
Amongst the most recent candidates for “Shakespeare Authorship” has emerged another conjectural theory that Giovanni Florio (John Florio) was the final editor and collator of “Shakespeare’s First Folio” published in 1623. Moreover there are some scholars who go further and suggest that John Florio was in fact the pseudonymous “William Shakespeare”. An expert linguist he translated the “De Cameron” from the original Italian and “Montaigne’s Essays” from the French. His grandparents were of Jewish descent and it is feasible that he was familiar with the Judaic tongue as well as a reader and translator of Greek and Latin. Among this Stratfordian group of revelatory authors and scholars are Saul Frampton, emeritus professor of Cambridge University on whose premise the Guardian Newspaper has led a series of weekly, but controversial articles since 2013 highlighting Florio’s linguistic and stylistic contribution to the 1623 Folio and the dedicatory epistle of “Shakespeare’s Sonnets”. However, these Stratfordian academics are still holding on to the spurious view that the Earl of Southampton would have been “rubbing shoulders” with a commoner, Will Shakspere and being advised on winning the heart of her majesty Queen Elizabeth, 40 years his senior? They also hold on to the orthodox arcane theory that a Stratford born man named William Shakspere was the author and playwright responsible for 7 volumes of poetry and a catalogue of 36 Elizabethan plays. Furthermore, in order to support this theory they cite the banned publication of unknown authorship entitled; “Willobie His Avisa” (1594) which is composed of hundreds of six-line stanzas recording the affairs of five suitors to a certain ‘Lady Avisa’ who inevitably rejects them all. This was assumed to be around the same time that Elizabeth was promoting herself as the “Virgin Queen” and chaste goddess “Gloriana”. It is presumed by several of these scholars that the ‘Lady Avisa’ is a euphemism for Queen Elizabeth 1st and that the five potential suitors were Sir Thomas Seymour, King Phillip 2nd of Spain, the Duke of Alençon, Sir Christopher Hatton and the 21-year old Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Professor G.P.V. Akrigg had already mentioned that whenever the “Lady” had occasion to sign-off her ripostes in this anonymous book she employed the phrase; “Always the Same, Avisa” which echoes Elizabeth’s heraldic family motto “Semper Eadem”. Now, this could very easily be a literary ‘red herring’ directing the reader to uncover or decipher what the author has written in an ambiguous manner. The Queen was being investigated and harassed by papal insurgents and Jesuit propagandists to uncover and determine her secret indiscretions (See “Shakespeare’s She-Wolves”). The same could be said of the controversial “Upstart Crow” letter supposedly written by Henry Chettle which is acknowledged as another ambiguous and misleading piece of evidence with more than one possible outcome. Perhaps it was a way to bring to the attention of the theatre-going public that “Shakespeare’s” name was finally being acknowledged in the limelight of authorial controversy after so many “lost years” in total obscurity. In the process of identifying the actual characters involved in this ‘ménage a trois’ obliquely referred to in “Shakespeare’s Sonnets”, (See “The Dark Lady & the Rival Poet” or “The Fair Youth of Shakespeare’s Sonnets”) it seems that the esteemed authors of this theory have surmised that it consisted of Queen Elizabeth, William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon, and another rival poet! As far as I am aware no scholar has been successful as yet in identifying who that un-named poet was, but possible candidates are Samuel Daniel (Florio’s brother-in-law), Sir Phillip Sidney or Michael Drayton. Other potential candidates have been suggested namely Gabriel Harvey or Christopher Marlowe although speculations generally run riot in these matters amongst the “literati”. In most of these articles several other suppositions emerge which are extremely vague and contradictory to the layman let alone other more experienced Shakespearean academics and scholars. They suggest for example that “Shakespeare” frequented the brothels of Southwark with his noble and illustrious patron Henry Wriothesley (H.W.) or the financier of the 1623 Folio William Herbert (W.H.), Earl of Pembroke and as a result of their careless proclivities they both sustained a dose of syphilis? Even E.K. Chambers on his analysis of the Sonnets has suggested that around 1594 “Shakespeare” had an ‘unsuccessful love affair’ but refrains from mentioning or identifying with whom. Writing in “Shakespeare’s England” (Oxford University Press, 1917) with regard to whether William Shakspere of Stratford as an eleven-year old boy had actually been present at a pageant hosted by Sir Robert Dudley in 1575 at Kenilworth on the subject of courtly life during Elizabeth’s reign he maintains:
“It is a beloved and baseless fancy of Shakespeare’s more sentimental biographers that he (Shakespeare) gazed upon the spectacle as a boy.”
Similarly, the flimsy supposition that he was scouring the red light district of Clerkenwell alongside Lucy Negro apparently a year after the elimination of the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe in a tavern brawl by Ingram Frazier is equally ‘fanciful’ (See “Who Killed Christopher Marlowe?”). It is scrupulously recorded that for a large part of his early adult life there appears to be no evidence of his whereabouts or circumstances either in Stratford or London from 1582-1592. For example Anthony Holden in his seminal “William Shakespeare” (pub: Little, Brown & Company 1999) has defined them as being from the age of 21 (1585 that being 3 years after his marriage to Anne Hathawaye) until the age of 28 (1592) when his name is first mentioned in the London theatres. Other Shakespearean scholars insist that it dates from the day he was born 1564 up to 1592. Anthony Holden then concedes that the so-called “Lost Years Theory” could in fact have been from the year he left school (in 1579, if he ever attended because of the absence of school records in Stratford) until he is actually recorded working in the London theatres in 1592. This was the same year that Sir Walter Raleigh was released from the Tower and when the Spanish treasure ship, Madre de Deus had been captured and boarded near the Azores by the Earl of Cumberland. On its return course its contents were inadvertently raided by members of the crew. Even when the ship docked in Dartmouth the pillaging continued so that Raleigh had to intervene personally to punish the miscreants and prevent further losses. Of the estimated £500,000 of precious jewels, gems, and precious metals, spices and so forth only £120,000 worth remained to adorn the Queen’s treasury and to this day the Azores Diamond has never been recovered. Christopher Marlowe’s secret mission, endorsed and paid for by Lord Burghley, when travelling to the Netherlands as an agent was to recover that missing treasure as well of course to secretly bankrupt the Spanish economy with counterfeit currency. Born in the same year as William Shakspere (1564) Marlowe failed to accomplish both these missions and brought disrepute to the Privy Council which might account for his sudden and puzzling death at the young age of 29.

But it seems that just prior to 1593 “Shake-speare” himself had been severely admonished by the playwright Robert Greene as “An Upstart Crow” since Greene’s “Groatsworth of Wit” had been published in September 1592 by Henry Chettle. By the 8th of December in that year Henry Chettle registered his own “Kind Harts Dreame” as a form of apology to “Shakespeare” and presumably two other poet/playwrights assumed to be Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson although they were not actually named. Also in April 1593 “Shake-speare” had apparently published “Venus & Adonis” again dedicated to the 3rd Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley. The poem was based on Ovid’s account in his own “Metamorphoses”(an English translation published by the Earl of Oxford’s uncle, Arthur Golding) of Aphrodite’s passion and admiration of the youth born of an incestuous liaison between Kinyras and his daughter, Myrrha. Aphrodite’s lust for the youth was so great that she hid him in a chest which she entrusted to Persephone in the Underworld but as things turned out Queen Persephone also became enamoured of the handsome youth so that both Aphrodite and Persephone brought their disputation to Olympian Zeus. The narrative oddly enough parallels the circumstances where a youth is born of an incestuous relationship and is then passed off as a child to another more sinister relation, the mentally enfeebled Earl of Southampton (died when Henry was 8 years old) and his wife, Mary the Countess of Southampton (née Browne, a maid of honour to the Queen) to conceal his secret bloodline to the Earl of Oxford. Henry Wriothesley followed an almost identical path to his estranged father Edward de Vere, first being in the care of Howard of Effingham who passed him onto William Cecil, Lord Burghley before being presented at court by the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux. In 1572 the second Earl of Southampton had been arrested and sent to the Tower for his involvement in the Duke of Norfolk’s treasonous intentions to marry “Mary, Queen of Scots”, it was probably as a result to agreeing to bring up as a ward the baby born of secret wedlock of Elizabeth Tudor and Edward de Vere that he was freed a year later.
Nevertheless, at that particular period William’s father John Shakspere had lost his position as Alderman and was still being pursued and sued for numerous unpaid debts he had accrued in Stratford and by 1592 he was left with just one property at Henley Street. He was also listed as a recusant because he was afraid of being served a warrant of arrest for debts when appearing at church. Much later a Jesuit treatise entitled “A Spiritual Testament” was discovered in the eaves of his house in 1757 by workmen which confirmed his religious affiliations to Catholicism and that he was in no way a supporter of Protestantism or the Lancastrian cause. Therefore, William Shakspere’s numerous travels between London and Stratford were intended to alleviate his father’s financial misfortunes not necessarily in order to see his wife and family. Then by 1594, the date connected to the Shakespeare play “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and also in 1595 the city of Stratford was ravaged by two fires, the townsfolk were devastated and Shakspere’s friend Richard Quiney travelled to London every year from 1597 through to 1601 to raise relief funds and obtain an exemption of tax while reparations were underway. Then in 1595 it is also alleged that he had joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and as early as March 1595 he is mentioned in the lists as receiving payment for his performance in the play “A Comedy of Errors”, first performed at Gray’s Inn. Within a couple of years he was able to place a deposit of £60 for the mortgage of New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. The vital question remains how did he manage to finance the publication of his first two volumes poetry, namely “Venus & Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”? (See “The Shadowy Figure of Shakespeare”)

Another misleading suggestion made in the Guardian articles is that Queen Elizabeth was somehow infatuated by Sir Thomas Seymour where the author neglects to mention that as Lord Admiral Seymour was seeking preferment by marrying the dowager Katherine Parr who died shortly after childbirth leaving him free to wed Elizabeth. She was, in the advent of Mary’s death, the next in line for succession during Mary’s short and bloody reign. In any case it is recorded by her governess, Kat Ashley that Seymour attempted a sexual assault on the 14-year old Elizabeth which Katherine was either oblivious to or indifferent. Judging by the numerous reports of his nefarious predatory activities it may have been that as a 14-year old girl Elizabeth was impressionable and did not realise that Seymour was in effect sexually grooming her purely for personal gain. However, he was also planning or attempting to abduct the young Prince Edward but he was detected, arrested, tried, then found guilty of 33 charges of treason and executed for his despicable and treacherous plot to upgrade his status and seize the throne of England. The Guardian articles somehow fail to mention these contextual background facts, preferring instead to emphasise Elizabeth’s infatuation with Seymour? The deliberate omission of a crucial piece of corroborative evidence is nevertheless an attempt to obliterate the real truth and strengthen a falsehood. His brother Edward Seymour, as Lord Protector had also been a rising star at court but he too was arrested, taken to the Tower and summarily executed. It was later rumoured that Seymour had indeed made Elizabeth pregnant but that with the aid of a country midwife she had aborted the child. Despite these conjectures or rumours, “phantom pregnancies” would haunt Elizabeth during her long reign of 44 years since it is alleged by alternative biographers that she was made pregnant by Sir Robert Dudley, the Earl of Oxford and Sir Walter Raleigh during her ignominious reign. The children they sired would have been made wards of court to other aristocratic families but it is assumed they were Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Wriothesley and Sir William Hastings respectively. It is also alleged that Elizabeth had indeed secretly married Robert Dudley in a private ceremony with witnesses but the event was never recorded and even now it is generally assumed by orthodox biographers that Elizabeth 1st never married or gave birth to any child. This did not stop conventional historians from concocting a mythical or legendary biography of Queen Elizabeth 1st.

The Oxfordian academic Charlton Ogburn in his book “The Mystery of William Shakespeare” suggests that ‘Avisa’ is either Anne Vavasour who was imprisoned in the Tower of London with the Earl of Oxford after their clandestine affair from which an illegitimate child was born named Edward or possibly a secret love affair between Queen Elizabeth and Edward de Vere. In his book Charlton Ogburn writes:
“If, however, H.W. in his ardour for Elizabeth is primarily Essex, I share the suspicion of others, acknowledged by Ms Stopes, that the triangle of W.S., H.W., and Avisa owes something to the triangle in the Sonnets, as the author construed it; indeed, in the context of the triangle, Avisa as combining Elizabeth and Anne Vavasour would work out quite well. We must not forget that this succéss de scandale may be no more than merest guesswork based on rumour and spiced with malicious fancy. If it be no more than that, it still tells us what kind of purported disclosures about Elizabeth and her suitors and courtiers found an avid and continuing market.”
However scandalous this appears to us in the 21st century imagine how scandalous it would be to discover that Henry Wriothesley (Shakespeare‘s patron) was in fact the product of a sub-rosa love affair between Queen Elizabeth 1st and the Earl of Oxford. Henry Wriothesley refused the marriage proposed by William Cecil to the Earl of Oxford’s daughter Elizabeth de Vere and was obliged to pay a fine of £4,000 to offset his decision possibly on the grounds of the potentiality of incest since Elizabeth would have been his step-sister by blood. Imagine indeed how crucial it would have been to conceal these facts from those enemies of Elizabeth, the Catholic insurgents and Jesuit priests who were planning her downfall or assassination (See “Shakespeare’s She-Wolves”). Taking into consideration that Oxford’s daughter Susan de Vere married Sir William Herbert and her sister Bridget although betrothed to Phillip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery instead married Francis Norris in 1599, both of whom were the dedicatees of “William Shakespeare’s Folio” it is fairly easy to join the dots or affix the missing pieces in this particular historical jig-saw puzzle. Elizabeth de Vere (originally betrothed to Henry Wriothesley) went on to marry the Earl of Derby (proposed as an alternative author of William Shakespeare’s Folio). Remaining anonymous and ostensibly untouchable as an author was critical in protecting those who were, by blood if not anything else, connected by birth to this and other notable scandals. Therefore initiating the greatest literary fraud in human history, at least for the majority of foreign tourists visiting Stratford-upon-Avon, and to the Royal Shakespeare Company was necessitated in order not only to protect the nobility and the monarch herself but those quite innocent in the tyrannical and notorious affairs of aristocrats. I suspect ‘great lies are born of great men eager to retain their spotless reputations’ in the light of their historical treachery and duplicity. (See “Shakespeare’s Secret Alchemy” or the “Hidden Symbolism of Shakespeare’s Publications” or the “Denouement of the Gunpowder Treason”)

What the authors of this hypothesis rely on is a literal reading of the words ‘dark’ or ‘black’ suggesting to a modern audience that the “Lady” was black or dark in her complexion or ‘her eyes’. Therefore the finger of suspicion would point literally at one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting Lucy Morgan (aka: Lucy Negro according to Leslie Hotson), who was also a brothel-keeper in Clerkenwell. But from what I personally understand from my own reading of colour symbolism in the late 15th – 16th century the terms were employed by “Shakespeare” metaphorically meaning perhaps inclined to evil deeds, promiscuous, sly, melancholic or dangerous. Aside from the Sonnets the exact term is used in a variety of ways in the poems Venus & Adonis, the Phoenix & the Turtle, the Passionate Pilgrim, and the “Rape of Lucrece”. True enough they were not employed in “A Lover’s Complaint” which might suggest a bias or lack of impartiality by the author, Florio. But I have always suspected that this particular poem was too romantically ‘florid’ to be representative of “Shakespeare’s Poetry”. However, the references to “black” or “dark” may have been purely symbolic, frequent use in the Sonnets are to the colours red, white and black although they were employed metaphorically and thematically not literally. In Sonnet #127 he writes:
In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;
But now is black beauty’s successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,

While judging from the portraits available to the public Queen Elizabeth’s eyes were distinctly brown, Elizabeth Vernon’s, Emila Lanier’s and Anne Vavasour’s eyes were famously very large and black and the well-known lines of Sonnet #130 describe her as follows:
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;
According to the Oxford dictionary ‘dun’ is a greyish brown colour generally given to describe horses not specifically human beings. And further use of the term and something of a definition of the term ‘black’ in the following Sonnet #131:
Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place.
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,
And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds.
The use of the word black in this instance has some moral undertones especially in the second line. John Florio was born in 1545 in London the son of an Italian refugee from Sienna but, like the poet John Lyly (the Earl of Oxford’s secretary and author of “Euphues, His England”), he was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford and was briefly in the service of the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley before entering the household as a tutor of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton in the early 1590’s. According to Stratfordian theorists it was there that he might have met the bucolic actor/stagehand, “William Shakespeare” since the character of Holofernes from “Love’s Labours Lost” tends to resemble him. While Rowe suggests that the character of Don Armado may have been modelled on John Florio. Many historical, well-informed commentators have suggested that Florio was the source for so much of the Italian in Shakespeare’s plays since the apparently “Stratford Born Man” never left the country while so many of his plays had a distinctly “well-travelled” feel about them (See “A Stratford Homunculus Forged & Distilled from Italian Comedy”). Oxfordian academics have since considered and accepted that Shakespeare must have been an aristocrat writing more in the vein of Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford), Sir John Davies or possibly Sir Francis Bacon (Baron Verulam). However, John Florio also worked as a lexicographer and translator, in 1598 he published an Italian dictionary “A World of Words” and five years later a translation of Michel de Montaigne’s essays some of which, because of their aphoristic style, found their way into “Shakespeare’s” “The Tempest”, into “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” and “The Tragedy of King Lear”. His wife was the sister to Samuel Daniel and he was reader in Italian to Queen Anne and a Groom of the Privy Council from 1604 as well as tutor to Prince Henry. He died of the plague in Fulham in 1625. During the reign of James 1st he was knighted for his service to the realm and to literary excellence.

The other theoretical assertion from this branch of “Florian Academes” is that Florio wrote an addition to the Sonnets entitled “A Lover’s Complaint” in an attempt to condemn “Shakespeare’s” abominable treatment of certain women, among them his loyal and chaste wife Avis Daniel (hence ‘Willobie his Avisa’). Again, the theory or notion that the bucolic, illiterate farmer’s son William Shakspere was rubbing shoulders or being ‘familiar’ with none other than the wife of the Earl of Southampton’s secretary, John Florio is equally absurd if not laughable. Perhaps in this age of “Conspiracy Theories” it fills the vacuum of doubt created centuries earlier by the Masonic Societies who were obliged to obscure certain truths from the general public including the authorship of the literary works by “William Shakespeare”. It is generally accepted though that when William Shakspere had occasion or opportunity to commit adultery it was with Jeanette Davenant in Oxford, one of his favourite stopping-off points when journeying between Stratford and London (See “The Shadowy Figure of Shakespeare”).
The lexicographer, poet and astrologer John Florio was no stranger to the Earl of Oxford since his illegitimate son, Henry Wriothesley employed Florio as his secretary. Like the Phaeton of mythology, as a youth Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, appeared to have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth – he was wealthy, of high aristocratic status, with many friends as well as enemies of course (eg: Sir Henry Howard and Gabriel Harvey). He was physically attractive, of an athletic stature, with long-held talents as a poet, writer, dramatist and musician. During the entirety of his life he had over 30 books dedicated to him, some of which were direct sources for “William Shakespeare’s” plays and poetry. Commendations of his eloquence and poetic skills were frequent at the height of his anonymous and secret career but equally his critics were also at his heels. However, in many ways the ensuing circumstances of his life parallels Phaeton’s dramatic fall, and Oxford himself appears to accord to those similarities, signing off a sonnet in 1591 ‘Phaeton to his friend Florio’. The Phaeton sonnet is the only dedicatory sonnet in John Florio‘s book entitled “Second Fruits” (1591). Minto suggested in 1874 that ‘Phaeton’ is another pseudonym for “Shakespeare”. This attribution cannot be easily dismissed, given the sonnet’s Shakespearean form, its imagery, language and metrics.
Phaeton to his friend Florio:
Sweet friend, whose name agrees with thy increase,
How fit a rival art thou of the Spring,
For when each branch hath left his flourishing,
And green-locked Summer’s shady pleasures cease,
She makes the winter’s storms repose in peace,
And spends her franchise on each living thing,
The daisies sprout, the little birds do sing,
Herbs, gums and plants do vaunt of their release;
So when that all our English wits lay dead
(Except the laurel, that is ever green),
Thou with thy Fruits our barrenness o’erspread,
And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen;
Such fruits, such flowerets of morality,
Were ne’er before brought out of Italy.
I had always suspected that someone in the theatrical milieu or someone acquainted with printing and publishing had been secretly commissioned to collate and edit the entire ‘Shakespeare Folio’. The history of its compositing, pagination, printing and publication was fraught with numerous errors and complications compared with other publications from the time. In which case then any idea that a ‘master-text’ would contain some secret anagrams or codes would be highly unlikely especially when the compositors and printers often made errors, revisions or changes. The text of stage scripts and quartos would in any case have been revised several times probably by the acting company so that alone would corrupt any secret anagram or code. I had always presumed that either Sir Francis Bacon or someone from the Pembroke circle would have naturally been involved in the collection of the quartos and the final editing. However, I also understood that Bacon was not on very good terms with the Earl of Oxford. I personally can accept that John Florio was involved in the editorial and publishing of the 1623 Folio and even possibly the “Sonnets Dedication” that was deciphered by Alexander Waugh in 2016 to reveal that the author was indeed Edward de Vere but I cannot accept that the pseudonymous author William Shakspere had any innate literary talent or education as a playwright and poet. (See “The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy”)