More than 150 years of literary detective work point to a persistent question about William Shakespeare, a man with a grammar school education at best, writing the greatest works in the English language, Impressio.bg reported.
“You can be born with intelligence, but you cannot be born with a book education,” Mark Rylance, a Shakespearean actor and artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, told Impressio.bg.
At a conference held by the Shakespeare Authorship Trust in London, American writer Robin Williams pointed to Mary Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, as a logical suspect in the centuries-old authorship debate.
Sidney was the sister of Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney, a poet herself, and one of the most educated women in England alongside Queen Elizabeth I, according to Impressio.bg.
According to Ann Endrude, Sidney had the motive, means, and opportunity to write the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
At her home in Wiltshire, she established a literary circle dedicated to elevating English literature, backed by a massive library, language fluency, and literary connections.
Sidney turned her Wilton estate into a haven for poets known as the Wilton Circle, where she edited works including her brother’s “Arcadia,” published as “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia.”
She also translated the Psalms of the Geneva Bible and Philippe de Mornay’s “A Discourse of Life and Death,” along with Petrarch’s “The Triumph of Death.”
Her translation of the play “The Tragedy of Antonie” is considered by many literary scholars to be the basis for Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.”
The first eight plays of Shakespeare were published anonymously, and three featured title pages stating they were produced by the Pembroke’s Men acting troupe, which Sidney and her husband sponsored.
Williams said that Sidney had a young lover named Matthew Lister, which could explain why Shakespeare wrote love sonnets to a younger man.
Ben Jonson praised the “sweet Swan of Avon,” and Sidney not only owned an estate on the River Avon, but her personal symbol was also a swan.
She was the Countess of Pembroke, born on October 27, 1561, and died on September 25, 1621, in London, earning renown as an author, translator, and literary patron.
Her mother was a descendant of the Dudley family, and her uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, served as a close friend and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I.
Her firstborn son, William Herbert, and his brother Philip both served as patrons of the King’s Men, the acting company associated with Shakespeare.
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