Timothy Spearman's Shakes a Spear©

Timothy Spearman Shakes Pallas Athena's Spear at Twin Serpents of Ignorance and Vice and Wears Her Helmet of Invisibility

Spearman's Cave

Radio Show Hosts

Radio Shows

Sacred Geometry music CD

Days Are Numbered musicCD

Self-Portrait

Bard's Buried Treasure I

Bard's Buried Treasure II

More Buried Treasure

Dead Man's Scrolls

Temple Initiation

Temple Keystone

Riddle of the Sphinx

Lighted Torch

Snake Oil

Plato's Cave

Secret Scroll

Secret Scroll II

Alien Scrolls

 
Timothy Spearman: Radio Show Host of Shaking a Spear
Timothy Spearman's show Shaking a Spear airs Thursdays from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. at www.Thatradio.com - Timothy Spearman is masked marauder Timothy Burns Watson - Catch him if you can!

Shakes his spear at the twin serpents of ignorance and vice as did the venerable god Apollo before him with consort Pallas Athena at his side. The Spearman reveals Shakespeare's Codex to all the world, the M.O. of the front man employed for generations by the Illuminati-controlled intelligence services. Just as Will Shaksper from Stratford was the front man used by the Illuminized Freemasons working for H.M.S.S. to hide the identity of the courtier scholar, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, so the modern day intelligence services employ an array of front men, including Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, etc. to conceal their covert operations orchestrated to advance the New World Order of Lucifer and the All-Seeing Eye Cult of the Brotherhood of the Snake and the Serpent Cult, Freemasonry. Edward de Vere worked for Francis Bacon's secret writing ministry, The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet, the secret writing ministry named in honour of Pallas's helmet of invisibility, which they did kiss and place upon their heads, while writing anonymously and under pen names. Meanwhile, Will Shaksper of Stratford, cousin of de Vere through the Arden family, would take the credit for the play so the true author could remain hidden behind the stagecraft.

So now in our age, we see the same M.O. played out in the drama known as the Killing of the King ritual, which took place in Dealey Plaza, Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald took the fall for the covert operation orchestrated by the All-Seeing Eye Cult's CIA. Osama bin Laden of the Freemason/MI6 creation known as the Muslim Brotherhood would later work for the CIA under the code name Tim Osmond, where he would be scapegoated for 9/11 while Dick Cheney was running his decoy wargame exercise known as Vigilant Guardian and Northern Guardian that same day. Shakespeare's Codex is alive and well passed on like a torch from the old world the new, Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the U.S.A.
Who Is Pushing the Pen? by Timothy Burns Watson soon to be published.
What Made Us Write With Our Feet?
The Symphony of Time by Timothy Burns Watson (Book) in Literature & Fiction

 

The Symphony of Time

by Timothy Burns Watson

soon to be published.
Novel I Spoke Thus To Zarathustra


Are we prisoners of the moment or can we use faith, imagination and hope to set ourselves free? This gloriously panoramic musical allegory, The Symphony of Time, offers an optimistic answer. Here is a sophisticated postmodern synthesis of spirit and materialism, consciousness and music, text and hypertext that will captivate and liberate the modern philosopher and educated reader.

Available for order soon

Shakespeare's Codex
Timothy Spearman of www.Thatradio.com is the Spear Shaker par excellence. Catch Tim's program Shaking a Spear at www.Thatradio.com Mondays from 9:00 to 10:00 p.m.

Timothy Spearman is masqued marauder Timothy Burns Watson - Catch Me If You Can!

apollospear@yahoo.com 


"Shakespeare's Codex" is an article on the use of a common M.O. by the world's Illuminati controlled intelligence services to conceal the real nature of their clandestine operations through the use of a front man. The M.O. was developed and perfected in Elizabethan England under the control of H.M.S.S. head Sir Francis Bacon, who employed the Shakespeare authorship deception by using Will Shakspere, the commoner, as the front man in order to conceal the identity of the true propagandist for National Security Reasons. The DISPLAY to the right shows the bard seated on the right receiving back his hair in a series of thumbsize Powerpoint images so that he more closely resembles the man he was on the left at age 36 when he sat for a portrait under his own name, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Will Shakspere, cousin of Edward de Vere through the Arden family, would be the illiterate front man Manchurian Candidate of the H.M.S.S. covert operation, who would take credit for the plays. The M.O. of the front man patsy has been been employed more latterly by the intelligence services with the likes of John Wilkes Boothe, assassin of President Lincoln, Jack the Ripper, Lee Harvey Oswald, patsy of JFK assassination, Timothy McVeigh, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Bureau front man, Osama bin Laden, boggy man terrorist blamed for 9-11 inside job, Moussaoui, mind-controlled fall guy for 9-11, etc.

Shakespeare's Codex
By Timothy Burns Watson

The Shakespeare authorship has deeply puzzled thinking people for over 400 years. How could a commoner study works in foreign tongues and retell the story in a new language in the process of development? It doesn't make any sense unless he was part of an avante garde movement of the British intelligensia. How could he possibly know the words and spellings of a vocabulary only recently introduced to English by Bacon's Fra Rosy Cross literary society as loan words from Latin and Italian? His caste position alone would deny him entry into this club of peerage and privilege. What if he was a mere front man, so that the real author could hide behind the scenes rather like the beggar dressed up like a lord in the opening scene of "Taming of the Shrew"? "Shakspere" is a far cry from "Shakespeare", a totally different spelling for a totally different man, but a spelling close enough to "Shakespeare" to allow the intelligence operation to succeed in duping successive generations of bard lovers for over 400 years.
The truth is that when the author's name appeared on the first folio of plays it was hyphenated "Shake-speare", proving that it was a pen name employed by some invisible personage. Why the deception? Because the bard was a British agent employed by H.M.S.S. who required a code name to conceal his true identity. Were his identity to be revealed, he would be in danger and many of the personages of the court he was lampooning in his plays would be exposed to the general public's gaze, which would have been a serious threat to national security. So the secret had to be kept and for national security reasons has been kept for 400 years. The code name of British agent Edward de Vere was actually derived from Pallas Athena, the patron goddess of the secret writing society he worked for called The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet also named in honor of Pallas, the Spear-shaker, who always shook her spear at the twin serpents of ignorance and vice and who wore the helmet of invisibility, which rendered her invisible every time she drew the visor down over her face. Initiates of Sir Francis Bacon's secret propaganda ministry would kiss the helmet of Pallas when they joined and subsequently wrote under pen names or anonymously. Bacon would refer to these propagandists as his "team of good pens". The Earl of Oxford was one such very "good pen".
Paul Streitz's book "Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I" recently created quite a stir in the international press for suggesting the author was actually the Queen's son. The Virgin Queen as she was known was not called so for her virtue, but for her occult witchcraft status as the incarnation of the moon goddess Diana otherwise known as Virginia, the virgin huntress and goddess of the moon. She had purportedly carried the child of her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, who impregnated her at the age of 16, forcing her to farm the child out for adoption to the home of the 16th Earl of Oxford to be raised as a changeling child. The secret prince would remain a state secret. A second liaison would occur with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, when Elizabeth and he were both confined to the Tower by Queen Mary. The product of that liaison would be a second child, whose identity was also concealed as a changeling child of the home of Lord and Lady Bacon. That prodigy would grow up to own one of the most illustrious names and careers in European history as Sir Francis Bacon.
The relationship forged between the half brothers allowed them to work closely on the secret writing fraternities they formed. Bacon and his brother Anthony Bacon would also work closely together, spawning H.M.S.S. through their joint efforts as well as Fra Rosy Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet. Bacon and his brother Anthony would go on to found most of the intelligence services of the European continent and would set up Masonic and Rosicrucian Lodges throughout Europe. This explains why high-ranking officers in the British and American military and intelligence units tend to belong to secret societies like the Freemasons and Rosicrucians to this day. Promotion within military-intelligence makes Masonic or Rosicrucian affiliation a practical prerequisite.
The most prestigious Shakespeare academic journal known as The Shakespeare Quarterly is located in Washington D.C. and is run by the Folger Gallery, which Paul Streitz exposes as a fraud in his book. The Folger Gallery actually committed a crime against history and scholarship by painting over a portrait purported to be of Edward de Vere that was also said to be a painting of the real Shakespeare. The museum's motivation for perpetrating this crime was to make the bard's cranium conform to the classical notion of what "the bald guy" is actually supposed to have looked like. It is amazing indeed to think that Shakespeare scholarship is actually entrusted to custodians of this kind. Why English departments around the world are not up in arms about this only attests to the fact that something stinks in Denmark.
Some people have asked me how I could seriously believe that Bacon or Oxford wrote the plays when 99% of academia have believed otherwise for 400 years? How could such a deception be orchestrated people ask and why? The answer is really very simple. The Freemasons created and control the university degree system based on the first three degrees of Freemasonry: Entered Apprentice corresponding with Bachelor's Degree, Fellow Craft corresponding with Master's Degree and Master Mason commensurate with Ph.D. Thus, rank within the academic establishment is defined not by the pursuit of truth, but with one's adherence to the fascist and duplicitous aims of the most powerful crime syndicate in the world - Freemasonry. Intellectual prostitutes are of higher degree and gain all the privilege, while genuine philosophers are relegated to the bottom of the social pyramid and denied tenure. Here I am languishing at the bottom of the academic world for espousing truths, but I'm the better man for it I console myself.
Revealing the truth about the authorship of the Shakespeare plays has grave implications for both British and American national security because it exposes the modus operandi of the front man used in so many of their clandestine operations A.K.A. John Wilkes Boothe, front man for the Lincoln assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald patsy for JFK assassination, Timothy McVeigh, front man for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms operation to sabotage the Murrah Building in order to destroy the files on the highly reactive vaccinations given to the Gulf War Vets now suffering and dying from Gulf War Syndrome, Osama bin Laden, boggy man for 9/11 inside job for planned second Pearl Harbor, pretext for invasion in oil rich countries of the Middle East, etc. That is why the Shakespeare Quarterly and Folger Gallery are located in Washington, D.C. The hawks in Washington want to keep a very close eye on Shakespeare criticism to ensure that the front man, Will Shakspere, gets all the press, while articles about the Oxford/Bacon connection continue to be suppressed. I leave you with one final question: Why are discoveries and insights like this not seen in popular bestsellers and mainstream news media publications? You may now be able to answer such questions for yourself. 
 
Good Friend, Sweet Friend, Lend Me Your Name
                                       By Timothy Burns Watson 

                 A man calling himself Lord Ampthill, who if memory serves, was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England in the early 20th century, wrote the foreword for Rev. J.J. Doke's biography of Gandhi. What is amazing about this is that Lord Ampthill actually presided over the laying of a foundation stone for a new Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford in honour of the supposed birthplace of the bard. In other words, this prominent Freemason was so duplicitous that he was not only instrumental in promoting the 400-year-old myth of Will Shakspere, but was in the process of cultivating the new myth of the 20th century concerning Freemason Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi's actual name was Mohandus, but became Mahatma because Theosophists who happened to also be initiated Freemasons were referred to as Mahatmas, meaning Great Souls.
                  To understand the Freemason-Rosicrucian-H.M.S.S. operation known as the Shakespeare plays, one needs to read Ignatius Donnelly’s book "The Great Cryptogram: Francis Bacon’s Secret Cipher Code in the So-Called Shakespeare Plays". Donnelly was an interesting man. He was a U.S. Congressman, who was actually running for the presidency at one juncture. What is incredible is that he cracked the code that reveals a secret biography of Will Shakspere, the frontman Manchurian candidate, who took credit for the plays and details about the gentleman of the court that concealed his authorship as an agent of the crown. At any rate, "A Comedy of Errors" was the first play to be performed and it was staged at Gray's Inn, one of the Inns of Court in the City of London, where both Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, and Francis Bacon attended law school. The reason this play was chosen as the first to be performed is because it contains the theme of the entire H.M.S.S. Manchurian Candidate operation, which would employ Will Shakspere as the replacement front man, who would take credit for the plays so the British agent could hide behind the stage curtain. The theme of the play thus revolved around two identical twins, who were constantly mistaken for one another, which was in fact the case for the bard and Will Shakspere, whose names were so alike that they were often mistaken for one another.
            Shocking though it may be, Bacon and Oxford it happens were half brothers and concealed princes of the realm, Bacon through the secret marriage of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, to Queen Elizabeth I and Oxford, the product of a rape then Princess Elizabeth endured at the hands of her stepfather, Thomas Seymour. There is something deeply suspicious about the conduct of court officials in the wake of this rape. In his biography of Francis Bacon, Alfred Dodd records that the queen was secreted away to the country to give birth to this bastard child under the auspices of Lord Burghley, her trusted confidante and friend. The reason this is odd is that it happens to be consistent with the behavious of high-ranking Illuminati families, whose virgin children are raped by a high wiccan priest, in order to seed a Luciferian offspring. Some may find the circumstances of the rape and aftermath suspicious in this regard as there are aspects of the scenario that complement Satanic ritual rape. It is interesting to note that, in the ancient world, it was believed that a wise magus was very often the product of an unnatural birth such as incest. The Earl of Oxford was a prodigy and a wise Magus of the kind only seen once in a  millennium.Why the concealment of the queen's secret issue? It is now believed that she had at least three concealed princes of the realm: Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere and Robert Devereaux, the Earl of Essex. Were the queen and her close officials involved in Illuminati sorcery and Satanic ritual sex magic or were they rather aware of some prophecy pertaining to the fate of her children that required her to take pains on their behalfs and conceal their existence from the world so that the Luciferian faction would not hunt them down and kill them. The latter seems the most likely given the beauty and majesty of Francis Bacon's and Edward de Vere's work and the legacy they have spawned, the most miraculous and edifying of its kind.   
            Together, these concealed princes would start Fra Rosy Cross and the Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet, named in honour of Pallas Athena, the Spear-Shaker who wore the helmet of invisibility. The bard is in fact wearing her helmet as one of Francis Bacon's team of invisibles, who are writing under pen names or anonymously as members of the secret propaganda ministry. Meanwhile, Will Shakspere, who is made great light of in the comedies through such characters as Sir John Flastaff (False-Spear) was a cousin of Edward de Vere through the Arden family. He becomes a figure of fun in the prologue to "Taming of the Shrew," where a drunken beggar is conveyed to a Lord's house, placed in his bed, dressed in fine clothes, lordly rings placed on his fingers. When he comes to, he is addressed as My Lord, told repeatedly he is Lord of the manner, addressed by the Lady of the manor as My Lord, until he begins to believe he has in fact been in some distemper that has caused him to forget his true stature. Within no time he begins to fall for the ruse and believe that he actually is the Lord. The whole play is based on mind control. Katerina is mind-controlled by Petruchio, who tells her it's the moon in the sky when it's actually the sun at midday and confuses day for night so utterly that her senses are so out of whack she doesn't know day from night. He then subjects her to food deprivation and sleep deprivation, all three strategies from the author's intelligence programming manual. Who else would be familiar with such psychological programming techniques but a member of British intelligence and Her Majesty's government? The Illuminati Bacon cabal had made the Manchurian Candidate into an art form only to employ it as recyclable M.O. for the next 400 years.

           The All Seeing Eye Cult-controlled intelligence services would then recycle the tried and tested M.O., one that they had refined into an art form for covert operations spanning some 400 years or so. The patsy front man would be used to conceal their covert operations, so that a lone front man would take the credit or the blame for the operation so the true operatives could remain behind the curtain with the puppet masters. Thus, a look alike of Rothschild agent and 33 Degree Freemason, John Wilkes Boothe would die in the barn allowing the assassin to escape unscathed. Lee Harvey Oswald's look alike would implicate him in a variety of settings, setting him up as the patsy front man for the Kennedy coup d’état. Timothy McVeigh would have a look alike on the ATF Bureau, who would implicate him by association with the Oklahoma Bombing. Osama bin Laden meanwhile has obviously had doubles doing the CIA videos for him. And more recently, Saddam's look alike would not only go to the dock for him, but would even stand in for him on the gallows. Very generous of him if it were actually a volunteer, but far more likely to be a mind-controlled Manchurian canadidate duped into believing he is the martyred Iraqi leader, just one more low born figure of fun in Illuminati stagecraft masquerading as statecraft.

 
Helmet of Invisibility

Bard Lovers Lend Me Your ears
by Timothy Burns Watson apollospear@yahoo.com


The identity of the secret agent employing the code name, pen name, alias or nom de plume, William Shakespeare, has long puzzled scholars and thinking people. This is because he was employing the name of his patron goddess, Pallas Athena, the Spear-shaker and patron goddess of the Greek theater, as well as Freemasonry and the other secret fraternal writing societies to which the real author, Edward de Vere belonged, namely Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet.
  

         The Oxfordian school of Shakespeare criticism has been gaining strength recently. Oxfordians have quite an illustrious history actually. Among their supporters is Sigmund Freud, who found the Earl of Oxford to be a perfect psychological match for the bard. Indeed in his youth, his adopting father, the 16th Earl of Oxford, died and his mother married with such unseemly haste that the young earl seems not to have thought terribly highly of her. Later, this Hamlet-like story would receive another layering from the behavior of his secret biological mother, the Queen. The Queen, it seems, desired to marry Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, so desperately in fact that she was not about to allow his wife, Amy Robsart, to stand in the way. The Queen and her lover arranged a little accident for her as it were. The rumour seems to have had wings for it traveled widely throughout Europe. So widespread was the rumour that the Queen was actually prevented from making her marriage official. Instead, the marriage took place secretly in the country. Her consort would become the Lord Chancellor rather than the king. He would, however, share an adjoining room in the castle for late night liaisons. Gertrude would be a composite figure based on the bard’s biological and adopting mothers. One could imagine the discomfort the Queen and the Earl of Leicester would feel watching their murder parodied on the stage in a performance fit for a king and queen. “The play’s the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the king.” The bard sees his role in society as political and ethical. His role is to restore some semblance of order and righteousness to society. He would naturally quip under the circumstances, “The times are out of joint/ Oh cursed spite that e’er I was born to set things right.”

          Far-fetched as it will seem to skeptics, Oxford was a British agent who received an annual fee from the Queen of one thousand pounds, a sum paid to him by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He was the Lord Chamberlain, which placed him in charge of all theatrical productions staged for the Queen. His theater company would hold regular rehearsals at Blackfriar’s Theater in London. Unfortunately, the author would lose caste in the Elizabethan Court due to a scandalous love affair with the Queen’s handmaiden, Anne Vavasor. The scandal erupted when the Queen learned that the maid was carrying the Earl’s child. This so incensed the Queen that she had the Earl and the maid confined to the Tower for a brief period. The maid’s uncle saw it as his duty to defend the honor of his niece. He would arrive at the Blackfriar’s Theater with a contingent of men and challenge the earl to a duel. The warring clansmen would stage their sword fight along the banks of the River Thames. The duel between the Earl and Anne’s uncle would inflict a wound that would stay with the earl for the rest of his life, one he would later refer to in his sonnets. This provided much of the biographical fodder for Romeo and Juliet, a classic Italian tale that somehow imitated life, his in particular.

         The earl might have some motivation to get his own back on the Queen after being disciplined by his mother so severely. Being the secret prince and her son, he knows she will spare him the rod and the rack. He also knows that she cannot punish him publicly for something written in his plays because his status as a playwright is a state secret. A play affords him the best option for revenge. The hidden import of Romeo’s balcony scene speech may be clearer in this light:

 

                 But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
                 It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
                 Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
                 Who is already sick and pale with grief,
                 That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
                 Be not her maid, since she is envious;
                 Her vestal livery is but sick and green
                 And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.

 

Among occultists like Sir John Dee, the Queen’s occult status was that of Diana, Cynthia or Virginia, the goddess of the moon. She was the virgin queen, Diana, the huntress. She was therefore the moon, who being middle-aged was wan and pale when set against the youthful visage of her maidservant, who wore the Tudor vestal which was in fact green. Juliet meanwhile alludes to Romeo’s secret name, “What’s in a name? That which is called a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Indeed so, especially if that rose was a Tudor rose. His pedigree would smell so sweet that even if he were called by another name, the pollen of his royal pedigree would bear a fragrance so heady in its perfume as to overwhelm the senses of a young maiden.

          As for the bard’s real name, Edward de Vere, even that was a stage name for the man for whom all the world was a stage, since he was a changeling child raised in the de Vere home. His other alias, his code name as a British agent, William Shakespeare, was derived from Pallas Athena, Hasti-Vibrans, the Spear-shaker, who always shook her spear at the serpents of ignorance and vice. As with all “the invisibles” that joined Sir Francis Bacon’s secret writing societies Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet, de Vere wore Pallas’s helmet of invisibility. He was one of Francis’s invisibles writing under a pen name or anonymously. One reason Freemasons have attributed the authorship of the plays to Bacon is because he left his ciphers and codes on many of the Shakespeare plays and we can see him planning and titling the Shakespeare plays in his Northumberland Manuscript. He would naturally, since according to Freemason Alfred Dodd, author of Francis Bacon’s Personal Life Story, he is a Freemason Grand Master and Rosicrucian and the head of Elizabeth’s secret propaganda ministries Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet. He was also, according to Dodd, the state censor in charge of all books published in England in his day. In fact, many of the books that would have been in “Shakespeare’s” library, from which he gathered much of the fodder for his plays, were being translated into English by Bacon’s “team of good pens” at this time. 

            According to Baconian scholars, A Comedy of Errors was first staged in the dining hall of Gray’s Inn law school and an inn of court in London. The idea that a commoner, however talented, would be let in the front door, let alone stage a play there is patently absurd. The caste system of the time was so rigid that aristocrats were virtually racist in terms of the discrimination they meted out on commoners. Anyone familiar with life in England will know that the class system remains a serious social impediment to this day.

            There were only a handful of books in the backward provincial town of Stratford at the time and most of them were in the hands of a local rector. The idea that a commoner could have mastered his own tongue to the degree to which the bard obviously did, let alone master several European tongues is patently absurd. He would not have found the opportunity. Anyone challenging this notion is simply ignorant, probably due to their own position of status and privilege within society, to understand the difficulties attending someone attempting to climb the social ladder in that day. It was only after the Great War in the 20th century that commoners were admitted to university academies in the U.K. How pray tell could a commoner have achieved such a thing in Elizabethan times? It is clear the bard is versed in legal terminology and concepts that only a law student would be familiar with. Where would he have got such an education when only those of noble peerage were admitted to law school? Despite being a graduate of Gray’s Inn and a conferred barrister, Bacon did not practice law and derived no income from the practice of law. He was often in debt due to a chronic shortage of funds. Oxford, on the other hand, did practice law and had gained a reputation for himself within the profession.

            Finally, for those who insist on the Bacon authorship, let me say that there is no evidence he possessed a poet’s ear. He would have his ciphers on the plays because he is coordinating the propaganda ministry and is the chief censor of the realm, placing his personal seal or watermark on everything published in England in his day. In the Druidic system of initiation, the Ovates is the highest position and the Bard is very much secondary. The man we know as Shakespeare is referred to as “the bard”. There is no mistaking his position in the Druidic hierarchy. There is an Ovates presiding above him and overseeing all that he does. It is clear that Bacon is not a Bard. He is the overseer of higher degree. In the feudal degree system Freemasonry upholds, those of higher degree take credit for the work of those of lower degree. This is the nature of the feudal system as it was in that day practically worldwide, even in locales as far flung as Japan and Korea. Interesting to note also is that, at this time it was considered beneath the dignity of a nobleman to lower himself by performing in the theater, writing plays or poetry or involving himself in the arts. This was as true of England as it was of places as far away as Japan and Korea. Interestingly, Korea and Japan also have a history of nobles writing under pen names and anonymously. In Korea, two operatic works, Chung Hyang Chon and Shim Chang Chon, were composed by an anonymous author of noble rank.

            The caste system was really quite rigid at this time and did not allow much wiggle room for those who wished to break caste. Will Shaksper of Stratford Upon Avon is unlikely to have been granted much wiggle room. He was however a convenient front man for an intelligence operation that required that the author’s true identity remain hidden. Indeed, Will Shaksper would have been in it on it as it were, initiated into Freemasonry, oaths and obligations administered, sworn to secrecy on pain of death, and forced to keep mum for the balance of his life. All the world is indeed a stage and for the Elizabethan one had to be a player. The idea that freedom of speech existed at this time is patently ridiculous. England was under siege by France and Spain and was a virtual police state not terribly different from North Korea today in terms of its hermit status. Commoners were not permitted to travel to the Continent and could never obtain a passport. Nobles could only travel to Europe after receiving special permission from the Queen. How could the bard show such familiarity with the geography of France and Italy that he practically paints the landscape for us had he not been there to bear witness to it in his own eyes? Will Shaksper wouldn’t have been permitted on the boat.

            The man we know as Shakespeare had no freedom of speech. He was forced to fulfill his role as a propagandist of the Queen’s court. All one has to do is look at modern day Hollywood to see that it functions as the propaganda ministry of the American government. The CIA is known to have had a longstanding relationship with several Hollywood studios including Columbia Pictures. For artists who are part of the establishment upward mobility is a piece of cake. For artists who inveigh against the establishment, it is an uphill climb. Anyone who debates this has not had the experience. The bard was a supporter of caste. Just look at Troilus and Cressida and the early plays and you see an ardent supporter of caste before you. Why would a commoner support the caste system when it surely would have stood in his way at every leg of his journey through life?

            The poet would eventually lose caste however. Acting in plays was not a luxury noblemen were allowed, and there is ample evidence that Oxford broke caste to be in his own cast. In addition, he had offended the Queen by having a love affair with her handmaiden. Having lost his standing in court and with no love lost between himself and his peers, Oxford would naturally gravitate to the company of commoners, most particularly members of his own acting company. This explains why we see him discarding the Italian renaissance courtier dress of his flamboyant youth and adopting the commoner’s dress of later life. In the portrait painting comparison featured in my last article (http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/160141.php) the middle-aged bard shown on the right in commoner’s dress has lost his hair due to aging, and has adopted a bohemian look replete with long hair, earring, scruffy beard and commoner’s dress. His later plays – Hamlet, King Lear, Richard II – correspondingly reject caste. We have an author who accepts the fact we are all accorded the same fate as poor Yorick in the end, a lawyer in life relegated to the level earth and the trowel in death.

 
                                               Was the Bard Murdered?
                                                    By The Spearman
              Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was a changeling child of Queen Elizabeth and one of the rightful heirs to the throne as a concealed prince. In a ritual undertaken with a Native American shaman in 2005, we contacted our ancestors with the aid of a Native American divination plant called salvia divinorum. After making contact with my inductee’s ancestors, I contacted mine, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
             He appeared to me in a vision. He was being pursued by some adversary along a fortress wall. I then saw two black stallions silhouetted against the night sky, one in hot pursuit of the other. Upon reaching a meadow, Edward dismounted from his stallion and took flight on foot. I saw him take an arrow in the back and fall face first into the pasture. Two enemies approached from the rear, grabbing him under the armpits. He was dragged to an animal’s water trough, where his head was forced under. I recall feeling his pain as the life was snuffed out of him.
            Following this vision, I performed automatic writing in order to corroborate the true circumstances of his death with my own suspicions. I wrote four questions down on a sheet of paper and left space on the right for the spirit’s replies. Replies to these questions appear below to the right of each question as they did on the night when the ritual was held. The reply to the first questions was a definitive “yes” written in a stylized Elizabethan hand. The other replies appear below in sequence:
 1. Are you Edward de Vere? yes
2. Did the Masons kill you? masons
3. Why? play
4. How can I avenge the death of Hamlet’s father’s ghost? by writing
 My shaman guide noticed that none of the responses were capitalized. He suggested that I combine the words into a single sentence and see what I came up with. He had a sharp eye. As a full sentence, the response read, “Yes, Mason play by writing.” This seemed to answer the most urgent questions: 1) Why had the Masons killed him? And 2) How can I avenge the death of Hamlet’s father’s ghost?  It appears that the bard’s last play, “The Tempest,” was the reason for his death. His answer to Question Three verifies that he was killed over a play. “The Tempest” is rich in Freemasonic references, including the attack on Prospero by three ruffians, a symbolic reference to the murder of Hiram Abif, the alleged architect of King Solomon’s Temple. The murder of Hiram is recorded in the Third Degree ritual of Freemasonry and contains and “The Tempest” contains a pointed allusion to this. The sentence “yes, mason play by writing” also answers Question Four pertaining to how I might avenge his death as a writer and researcher. By writing a screenplay, which I may soon be commissioned to write, I may be able to avenge the death of the bard by conveying the truth to the multitudes and by attributing merit where merit is due by granting full credit to Edward Tudor better known as Edward de Vere, Lord of Oxford.
              The "mason play by writing" appears to have been the motive for the killing. My suspicion is that he got the truth out about the plot to kill Prospero, i.e. himself (Pro-spear-Oxford or prosper-Oxford) by the Three Unworthy Craftsmen featured in “The Tempest” who attack Prospero with blows to the head (corresponding with the Third Degree of Freemasonry), making off with his manuscripts. It therefore seems that at some point in time, the bard’s more recently penned manuscripts were stolen. This may have been a reconnaissance operation to ascertain the nature of the bard’s work on the Isle of Man, where he was exiled by King James to live out the remaining eleven years of his life, following his official death in 1603. In short, the bard’s work was stolen! At the beginning of “Troilus and Cressida”, we have a prologue, which relates how the author's manuscripts were in the safekeeping of the Grand Possessors. These I take to be a guild of Freemasons under the control of whom? Was it one of brother Francis's organizations: Fra Rosi Cross perhaps?  The author appears to have been blowing the whistle on Luciferian Masons through the plays. I strongly suspect that King James was at the head of the Luciferian Masons.
            On the occasion of his mock death in 1604, Edward was paid the honour of a state funeral, in which some of his plays were performed as a tribute to him as Lord Chamberlain. Keep in mind that on the occasion of King James' ascension to the throne, Oxford and his concealed son, the Earl of Southampton, were both arrested and confined to the Tower of London. This is no doubt due to the fact that they were perceived as threats to the throne as they had a legitimate claim overriding that of James.
              I believe James struck a deal with Oxford around this time. The deal was that he would be allowed to live and continue to exercise his talent as poet laureate from exile on the Isle of Man. This legend is recorded in a book by Oxfordian Peter Sammartino. He would then stage his death and the death certificate would identify the "plague" as the cause. His official death was in 1604, which would make him 53 years of age. According to legend, he would live for an additional 11 years on the Isle of Man, continuing to write his plays for all posterity, which would put his actual death at 1615. There is some dispute over his burial site, some alleging he is buried in Hackney Churchyard, while others maintain he is interred in Westminster Abbey. This dispute results from the fact that he was not buried. In the Henry plays, the author makes repeated allusions to Prince Hal's fear of not being given a proper Christian burial. This is because the Luciferian Masons reserved this punishment as one of their most severe, reserved for those who betray their dark lords.
           Following the "contacting ancestors" ritual, I awakened in the middle of the night to a vision some nights later, where I saw Edward's casket on the sea bottom with seaweed dancing in the tide in front of it. The casket lid opened and bright white light came flooding out. This matches the First Degree of Freemasonry in terms of ritual punishment:
 
                             All this I most solemnly, sincerely promise and swear, with a firm and steadfast resolution to perform the same, without any mental reservation or secret evasion of mind whatever, binding myself under no less penalty than that of having my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by its roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea, at low-water mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours, should I ever knowingly violate this my Entered Apprentice obligation. So help me God, and keep me steadfast in the due performance of the same.
 
I am firmly convinced based on mystical and metaphysical evidence presented to the sixth sense superseding my other five that Edward Tudor/Vere was murdered on the Isle of Man by Luciferian Masons under the control of the Luciferian King James I and that his body was sunk in the sea at the mouth of a river of the coast of the Isle of Man. I strongly recommend a sea expedition of said coast in search of Edward's remains so that he can be given a proper Christian burial on the occasion of the 400 year anniversary of his death in 2015, when he was assassinated at age 64 by Luciferian Masons for revealing certain untimely secrets in the play “The Tempest”.
 

Shaking a Spear at Ignorance:

A Resolution to the Shakespeare Authorship Problem

 By Timothy Burns Watson
 This paper was originally inspired by a discovery the author had made concerning a similarity in the likenesses of the subject featured in the portrait of William Shakespeare by John Taylor and that of Edward de Vere by Marcus Gheeraedts. The conjecture of the author of this paper is that the subject featured in the Taylor portrait of Shakespeare is the same man shown in the Gheeraedts portrait only advanced in age by some fifteen years and therefore with a receding hairline resulting from middle age. The hypothesis is that, having lost caste in the Elizabethan Court for writing subversive plays that failed to meet their sole objective of serving the propaganda aims of the Court in addition to causing other scandals, including an affair with the Queen’s handmaiden, Anne Vavasor, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford became increasingly defiant of the establishment, adopting a bohemian lifestyle and dress, growing what was left of his hair long, allowing his courtier goatee and mustache to grow into a full but scruffy beard, while sporting an earring and commoner’s dress.
Further study resulted in the discovery that the author was a Freemason initiated into the Higher Degrees of Freemasonry and a British intelligence operative under the cover of a diplomat, who visited the courts of Europe on several occasions. The life of privilege led by Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, so dwarfed the life of the mediocrity from Stratford-upon-Avon as to eliminate him altogether from the authorship candidacy. Why, thought the author of this paper, would the Stratford man so clearly support the ideology of caste and privilege, as evidenced by his early plays in particular, when such an ideology disqualified him from upward social mobility? In addition, it did not make any sense whatsoever that he had such a breadth of knowledge gleaned from having participated in aristocratic sports, while studying jurisprudence, medicine, and several languages, in addition to traveling widely, when none of these privileges would be open to the commoner from Stratford. The author of this paper therefore thought to shake his spear at the ignorance of a naïve world blinded by four hundred years of incalculable oversight. The author hopes the findings here presented will sufficiently shake a spear at the serpent of ignorance that he might seek safe haven in the same hole he crawled out of. We also hope, but by no means hold our breath, that the academic world that has been so spitefully unkind to our person will offer a warmer reception to this our “spear-shaking” than it has in the past. It is also hoped that those who gaze upon the countenance of Edward de Vere will have the vision to see the resemblance in the two portraits this study has herein brought to the world’s attention.
What’s in a name? In the name “William Shakespeare”, there is a great deal. One would assume then that, as a name of great import, the author would at least endeavor to adopt a uniform spelling of his name and a uniform signature to go with it. Yet, of the six signatures found attached to documents ascribed to the man from Stratford, each displays a different spelling and style of handwriting. Why would this be when literate men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries developed personalized signatures just as people do today? As evidenced by the signatures extant, the man from Stratford whose name was most commonly spelled Shakspere seems not to have developed a consistent signature.1 Baptized Gulielmus Shakespere, he would go on to be known in other documents by William Shaxpere, William Shackespere, Willelmus Shackspere, William Shackspere, William Shakespeare of orthodox spelling, William Shackspeare, Willelmus Shakespeare, Willelmum Shakespeare, Willielmi Shakespeare, Willelmus Shackspere, Willelmus Shakspeare, Wyllyam Shaxpere, Mr. Shakespere, etc. These names appear on records ascribed to the man known by the name most commonly spelled William Shakspere from Stratford-Upon-Avon. It makes no sense whatsoever that a man of such importance would not endeavor to standardize the spelling of his name as well as his own signature for simple purposes of identification if nothing else. Indeed, the fact that there seems to have been no effort on the part of the Stratford man to do so is where a good part of the confusion rests and has contributed in no small degree to the authorship problem itself. Some of the scholars who examined these records initially decided that some of these documents belong in the biography of some other man of that name. Scholar Sydney Lee, for example, concluded Anne Whately became engaged to another of the numerous “Shakespeares” who then abounded in the diocese of Worcester. Then, in two articles entitled “Other William Shakespeares,” Charles William Wallace established that one of the documents pertaining to malt sales should be reassigned to a man other than the Stratford man.2 So the already scant record on the Stratford man, a record showing no evidence of any literary life, may be reduced still further by the fact that many of the “Shakespeares” referred to under different spellings in diverse documents may in fact be different men. The question that immediately springs to mind is why is the record so blank on William Shakspere of Stratford? Why is there such abject poverty in terms of documentation, including written records, letters, manuscript materials, etc.? Bear in mind that the question is asked of the man deemed to be the greatest author of English letters. How can this be, when significantly more documentation has been found on contemporaries of lesser note such as Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton? Michael Drayton, a much less revered contemporary and fellow poet from the same town, has exactly the kind of documentation associated with him one would expect to find in the great bard’s record, including letters, direct references to works, a brief description of his physical appearance, evidence of revision and polishing of his works, evidence of attending educational institutions, etc. Why the comparative destitution in the Stratford man’s record? And why is there no surviving evidence that these two famous poets from the same town had known each other or even met?3
    We might just as well ask: What’s in a face? The sheer abundance of disparate visages appearing in engravings and paintings of the bard indicate that hardly anyone seems to have had a clear impression of what the man actually looked like. In the opinion of the author of this paper, there is only one true likeness of the author of the plays and sonnets, and that is the portrait of Shakespeare painted by John Taylor circa 1610. While the painting by Taylor has been given the date 1610, this date must be erroneous since the subject of the painting, Edward de Vere, died in 1604. While many will be surprised by this claim, since the Stratford man is known to have died in 1616, I contend that it is not the Stratford man who is the subject of the Taylor portrait. The subject is indeed the man posterity knows as William Shakespeare, but that man is not from Stratford-Upon-Avon, nor was his real name William Shakespeare. The portrait is in fact a likeness of Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, who wrote the plays under the pen name, William Shakespeare. The man shown in the Taylor portrait bears a striking resemblance to a well-known portrait of Edward de Vere painted by the Dutch painter Marcus Gheeraedts. An approximate date for the Gheeraedts’ portrait is given as 1586. The marked difference of course is the fact that the man appearing in the Taylor portrait is bald, while the portrait of de Vere shows a man with a full head of hair. The reason for this is that the subject in the Taylor portrait is some fifteen years older and has gone bald with advancing years, while the de Vere portrait depicts the same man in his prime and with a full head of hair. The subject featured in the Taylor portrait is in fact the same man shown in the de Vere portrait only fourteen to fifteen years older, since the de Vere portrait shows the same man at approximately 36 years of age, since an approximate date of 1586 has been given to the painting. The author of this paper believes the Taylor portrait depicts de Vere at approximately fifty years of age, four years before his death in 1604. The dating of the Taylor portrait would, therefore, have to be reassigned to circa 1600, ten years earlier than that assigned by orthodoxy. Included in this paper is a composite photo comparison of the subjects featured in the two paintings. Both the aging process and unkempt appearance is eliminated in the painting of the bard with the aid of Photoshop, restoring his full head of hair, while eliminating his earring and long hair. Before and after photo analysis reveals that the middle-aged bard bears a striking resemblance to Edward de Vere featured at the age of 36, suggesting that Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is the bard writing under the pen name William Shakespeare. (See the accompanying composite portrait comparisons of before and after likenesses).
The authorship controversy has not been helped by the fact that irresponsible researchers have deliberately misled lay people and scholars alike by making grossly erroneous claims. Perhaps the best example of this is Gareth and Barbara Lloyd Evans’s grievously errant contention in their Companion to Shakespeare:
 
                                  We no more about the life of Shakespeare, both in
                                  terms of facts and of rational conclusions that they
                                  suggest, than of any other Elizabethan dramatist…
                                  Documents relating to Shakespeare’s activities,
                                  including letters to him and material relating to
                                  his family, are extant in quantity in the Shakespeare
                                  Centre records office at Stratford upon Avon.4
       
Note that the Evans’s tell us that there are many “letters” extant to Shakespeare, that is “letters” in the plural, misleadingly implying that there are many such letters extant. The truth is, however, that there is only one letter on record addressed to William Shakspere, the man from Stratford, and it was never delivered.5 How can so-called scholars mislead the public so irresponsibly? No wonder the authorship question has never been adequately resolved. With such gross distortions of the actual facts, many of the misinformed are discouraged from even embarking on the quest for the true author due to the erroneous weight of evidence tilting the balancing scales in favor of orthodoxy.
The surname “Shakespeare,” it should be noted, appears as the hyphenated name, “Shake-speare,” in the dedications to Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. Of the thirty editions of the Shakespeare plays published before the First Folio of 1623, in which authorial attribution was given, the name appeared hyphenated in fifteen of these cases. This suggests that the name is of the order of a sobriquet or nom de plume. The only legitimate case for hyphenating an Anglo-Saxon name would be in the case of two noble families brought together through the bonds of marriage and who wished to retain their family peerage mutually by preserving both names in a hyphenated surname, but in such cases, the family name appearing after the hyphen would be capitalized. The “speare” in “Shake-speare” is most definitely not capitalized, leaving little doubt that it is pseudonymous.6
 What’s in such a name? If a dramatist were to assign himself a pen name, would it not be apropos to take on a name that canonized him as a dramatist in some kind of homage to his art form? True, he would be under no obligation or compunction to do so. Still, it would be no less fitting. This being the case, it will constitute no shock to learn that the name “Shake-speare” or “Shakespeare” is derived from Pallas Athena, patron goddess of the Greek theater in Athens, who was nicknamed “Hasti-Vibrans” in Latin, meaning the “Spear-shaker”. The reason assigned to the sobriquet for both the goddess and the bard is that Pallas was known for shaking her spear at the serpent of ignorance and vice.7 In Greek mythology, Pallas Athena was the goddess of wisdom, philosophy, poetry, and the fine arts. Her original name was Pallas…from palein, meaning ‘shake’. Athens, the home of Greek drama, was under the guardianship of Pallas, the spear-shaker. The phrase, “The spear of Pallas shake,” can be read in a line of verse from a collection of Shakespeare’s poems of 1640.8
Pallas always shook her spear at ignorance, which is what the poet himself is doing, shaking his spear at the ignorant mass of humanity for believing the ridiculous ruse that an ignorant rustic from the country could be a claimant to the throne of the immortal bard, this a mere stand-in, substitute, or understudy brought in to play the part of the bard so that the true author could remain behind the scenes hidden from view. Pallas Athena also wore the “helmet of invisibility,” which rendered her invisible each time she drew the visor down over her face. The bard is, therefore, wearing Pallas’s helmet of invisibility, as his true identity is concealed behind a mask or visor. Ben Jonson recognized the true significance of the sobriquet when he wrote of Shakespeare’s “true-filled lines,” that “In each of which, he seems to shake a lance, /As brandished in the eyes of ignorance.”9 How did Jonson know about the Pallas Athena connection unless he was in on the plot? Gabriel Harvey, a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, in an address to the queen during one of her visits to the university, paid tribute to Oxford as a prolific poet, and one whose “countenance shakes spears.”10 Why the strange reference to the Shakespeare-Pallas Athena sobriquet once again?
      Why was the Bard so inspired by Pallas Athena that he chose to adopt her nickname? From whence did this influence arise? It is known that, while studying law at Gray’s Inn, the young Francis Bacon formed there a secret literary society called “The Honourable Order of the Knights of the Helmet”. The “Helmet of the Order” was of course the helmet of Pallas Athena, the helmet that occulted her and rendered her invisible. She was Francis Bacon’s patron goddess since his early experience with the French Academie on the Continent whose patron was Pallas Minerva, the same goddess under her Roman designation. The candidate for initiation within the order swore allegiance to Pallas Athena and to uphold her ideals, banishing the serpent of ignorance to the remotest corners of the civilized world in order to spawn an age of enlightenment and a literary renaissance capable of enlightening the world. The initiate would then kiss the helmet, after which it was placed on his head. Just as the Helmet of Pallas was said to make the wearer invisible, so the initiate would become an invisible of Bacon’s invisible college or mystery school and secret literary society. In his right hand simultaneously was placed the spear of Pallas, which he was sworn to shake with valor at all the serpents of ignorance and vice to be found in the world.11 The author of the Shakespeare plays, who the author of this paper believes was Edward de Vere, would have worn the helmet of one of Bacon’s ‘invisibles’ within the Order and would have been sworn to write in secrecy. Given the political import of many of the plays including, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth, the author would have been forced to write under a pen name and to conceal his authorship. The Shakespeare Sonnets would also have to have been written under a pseudonym since they contained the story of the author’s invisible or secret life. 
The visor of invisibility Pallas Athena drew down over her helmet to render herself invisible makes sense of an otherwise obscure scene from Act V, scene I of Henry the Fourth, Part Two, in which Davy speaks of one William Visor to his master Justice Shallow, a name of obvious allegorical import, “I beseech you, sir, to countenance William Visor of Woncot…” (Henry IV, Part II in Shakespeare’s Complete Works, Collins Classics, V.I, ll.38, 39) To this entreaty, Shallow replies, “There is many complaints, Davy, against that Visor. That Visor is an arrant knave, on my knowledge.” (V.I.ll.40-42) “Woncot” is a probable allusion to Wincot. Wincot is where Will Shakspere’s uncle and aunt lived and is clearly a name of Warwickshire designation. The gratuitous exchange has no relevance to the play and makes no sense at all unless it is to point to Will Shakspere of Stratford as the “visor” of Pallas Athena’s helmet behind which the true author of the plays may remain obscured.12 In other words, Will Shakspere from Stratford is the front man behind which the true author, Edward de Vere, can conceal his identity as the bard out of political and social necessity. To substantiate the point, the Earl of Oxford’s wife died in 1612. In her will, she stipulated that a certain sum be laid aside as a provision “to my dombe man.” Was this the continuance of an allowance to be paid to the Stratford man, Will Shakesper, to continue in his capacity as the front man?13 He certainly was mute in terms of composition and functioned as a kind of “dummy” of the real bard, a mere stand-in or double.
Alfred Dodd believes that Bacon wrote under many masks including, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Watson, Robert Greene, and John Lyly. In fact, amazingly, if it can be believed, Dodd claims that even Edmund Spenser was a mask employed by Bacon to conceal his authorship. According to Dodd, it was in July 1580 that a clerk, who worked for the Earl of Leicester, named Edmund Spenser, left to take up a job in Ireland. Before he left, Francis paid him for the use of his name in the publication of certain writings.14 According to Dodd, John Lyly is just one of the masks under which Francis Bacon wrote secretly. Using the initials I.L., since the author of John Lyly’s work often signed himself Ihon Lillie, the author wrote a commemorative poem about Edward de Vere. It must be remembered that it was common practice in the age of Elizabeth for authors to suppress their names and substitute initials or a pen name.15 This probably resulted from the fact that Elizabeth had enforced such strict censorship laws and mete out such severe penalties on violators. The author of the poem here in question attributes the valor Edward de Vere exhibited in the naval battle against the Spanish Armada to the inspiration provided by his patron goddess, Pallas, whom he refers to by name:
 
                                           
De Vere, whose fame and loyalty hath pierced
                                            The Tuscan clime, and through the Belgike lands
                                            By winged Fame for valour is rehearsed,
                                            Like warlike Mars upon the hatches stands,
                                            His tusked Boar ’gan foam for inward ire,
                                            While Pallas filled his breast with warlike fire.16
       
It seems rather odd that Pallas Athena, patron goddess of the Greek theater in Athens and goddess of wisdom sprung from the brow of Zeus, should be placed on board Edward de Vere’s ship at the time of battle. One could imagine the goddess of war or some other goddess being at his beck. Why of all goddesses it should be the goddess of the Greek theater inspiring him in time of battle is extremely odd, unless of course Lyly, or Bacon, if indeed Lyly was a Baconian mask, knew Pallas was de Vere’s patron goddess. If de Vere’s patron goddess was Pallas Athena, then it would not be surprising for him to borrow her attributes, since it was custom for noblemen to employ pen names to conceal their authorship at this time anyway. It must be remembered that the nobility seldom attached their names to works of poetry and especially dramatic works, as it was considered beneath their dignity to publish lines of verse or plays. 
     Why would Edward de Vere employ a pen name? Recourse to pen names and anonymous authorship by men of noble rank is not unique to Elizabethan England. Precisely the same practice was employed by the nobility in diverse cultural milieu. In Korea, for example, two classical operatic works were composed anonymously by persons of the noble class, Shimjong Jeon and Chung-hyang Jeon, and for precisely the same reasons. Gentleman of rank in the Choson Dynasty were forbidden to attach their names to dramatic works and works of poetry. It will come as no surprise then that the same practice was adhered to in another feudal society halfway around the world at the time of Queen Elizabeth. Any nobleman writing poetry for publication or dramatic works for the theater would have lost caste immediately.
     The threat of losing caste was so real for the author of the Shakespeare plays that it is even alluded to in a poem by John Davies, a contemporary, appearing in the Stationer’s register of 1610. What becomes abundantly clear is that the entire poem is written in the past tense, which suggests that its import is addressed to a poet already dead. Edward de Vere was of course already dead in 1610. He is known to have died in 1604 in fact. Will Shakspere of Stratford, however, would not be referred to in the past tense in 1610, as he still had six more years of life to live. The other thing to notice about the Davies’ poem is the fact that the Will. Shakespeare referred to is most definitely of the noble class, which the Stratford man was most definitely not, and has lost his noble rank as a consequence of his having performed in his own plays, a definite no-no for a nobleman:
                                       To our English Terence, Master Will. Shake-speare.
                                       Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,
                                       Hadst thou not played some Kingly parts in sport,
                                       Thou hadst been a companion for a King;
                                       And been a King among the meaner sort.
                                       Some others rail; but, rail as they think fit,
                                       Thou hast no railing, but, a reigning Wit:
                                       And honestly thou sowst, which they do reap;
                                       So, to increase their stock which they do keep.17
               
The import of the poem is that “Shake-speare”, the name once again appearing hyphenated, indicating it is pseudonymous, is a nobleman who lost rank by performing on the stage. So addicted was he to the stage that he would take to the stage secretly under his pen name, but was probably recognized by the Queen’s omniscient ‘Gestapo’ or secret service and reported. “Thou would have been a companion for a King,” is an allusion to his status as an earl. The title “count”, being equivalent to “earl” in the English caste system, is in fact designated as a “companion to the King” in terms of peerage. “And been a King among the meaner sort” refers to the fact that de Vere had played kingly parts for the theater, which would in fact be seen as “a meaner sort of King”, since the theater was considered low and common. There is in fact a well-known portrait of Edward de Vere extant showing him in costume as King Henry. The last two lines of the poem indicate that the bard labors without gain, since others profit from his work. The implication seems to be that certain individuals reap the benefits of his work and keep the profits for themselves. At the same time that a nobleman who has lost caste is implied, so an allusion is also made to the man from Stratford known as Will Shakspere. The clue for this occurs in the allusion to “our English Terence”. The English Terence refers to the Roman poet Terence, a slave who became a free man and a well-known poet. The man summoned from Stratford to act as the front man and to double as the bard, in order that the true author could conceal his authorship of the plays is here implied.18
     To corroborate the above account, where a tribute is given to an author already dead, when the man from Stratford is still living, we have the first edition of the sonnets published in 1609 under the title, Shake-speares Sonnets. Once more the name appears hyphenated implying a pen name, but there is something else this time. This kind of locution is usually reserved for one who is already dead. The byline should read, “By William Shake-speare” for a living author. Then, there is the text of the dedication, which refers to “our ever-living poet.” Implying once again that the author is no longer living. “Ever-living” is used in memorials to signal the fact that someone dead lives on in the memory of the living.19
     Is the Elizabethan social ethos and the question of caste the only issue? Are there other reasons for adopting a pen name? The author of this paper would like to suggest that there is. Edward de Vere would have a rather good reason for adopting a code name were he a spy or agent of the British Crown. And the evidence strongly supports the fact that he was. The most convincing piece of evidence for his status as a secret agent can be found in a Privy Seal Warrant issued by the Queen on June 26, 1586. The warrant calls for a grant to be issued to the Earl to the tune of 1,000 pounds a year, a sizeable sum equivalent in today’s terms to three times the Prime Minister’s salary. The reason for the grant is not given, but what is abundantly clear is that the Queen issues instructions at the end of the letter that no accounting for the expenditure is required by the Exchequer, standard practice in the case of secret service money:
 
                                           
Elizabeth, etc., to the Treasurer and Chamberlains
                                            of our Exchequer, Greeting. We will and command
                                            you of Our treasure being and remaining from time
                                            to time within the receipt of Our exchequer, to
                                            deliver and pay, or cause to be delivered and paid,
                                            unto Our right trusty and well beloved Cousin the
                                            Earl of Oxford or to his assigns sufficiently
                                            Authorized by him, the sum of One Thousand
                                            Pounds good and lawful money of England. The
                                            same to be yearly delivered and paid unto Our
                                            said Cousin at four times of the year by even
                                            portions: and so to be continued unto him during
                                            Our pleasure, or until such time as he shall be by
                                            Us otherwise provided for to be in some manner
                                            relieved; at what time Our pleasure is that this  
                                            payment of One Thousand Pounds yearly to our
                                            said Cousin in manner above specified shall cease.
                                            And for the same or any part thereof, Our further
                                            will and commandment is that neither the said Earl
                                            nor his assigns nor his or their executors nor any
                                            of them shall by way of account, imprest, or any
                                            other way whatsoever be charged towards Us,
                                            our heirs or successors. And these shall be your
                                            sufficient warrant and discharge in that behalf.20

What the last two sentences mean is that no accounting of expenditures implied by the grant are to be required by the Exchequer, which is tantamount to saying that the transaction is secret and classified. The scholar B.M. Ward claims that this is the usual formula followed in the case of secret service money. The Earl had no known office other than his place on the Privy Council, so there is no good reason for the payment in terms of official function or capacity. There is no evidence of any official assignment calling for such an annuity. The Earl never left the country following the issuing of the grant which he received beginning in 1586 when he was 36 until the time of his death in 1604 at the age of 54.21
For so large an amount to be paid out of the secret service fund, it had to have been used for purposes of state, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn arguing that it was used for England’s first Ministry of Propaganda. The purpose of the propaganda ministry would be to educate the English people, most of whom could not read, through a medium of education analogous to today’s Hollywood, opening their eyes to the world around them, while acquainting them with a revisionist history that would have them bursting with pride. And while the state was busily taking charge of the theater for purposes of state propaganda, it was simultaneously clamping down on the printing presses, the Queen authorizing Archbishop Whitgit and the Privy Council to draft legislation to strictly regulate them. A Star Chamber decree was duly authorized on June 23, 1586 calling for stricter governance over the printing press, with a list of pains and penalties for violations of the censorship laws. No publication could be released without first receiving approval from the Archbishop of London. The success of the Queen’s Propaganda Ministry cannot be underestimated for its power to instruct the uneducated masses on their history, enlightening them on their place, and furnishing them with so thorough a knowledge of rewards and punishments they would have known what would invite praise and censure. A more vivid description of the state propaganda apparatus the theater guilds served could not be found than Thomas Heywood’s aptly named Apology for Actors, which is none other than an apology for the theater arts being held subordinate to the state to which the performers themselves had been held ransom:

                          
           Plays have made the ignorant more apprehensive,
                                     taught the unlearned the knowledge of many
                                     famous histories, instructed such as cannot read
                                     in the discovery of all our English chronicles;
                                     and what men have you now of that weak
                                     capacity that cannot discourse of any notable
                                     thing recorded even from William the Conqueror,
                                     nay from the landing of Brute, until this day?
                                     Being possessed of their use, for or because
                                     plays are writ with this aim, and carried with
                                     this method, to teach their subjects obedience to
                                     their king, to show people the untimely ends of
                                     such as have moved tumults, commotions, and
                                     insurrections, to present them with the
                                     flourishing estate of such as live in obedience, 
                                     exhorting them to allegiance, dehorting them
                                     from all traitorous and felonious stratagems.22
              
Is it mere coincidence that history plays remained in vogue from 1586 until the conclusion of the Anglo-Spanish war? Chronicle plays were very popular, the pseudonymous author Shakespeare, Marlowe, and others writing several, many of which were original, but some of which Oxford apparently permitted his apprentices to revise and reshape. At the cessation of the war, the demand for such plays from the state and the appetite for them from a people weary of war dried up. Considering how scarce money was at the time, and how careful the Queen had to be with funds in providing for the war effort, it is clear that, if not the Queen, the state apparatus, had to be sufficiently pleased with the propaganda produced for the Elizabethan stage to maintain Lord Oxford’s annuity until the time of his death.
Why would the Earl receive such an annuity? If he is not being paid for his official duties, what is the reason for so exorbitant a salary? Is he being paid for covert operations of some kind? Once again, the evidence would support such a hypothesis. Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson both faced prosecution for libelous and blasphemous allusions made in their plays, great risks for commoners to take without protection from higher personages, institutions or organizations. In May 1593, the Star Chamber prosecuted Christopher Marlowe for “lewd libels” and “blasphemes”. Certain papers of Thomas Kyd were found keeping company with Marlowe’s manuscripts. Testifying under duress on the rack, Kyd protested that, “My first acquaintance with this Marlowe rose upon his bearing name to serve my Lord, although his Lordship never knew his service, but in writing for his players.” It is one of the most tantalizing mysteries in the Marlovian biography question that Kyd omits to identify the mysterious lord of whose household he had been a member for nearly six years. Six years places Kyd in the services of the mysterious lord back to the end of 1587, from his time of arrest in 1593. The Spanish Tragedy attributed to Kyd on the strength of a single reference is assigned by scholar Edmund Gosse to the period 1584 to 1586. Researcher E. T. Clark believes that the mysterious lord under whose supervision Kyd worked for six years, and for whose players Marlowe wrote, was none other than Lord Oxford. It is more likely to have been Sir Francis Bacon, since the author of this paper believes that both Kyd and Oxford were working under Bacon as ‘invisibles’ in his secret literary societies, which in essence were employed as compartments within the state propaganda apparatus. The period of Kyd’s employment nevertheless coincides with the period in which Oxford’s annuity of 1,000 pounds commences.23 It also happens to coincide with King Philip II of Spain’s rage over the manner in which he was portrayed on the Elizabethan stage. The Venetian ambassador of Spain even reported on King Philip’s complaints concerning the Elizabethan stage to the Signory:

                                                But what has enraged him much more than
                                                all else, and has caused him to show a
                                                resentment such as he has never displayed
                                                in all his life, is the account of the
                                                masquerades an comedies which the Queen
                                                of England orders to be acted at his expense.24

What King Philip’s complaint, as related by the Spanish ambassador, makes explicit is the fact that the plays had some effect in rousing a reaction from the foreign courts. It is at this time that we begin to hear about the so-called “university wits”. Researcher E. T. Clark believes that Oxford’s apprentices turned out dozens of plays under his supervision, including chronicle plays, revenge plays, Senecan plays, most of them conceived to sustain the people’s morale during wartime. Since his early twenties, Oxford had served as a patron for other writers, so it was easy for him to slip into his new role as the master of young propaganda initiates.25 Clark maintains that Oxford turned to recent graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, and even to those at the point of graduating, who showed promise as writers, to assist in the task of writing state propaganda for the stage. Clark also contends that it was Oxford who discovered Marlowe’s dramatic gifts, encouraging him to write Tamburlaine to portray as a ruthless conqueror the personage of King Philip.27
According to the great Baconian scholar, Alfred Dodd, in 1579 and by 1580, Sir Francis Bacon had founded the secret literary societies Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Knights of the Helmet, the latter named in honor of his patron goddess Pallas Athena who always whore the ‘helmet of invisibility’. This was all part of Bacon’s effort to achieve “The Universal Reformation” or English Renaissance in literature. Fra Rosi Cross and The Honourable Knights of the Helmet were invisible colleges or mystery schools, whose initiates wore Pallas Athena’s helmet of invisibility and were known as ‘invisibles’. The founding of these societies began at Gray’s Inn law school, the Grand Patriarchs of the orders being Bacon’s personal friends such as Gabriel Harvey, his old literary professor, and Fulke Greville, a well-known poet. Bacon’s cousin, Sir Philip Sydney, and Sydney’s sister, Lady Mary, Countess of Pembroke, would also be on the planning committee. And according to Alfred Dodd, “He would have the warm support of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, also a poet.”28 Was Oxford a poet or a concealed poet, one of the invisibles? Dodd has provided strong evidence that Oxford and Bacon were associates and that he was even in on the planning of these invisible literary societies? Was he also a member? It is very likely. He was referred to as a poet and playwright and yet he stopped writing poetry at least under his own name at a very young age, while strangely none of his plays survive under his own name. 
Kid, Jonson, Marlowe, Lord Oxford as Shakespeare and others were working together as a syndicate of writers under the patronage of Sir Francis Bacon, whose source of funding came from the Queen, which is one explanation for the great flowering that occurred in Elizabethan drama and the unity of style found among the major playwrights of the time. Similarities found between the Shakespearean and Marlovian works, which have hitherto been explained away by charges of plagiarism and even the speculation that Marlowe was covertly writing the Shakespeare plays following a staged death in a tavern brawl, can now find a more logical explanation. What is more likely is that the similarities in styles found among the playwrights resulted from them working closely together as part of the same secret literary society and propaganda ministry, writing and sometimes sharing plays to meet deadlines assigned to them either by Bacon’s propaganda ministry or the Court. Similarities found between Shakespeare’s early historical dramas and Marlowe’s Edward the Second, published in 1594 as Marlowe’s, which orthodoxy acknowledges as proof of the greater author’s debt to the lesser, can instead be explained by the reverse scenario, in which Marlowe, as a initiated member of Fra Rosi Cross, is apprenticing under de Vere, the author known to posterity as William Shakespeare. What is more likely than Shakespeare being the plagiarist of the inferior dramatist’s work is that de Vere turned one of his own early plays over in draft form to his apprentice Marlowe to complete, perhaps in order to meet some pressing deadline assigned by their patron Sir Francis Bacon or the court.