Never trust a Cecil

William Cecil, Lord Burghley – called the “master strategist of the Elizabethan Age” – amassed staggering wealth and power through unflagging service to Queen Elizabeth. But beneath his polished image lay a more shadowy figure: a habitual redesigner of the truth, a propagandist who wrote under pseudonyms, a cunning spy master, a possessor of three grand houses who lamented his poverty.

Shakespeare knew personal details about both sides of Burghley intimately and had no fear of portraying him and his son Robert as duplicitous and untrustworthy.

How did Shakespeare gain such insider knowledge? And what does it reveal about the identity of the author of his works? In a compelling talk for the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable, Dorothea Dickerman uncovers Burghley’s double nature and his role in the Shakespeare Authorship Question.