Henry Neville (politician) - Neville As Shakespeare

Neville As Shakespeare

Neville (nicknamed Falstaff) is a candidate for being the true writer of Shakespeare's works. Mainstream Shakespearean scholarship does not accept that anyone but William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author; however, there exist a number of theories that the works were penned by someone else.

In The Truth Will Out, published in 2005, authors Brenda James, a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, and Professor William Rubinstein, professor of history at Aberystwyth University, propose that Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English politician who was a distant relative by marriage of Shakespeare's mother, is the true author. According to James and Rubinstein, Neville's career placed him in the locations of many of the plays about the time they were written, and his life contains parallels with the events in the plays.

The book outlines the case for Neville as the true author, proposing that otherwise inexplicable features of Shakespeare's works thus make sense. For example, many of Shakespeare's plays are histories that revolve around the Plantagenets — the long-ago-defeated enemies of the (then) current (Tudor) regime in England. According to James, the choice of subject makes little sense with Shakespeare the author, but perfect sense if the author was Sir Henry Neville, a descendant of John of Gaunt and member of the Plantagenet family. Also, Neville had access to private documents that he is said to have used in his works and he has the most reasons to have written the plays and sonnets.

The book contends that, in many respects, Neville is a match for authorship. He had traveled extensively to places described in the plays, in particular Italy; was fluent in Italian, French, Latin, and most other current European languages; had a detailed knowledge of both court protocol and law; and in many other respects matches the educational knowledge and societal norms exhibited by the author of the plays.

The Truth Will Out cites circumstantial documentary evidence that Neville was the author, notably the "Tower Notebook", a collection of writings by a prisoner in the Tower of London, presumably Neville. The notebook contains writings similar to the stage directions for the coronation of Anne Boleyn in the play King Henry VIII. Sources taking a contrary position may be found here .