What would have been the motives for the Herbert Family to hide de Vere’s authorship of the works of Shakespeare?
In 1920 John Thomas Looney revealed the profound literary and personal enmity between Philip Sidney and Edward de Vere (Looney, ed. Warren, 122, 145, 180, 212–13, 242–52). Over the next century dozens of Oxfordian scholars further documented the breadth, depth and details of that conflict. This essay integrates that extensive scholarship and shows the Herbert family’s motives for continuing de Vere’s anonymity as Shakespeare after his death in 1604, while covering up and misattributing the authorship of the Shakespeare canon in their 1623 play collection known as the First Folio.
This article by Bruce Johnston was first published in The Oxfordian in 2019.
