I hate to admit it...

but sometimes the Oxfordians do have a point. Inspired by that article I stumbled across last time, I've done a little digging through the DNB and discovered some fun facts about Thomas Howard, fourth and last Duke of Norfolk. They describe him as "a man of contrasts... on the one hand, there was the image of the handsome and mannered outdoor aristocrat.... on the other there was the socially powerful but personally weak magnate who practiced dissumulation."

Howard's public image is best encapsulated in this obersvation by Guerau de Spes, the Spanish Ambassador, as Howard was being led to the tower: "the concourse of people was so large and the shouts so general that a very little more and he would have been liberated." Also, the DNB notes that Howard tended to prefer life in his country estates to life at court, so there is every reason to think about a country inkeeper like Blague being steadfast in his service of "The Good Duke of Norfolk."

But for 30 years?

Howard ultimately wasn't that bright, and concealed his aspirations to marry Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotts, from Queen Elizabeth. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that, if you want to hook up with one of your sovereign's potential rivals, you might want to clear it with her first. It also shouldn't take much wit at all to figure out that, when she catches you in the act and gives you a second chance, don't try to continue your courtship in secret. Howard did both of these, and was convicted of treason and executed. His head came off on 2 June 1572.

Recall my estimation of 1603 as a first-performance date. I felt very good for coming up with that because, when I looked it up in Chambers, he had come to the same conclusion. Having your thought process be in sync with one of the great lions of Renaissance scholarship feels.. you know... good. Of course, even then I was writing of this as a probable latest first performance date. I suppose there's no reason to suspect that it wasn't written sooner, but that creates a strange mystery in and of itself. If Merry Devil is a product of the 1580s or 1590s, why isn't there a either a stationer's register entry for it or a record of its performance? And how did the play come into the possession of the Chamberlain's/King's Men?

Since Chambers has got my back on this one, I think that I'll stick with my 1603 estimation. That, in turn, leads to interesting character questions. Host Blague praising the Good Duke of Norfolk would be a little bit like running into a hotel in the middle of nowhere decorated with Nixon memorabilia. There is something almost absurd about it, but then again, Blague is supposed to be a bafoonish character, and they do absurd things all the time. That's why we laugh at them.

So while our anonymous Oxfordian raises some interesting issues, these seem to me most likely to be issues to resolved "in game." They help inform the character more than they do the date of authorship.

How those Oxfordians do go on.

Some people out in the world think that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote most (or all) of Shakespeare's plays. To prove their claim, some of the more industrious among them have resorted to such highly respected methods as ouigi boards. I don't think I've ever met an Oxfordian, but I have met adults who believe in unicorns. While I won't go so far as to call Oxfordians "stupid," because some very intelligent people have subscribed to this theory, there is not a single shred of concrete evidence to support the convoluted narrative that they create to justify de Vere as the author of the canon.

I mention this because, while doing a little bit of research, I stumbled across this article, which as you've probably guessed proposes de Vere as the author of Merry Devil. Is it impossible? Yes, but the evidence that this apparently anonymous author puts forth doesn't even come close to suggesting it. Lets look at his argument, you know, for fun. I'll sumarize in bullet points:

• Merry Devil was probably written by a Cambridge graduate because it refers to Cambridge in a positive way.
• The author was familiar with an area 15 miles south of London, as evidenced by the references to specific locales.
• The play was probably written before 1572, because there was no Duke of Norfolk after 1572.
• Merry Devil is about young men in love, and must have been written by a young man in love. Coincidentally, de Vere was a young man at that time.
• de Vere was a friend of Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk
• de Vere was proclaimed as a comedy writer

Therefore, de Vere wrote Merry Devil. Case closed, right? Of course, by this logic, Harry Potter must have been written by a Hogwart's graduate still young enough to remember his early years there. Probably by someone who knew the principle characters.

The fact is, while Fabell the Cambridge scholar and his student are portrayed sympathetically, you could substitute just about any school name in there and it wouldn't change a thing. Even so, a lot of people went to Cambridge, Christopher Marlowe, for example. Also, a lot of people probably were familiar enough with the area in which the play takes place to have written about it. Just about every other point that the author makes in this article begs the question: de Vere could have written it, therefore he may have.

Still, the references to the fate of Howard and Jerningham are rather intriguing, and might be worth some further investigation.