Born Yesterday. Garson Kanin, writer; Doug Hughes, dir.; Binder Casting, casting dir. Rehearsals begin approx. March 1; opens in mid-April in NYC.

Seeking — Ed Devery: early 50s, thirty years ago, when he was secretary to a great Supreme Court Justice, he was known as a young man destined for greatness, fifteen years later, they speak of his past brilliance in law, and charitably forget that he now has but one client, Harry Brock, who might have difficulty in finding a reputable lawyer to serve him, but Ed is past caring, Brock represents over $100,000 a year, which buys plenty of the best available scotch, attractive, but the years and the booze have taken their toll, but he still retains a glimmer of his earlier appealing looks, protects himself with an ironic, jaundiced sense of humor; Eddie Brock: late 40s-early 50s, Harry's cousin and servant, wiry little streetwise mug, knows he is dependent on Harry, and genuinely fears him, as he has seen him at his most dangerous and violent, smart enough to know how to stay in Harry's good graces, while at the same time having a dry sense of irony and humor about the position he is in...

Probably better just to end this post before venturing too much into the storyline here. Interesting, though, about Devery's "wiry little streetwise" colleague Eddie Brock. Will Shakspere redux?

EDITED to add links and references to the original version of Born Yesterday. The first draft of this post suggested the play was new. It ain't.

(Hat tip to G.Q.; creative commons photo by matt.h.wade)

Found video: Ed de Vere and Will Shax speak!

Look Here, upon This Picture, and on This

Two items crossed the transom today. First comes the new publicity still of Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere and its accompanying blurb from Columbia Pictures.

Cue generic, string section-saturated thriller soundtrack music. And, as you read these words, think of that one guy with the deep voice behind every movie trailer ever made:

Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, Anonymous speculates on an issue that has for centuries intrigued academics and brilliant minds ranging from Mark Twain and Charles Dickens to Henry James and Sigmund Freud, namely: who was the author of the plays credited to William Shakespeare? Experts have debated, books have been written, and scholars have devoted their lives to protecting or debunking theories surrounding the authorship of the most renowned works in English literature. Anonymous poses one possible answer, focusing on a time when cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances in the Royal Court, and the schemes of greedy nobles hungry for the power of the throne were exposed in the most unlikely of places: the London stage.

And so it goes.

Second is the forthcoming release (unspecified date in "spring/summer 2011") of the next big Oxfordian book, Richard Malim's The Earl of Oxford and the Making of "Shakespeare". Its publisher's blurb reveals this tome will be taking a broader scope than just a literary biography of de Vere.

The Making of "Shakespeare" will also provide "a historical overview of English literature from 1530 through 1575" and a speculative appendix on the role of Will Shakspere of Stratford in the unfolding "Shakespeare" drama.

Unless it packs a lot more new evidence into it than the blurb suggests, it won't be bringing as much original material to the table as will Richard Roe's forthcoming Shakespeare's Guide to Italy. But I have high hopes that Malim -- longtime contributor to the De Vere Society's newsletter and related publications -- will assemble a solid and compelling precis for the Oxfordian case.

Given the slough of misinformation about Edward de Vere that'll be flying when Anonymous hits movie theaters in the fall, Mr. Malim's work in the New Releases section of bookstores will, no doubt, provide a great assist.

Links & tangled webs

Two new and noteworthy web resources came to my attention this past week worth passing along.

First, a new (brief) documentary biography of Edward de Vere has been posted -- for free download, no less. Canadian researcher Nina Green, familiar to many Oxfordians as the moderator of the "Phaeton" email list, recently posted her 44-page Oxford's Biography (PDF) on her Oxford-Shakespeare website.

It's not an Oxfordian biography. (We, ahem, already have a pretty decent one of those.) Rather, it's a strict recitation of all the known facts and documents relating to Edward de Vere's life, from the christening cup granted to baby Edward on April 17, 1550 to the June 18, 1604 custody transfer of the Forest of Essex (six days before de Vere's death).

The PDF biography refrains from theorizing about the Shakespeare authorship issue. The previous documentary biography of de Vere (Alan Nelson's Monstrous Adversary, 2003) wore its hostility toward de Vere on its sleeve -- indeed in its very title. Its errors skewed toward making de Vere look bad and his case for any claim to the "Shakespeare" canon worse.

Kudos to Ms. Green for assembling this fresh and welcome new look into Edward de Vere's life.

Second link is a great new website hosted by the Georgetown University clinical psychiatry professor Richard Waugaman, "The Oxfreudian". It's a fine turn of phrase, with a good (and we hope ever-growing) collection of papers Waugaman has written on Edward de Vere and the authorship issue.

Like the late Bronson Feldman before him (one of the great underappreciated Oxfordian writers and critics), Waugaman brings a career of clinical experience as a psychoanalyst to the authorship issue, with often incisive results. For instance, in one essay for the Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review (co-written with Roger Stritmatter), Waugaman notes

It may come as a surprise to psychoanalysts to learn just how much current literary theory minimizes the significance of an understanding of the psychology and life experiences of the author. For several years, the predominant view has instead been that studies of the text itself should be paramount, and it is often not considered legitimate or relevant to introduce data, much less psychological speculations, about the influence of the author’s psychology on their literary creations.

Freud touched on this problem when he accepted the Goethe Prize. He interwove his comments on de Vere with his defense of a psychoanalytic study of Goethe. He acknowledged that some would object that such psychoanalytic studies would "degrade" a great man. He met this objection with the claim that only a psychoanalytic study of great writers can "throw any light on the riddle of the miraculous gift that makes an artist" or "help us comprehend any better the value ... of his works" (Freud, 1930, p. 211). We strongly agree with Freud that advances in our understanding of literary genius, and creativity in general, will be promoted by once more legitimizing the study of connections between the artist’s life and work.

Creative Commons photo by Jenny Downing

The pen, the spear... and the temptation - part 2

Earlier this month, I blogged about a tantalizing piece of Oxfordian evidence that was divulged this year in an endnote (!) to a paper on a different subject.

The evidence consisted of a book published in 1604 written by someone who knew Edward de Vere. In his 1604 book, the author made an elegiacal reference to an unnamed individual who "with one hand [holds] a speare... and with the other [holds] a pen."

The year of de Vere's death, in other words, the book might seem to record a contemporary remembering the recent passing of "Shake-speare."

My initial response to this find was -- like discovering an incredible new album or book or movie -- excitement... to the point of growing a bit starry-eyed about the material itself.

It was, in the words of the old journalist's saw, "too good to check."

And here is where a wiser version of me would have sat on it for a time. And spent some time researching it and thinking about it before making any public statement about it one way or the other.

Because once I was able to investigate it, the whole thing rapidly crumbled into nothing.

And so I record the following notes on one that got away as a reminder to myself -- and anyone else who cares to join along -- how important it is for Oxfordians to be their own harshest critics. Certainly, go ahead: Entertain that wild-eyed notion about what so-and-so said about this or that. But then go back and play devil's advocate. Far better to catch yourself in an error -- or, at least, be called on the carpet by one's peers -- than to be dragged through the mud after an opponent discovers the mistake.

Barnaby Riche was a professional soldier, eight years older than Edward de Vere. Riche had fought in Irish military campaigns in 1573 and 1599 and in France and the Low Countries at various times in Queen Mary and Elizabeth's reigns.

In 1581, he wrote a book of stories and satire in which he bid, as the title suggests, Farewell to the Militarie Profession. Shakespeare scholars know it as the book containing a possible source for Twelfth Night: Riche's story "Apolonius and Silla." Trace back the source of Riche's story, though, and one finds the commedia dell'arte performed on Twelfth Night in the Italian town of Siena (Gl'Ingannati). It's a longer and more twisted tale than is worth getting into here. For more detail, The Atlantic magazine from 1902 has an extended discussion of Twelfth Night's possible intermediate sources. (In the final analysis, one really only need know this: De Vere traveled to Siena, and in fact wrote a letter to his father-in-law from Siena just two days before Twelfth Night of 1576. It's a fair bet de Vere saw enacted onstage the original Italian version of Twelfth Night.)

Some Oxfordians might also know Farewell as another source: In his book, Riche goes on at length about an effeminate and Frenchified dandy that he sees on the streets of London. Some Oxfordians have presumed Riche was talking about de Vere here.

In my first draft of "Shakespeare" By Another Name, I presumed that too. However, I cut it out in the final draft. I owe a more careful and sober look at Riche's book to the (now sadly departed) Oxfordian researcher Peter Moore. There is, Moore patiently pointed out, practically nothing in Riche's description of the fop that would specifically identify him as Edward de Vere.

So it also is with Riche's 1604 book A Souldier's Wishe to Britons Welfare. The book is dedicated to King James's son Prince Henry. The original endnote that set this jolly train in motion earlier this month might seem to suggest that the "pen" and "speare" reference was found in the dedication. But it is not.

After an unremarkable dedication to Prince Henry, Riche launches into a long dialogue between two soldiers, Captain Pill and Captain Skill. The former is a greenhorn and the latter a leathery old vet. As military historian Paul Jorgensen summarizes Riche's fictionalized dialogue, "Throughout the book the pattern of discourse scarcely varies. Pill offers his respectful opinion on a military subject; Skill counters it with his more learned judgment."

On page 61, then, we get to Pill and Skill's exchange in question. (I've modernized the spelling and punctuation here.)

Pill wonders, "When shall arts prevail and flourish then?" To which Captain Skill replies, "When kings become philosophers again."

Pill says, "That time is come, and God be thanked... But now if the goodness of a prince may promise a gracious consideration to the well deserving, England is made happy in him whose name is already consecrated to immortality, whose magnificence equalled with virtue, is able with Caesar, with one hand to hold the spear in the rest and with the other to hold the pen, whose imperial seat is no less renowned by Mars than beautified by the Muses." (My emphasis)

Just for starters: Riche's Captain Pill is clearly talking about someone who holds the scepter of power, who sits on an "imperial seat."

In other words, Riche is probably talking about Prince Henry. Perhaps King James himself. (There was by the time of Henry's untimely death in 1612 a full-blown cult that recognized in the Stuart heir to the throne a platonic ideal philosopher-king -- one who if he had lived to inherit the kingdom would have carved out an entirely different trajectory for the English speaking world than that of his foolish brother Charles I, whose controversy-plagued reign played no small role in sparking the English Civil War in 1649.)

In any event, that Riche is not talking about de Vere comes clear in just the phrase preceding the "spear/pen" fragment: De Vere was many things, but a Casear he was not.

So we return good Captains Pill and Skill to the obscurity whence they came. As with Riche's other possible Oxfordian reference, from 1581, a closer examination of the full text reveals a simple and straightforward fact. There's no de Vere here.

(Thanks here also goes to the careful and diligent researcher C.P., who also emailed his own analysis of the 1604 Riche "evidence," drawing the same conclusion that nothing in it pertains to Edward de Vere.)

Creative Commons photo by striatic

Video: Why Was I Never Told This?

This new YouTube video was recently posted by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition.

Please take a gander -- and if you like it, please tweet, facebook & email it to others!

The Jacobian Lear - mark your calendars

Sir Derek Jacobi, The Wall Street Journal said in a review Friday, is now treading the boards in London in "the finest performance of Lear we are likely to see for some time."

And it's not just the WSJ who are waxing rhapsodic. Jacobi's King Lear (directed by Michael Grandage) has been widely hailed as one of the great (legendary?) Shakespearean performances of the present day.

The Daily Express calls it, "An evening of greatness" and "one of the most remarkable performances of the past decade," while The Daily Telegraph called this production "A Lear to rank with the greatest."

In a separate article The Telegraph also reminds its readers where Jacobi stands on a related matter: "Sir Derek Jacobi doesn't believe Shakespeare wrote 'King Lear' - but he's still given one of the greatest performances in the role."

That Jacobi is an Oxfordian and patron of the De Vere Society (UK) doesn't appear to merit mention. But the legendary actor's apostasy may indeed not be irrelevant to his clearly penetrating insights into Lear's psyche.

The Evening Standard's critic extols Jacobi's "exaggerated pomp, wounded majesty, paternal indignation and, as his tyranny turns to self-knowledge, a blighted, ordinary humanity." While the Independent says, simply, Jacobi's Lear comes off like a "coward and a poet."

The downward spiral of Edward de Vere's life tracks Lear like a phantom horseman -- from de Vere's disbursement of his ancestral castle amongst his three daughters (from his first marriage) to his bastard and legitimate sons (the latter from his second marriage) that clearly inform the portrayal of the play's Earl of Gloucester.

And if I didn't know any better, the "pomp, indignation, tyranny" and "coward" quotes above might seem to be a slanderous summary of de Vere's life, as portrayed by contemporary libelers (such as Charles Arundel) or current-day ones (such as Alan Nelson).

If you can get thee to London's Donmar Warehouse before Feb. 5 (or to the locations of its UK tour through April 9), then please let readers know what you thought in the comments section here.

For the rest of us, though, there's good news: In February, select cinemas around the world will be screening Jacobi's Lear as part of the National Theatre Live project. (See the link for details on venues and screening dates near you.)

Last month Jacobi, 72, told The Guardian:

"The pressures are much bigger now," Jacobi said. "There was a lovely actress called Dorothy Tutin and she always said that there were three categories of actor. The first one was 'young and talented,' which is a great category to be in. You've got youth on your side, and you're the rank outsider in the race. You've got everything to play for, nothing to lose. Then you become, if you're lucky, 'experienced and successful.' You've got work, you're making a living, and you're also getting wonderful experience. And then there's the last one, which is 'distinguished and acclaimed.' And that's where the pressure is. Now you're the favourite in the race, you have to win or come a good second. Now people are putting money on you to win."

As the Guardian's critic concluded, "I think this Lear may turn out to have been worth the wait."