As royal wedding fever grips the nation – or at least some parts of it – there is speculation about the forebears of Prince William and Prince Harry, as the unofficial heritage line is drawn back 400 years to encompass distant Tudor celebrities.
To understand the strange links being made between the royal duo and the world of Shakespeare, a few facts are needed. First, Will and Harry are members, on their mother’s side, of the Spencer family. Before she married Prince Charles, she was Lady Diana Spencer. The Spencers are an old aristocratic family. Penelope Spencer, née Wriothesley, was born in 1598, the daughter of Lady Elizabeth Wriothesley, née Vernon. Penelope, who married the Honourable William Spencer, gave birth to a son in 1620. He inherited the title of Baron Wormleighton. Three centuries later, the houses of Spencer and Windsor were joined together.
This much is known, but the Tudor roots of the Spencers are more mysterious. The question is: who was Penelope’s father? According some theories, it was not Lady Elizabeth’s husband, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton.
The German historian Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel had already theorised that Elizabeth Vernon was the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets when, in 2007, she declared that Elizabeth’s daughter was fathered by the Bard of Avon. Since Penelope was the original Lady Spencer and Diana her direct descendant, William and Harry would be the descendants of William Shakespeare.
This claim came as a surprise to most Shakespeare scholars. There is certainly doubt about the identity of Penelope’s father.
Elizabeth’s relationship with Henry Wriothesley was a stormy one. After a courtship which started 1595, Henry was embarking on a two-year trip to Europe when Elizabeth announced she was pregnant. Court rumours suggested that Henry was not the father. Nevertheless, Henry returned in August to marry Elizabeth and Penelope was born on November 8 – nine months after Henry had left for the continent and 10 weeks after the marriage.
None of this convinces Hammerschmidt-Hummel. Shakespeare’s sonnets feature an emotional triangle between the poet, the Dark Lady and the Fair Young Man. Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel identifies Elizabeth Vernon as the Dark Lady and Henry Wriothesley as the Fair Youth. But while Elizabeth married Henry, the historian suggests it was Shakespeare who fathered Penelope while Wriothesley was preparing for his voyage.
There are holes in this argument. Elizabeth Vernon was one of Elizabeth I’s ladies-in-waiting and the Queen would have strongly disapproved of any such shenanigans. Given the rigid class divisions in Elizabethan England, someone of low status, such as a man of the theatre, would be unlikely to encounter an aristocratic woman.
Elizabeth Vernon is described as “very feminine”, “strikingly emotional”, “doll-like” and “pretty” – terms that certainly apply to the portrait of her by Sir Peter Lely. By contrast, Sonnet 130 paints a less than flattering portrait of the Dark Lady. “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun/Coral is far more red than her lips’ red / If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun / If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head / I have seen roses damasked, red and white / But no such roses see I in her cheeks / And in some perfumes is there more delight / Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.”
There is a second conjecture circulating among some Shakespearians. The “Prince Tudor” theory centres on Henry Wriothesley and suggests that he was not Shakespeare’s rival but his son. The third Earl of Southampton is the Fair Youth of the sonnets and the son of Elizabeth I, born in the summer of 1574. His father was the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
Several revisionist Tudor historians challenge the common view of Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen. This variant ties Elizabeth into Shakespearean controversy by an ingenious twist. Oxford, it is claimed, fathered Wriothesley, but could never admit to having had sex with the Queen. Wriothesley was secretly handed to the second Earl of Southampton and brought up as his heir. In 1598, he married Elizabeth Vernon and, in this version of Tudor history, fathered Penelope Wriothesley. From this point, accepted history resumes and Penelope Wriothesley institutes the Spencer family line.
While rumours that Elizabeth was not a virgin circulated in the late Tudor period and have been long discussed, none relate to a birth in 1574. At that time, the Queen was 41 and the Earl of Oxford was 24 and married – albeit unhappily. But the theory of a relationship between them suits those who contend that De Vere is the real author of Shakespeare’s works and had to conceal his identity. In this line of thinking, the Earl of Oxford is the poet in the sonnets. He is writing them to his son as the Fair Youth, while Elizabeth Vernon is the Dark Lady. Thus Penelope Wriothesley is still the descendant of Shakespeare, but through Edward de Vere.
Even many supporters of the Oxford-as-Shakespeare theory regard the notion that the aristocratic De Vere wrote Shakespeare’s poems but concealed his identity because he was the father of the Queen’s son as far-fetched. But the Prince Tudor hypothesis has helped make to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, current leader of the pack of the alternatives for Shakespearean authorship – ahead of Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe.
Of course, many will not gainsay the supposition that William Shakespeare himself wrote his plays and poems but the De Vere conjecture is likely to receive a major boost in the autumn. The forthcoming Hollywood blockbuster Anonymous takes it as its central theme. It may be turn out to be a bigger controversy than the one which surrounded The Da Vinci Code.
So Prince William and Prince Harry may be descended from Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, or neither. There are real historical and epistemological issues to be resolved around late Tudor history, but they are in danger of being lost because the conspiracy industry is working overtime.
