From the archives of the 1988 Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter,* Volume 2 page 6, (page 23 of the combined pdf), we have a paper entitled The Dating of The Tempest and “Ostler v Hemings” by Judge Minos D. Miller, Jr., father of Bonner Miller Cutting. The article is in our online archives but it has an enormous number of typos. Bonner retyped it herself for this posting.
The last two paragraphs contain a fascinating fact not often referenced today.
As our archives state: It should be kept in mind that these articles are dated and recent discoveries and/or scholarship may call into question conclusions drawn therein.
* Historical note:
In the US, the Shakespeare Oxford Society was incorporated in 1957. In 2001 a second American Oxfordian organization formed and took the name The Shakespeare Fellowship. That name was chosen as a deliberate homage to the old Shakespeare Fellowship, one of the very first authorship-related groups.
The Dating of The Tempest and Ostler v. Heminges
Judge Minos D. Miller, Jr.
Getting back to the great debate before the US Supreme Court, I have absolute, untarnished faith in the validity of my worries. Surely enough, the worst fears were realized in the database when it appeared Professor Jaszi had not been sufficiently briefed by his advisors on the sources of The Tempest. In my wife’s edition of Shakespeare Identified, Vol 1, pp 435-466 on The Tempest, one will find historical citations for assigning an early date for its composition.
Stratfordians have long relied on a date of composition based upon an account by Sylvester Jourdain of a shipwreck at the island of Bermuda. Jourdain’s shipwreck occurred in 1609 and the account was published in 1610. The Jourdain account, according to Stratfordians, was the sole source available for Shakespeare to know of a shipwreck at Bermuda that supplied the reference in The Tempest to the “Bermoothes.” Since de Vere died in 1604, he could not have known of shipwrecks in Bermuda or anywhere else in 1609. Ergo, he was not Shakespeare the dramatist.
This Stratfordian misrepresentation is one of the most amazing revelations of sloppiness in academic research, one of many errors made by literary scholars who fail to explore historical sources.
By way of context, the island of Bermuda was discovered in 1500 and was correctly located on maps thereafter. Shipwrecks in the area of Bermuda were familiar hazards to English sailors by the mid-1500s. Well known to all except Stratfordian scholars was Sir Walter Raleigh’s account in 1591of the loss of The Revenge in a tempest in the bay of Mexico. As reported by Richard Hakluyt in The Principal Navigations Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, there were approximately 70 ships consumed and lost in the area. Bermuda is shown on the 1582 map by Michael Lok for Frobisher’s expeditions – voyages in which the 17th Earl of Oxford was heavily invested.
In the early 1580s, following the Third Frobisher expedition, de Vere purchased the ship the Edward Bonaventure. In 1588 when men and ships were commandeered for England’s defense against the Spanish Armada, it is known that de Vere outfitted and commanded his own ship against the Armada. Whether this Armada ship was the Edward Bonaventure is now unknown. The next we hear of the Bonaventure, she is one of three ships which met misfortune in a storm at — of all places – Bermuda. Two accounts of the Bermuda shipwreck of the Bonaventure were printed and reported by Hakluyt. Further research may someday reveal whether de Vere still owned or had a financial interest in this ship at the time of its Bermuda shipwreck. Meanwhile it is within the realm of rational belief that de Vere, at least, had a continuing interest in the common welfare of this ship.
It seems to me that the generations of scholars who have continued to make the factual error that Sylvester Jourdain supplied the “first account of a shipwreck at Bermuda” fly in the face of all that is expected of reliable scholarship.
Furthermore, a parallel reading of the lines of The Tempest with the Jourdain account can be compared with two additional accounts of shipwrecks. In 1591, Edmund Barker tells of the last days of the Edward Bonaventure and Henry May writes of the shipwreck on Bermuda, nullifying the Stratfordian position. When one compares the May report of the shipwreck with the Jourdain account, one sees that Shakespeare’s Tempest draws almost word for word on May. Now, why should Stratfordians flinch at this? From 1583 to 1593 – the “missing years” in the life of the Stratford man’s biography – Edward de Vere could be expected to follow his investments by reading reports of the Frobisher expeditions. Why won’t scholars admit that the May account of a Bermuda shipwreck, at the very least, could have been read by their “Shakespeare”? Is it because “scholars” prefer to insist that de Vere was dead before The Tempest was composed?
My second concern was whether Professor Jaszi knew of the case of Ostler v. Heminges. This case, filed in 1615 in the Court of the King’s Bench, Coram Rege Roll, holds the pleadings of Thomasine Ostler against her father John Heminges (KB 27/1454, rol 692, 13th year of King James). In this filing, Stratford’s Shakespeare was alleged to be dead. But, as we know, the man from Stratford was alive when the pleading was filed. In years past, both Charlton Ogburn and the Cyrs (as well as Samuel Schoenbaum) have refused to take a hard look at Oster v. Heminges which, I submit, blows the Stratford man completely out of the timeline in Stratfordian claims. The Ostler case was discovered by Professor Charles Wallace when he and his wife Hulda were combing the Public Records in search of documents of Shakespeare’s life. Of course, the Wallaces are famous for the discovery of the Mountjoy/Bellot deposition with the Stratford man’s sixth scrawled signature.
The Ostler case was transcribed but not translated in E. K. Chambers’ two volume Life of William Shakespeare. Chambers added punctuation to fit his narrative, and the added punctuation does not appear in the original document. Also, a translation of the legal Latin, as originally written, does not support Chambers’ transcription. However, the punctuation that Chambers added was adopted by B. Roland Lewis in his two volume work The Shakespeare Documents (Stanford University Press, 1940). Although Lewis presented the Ostler case in Latin without an English translation, he added the Chambers’ comma which is not present in the original.
Though Lewis work is clearly Stratfordian, it is superior to Schoenbaum’s 1975 William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life. Schoenbaum covers the same ground while giving little recognition to Lewis. But about the Ostler case, Schoenbaum doesn’t even mention it. As it’s been famously said, “in his omissions ye shall know him.”
There is good reason for Schoenbaum’s omission. Years ago, Dr. Louis Benezet of Dartmouth College realized that, given a correct translation with the original lack of punctuation in the pleadings, the Ostler case destroyed the Stratfordian position that the Stratford man owned shares in the Globe Theater. Miss Gwyneth Bowen, an Oxfordian writer in London, inquired further and agreed with professor Benezet. On the strength of the Benezet and Bowen findings, their interpretations of Ostler are included in Vol II of the Miller edition of Shakespeare Identified.
Because this information does such damage to the Stratford narrative, I’ve anticipated that it might be seriously challenged. To prepare for this possibility, I’ve had two Latinists translate the Oster document from the original. One translation was made by Dr. Fred Youngs, who holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Now on the faculty at Louisiana State University and teaching Elizabethan studies, Dr. Youngs said that the point “jumped at me from the page.” The document clearly indicates that the “William Shakespeare” who was a shareholder at the Globe was dead by 1615 when Hilary Term commenced in the 13th year of King James’ reign. The Stratford man was among the living when Thomasine Oster filed her pleading alleging Shakespeare was dead.
My second translator/transcriber was Dr. F. G. Emmison (M.B.E., F.S. A., F. R. Hist. S., F.S.G.), the former County Archivist of Essex and author of the Elizabethan Life series. Dr. Emmison transcribed and translated the Ostler document directly from the original in the London Public Records Office. There is no doubt that the “William Shakespeare” who owned shares in the Globe Theater was, in the opinion of a fellow owner of shares, dead in 1615 when John Heminges’ daughter filed her pleading against him. Since Stratford’s Shaksper was still living at this time, the evidence might have given the Supreme Court Justices Brennan, Blackmun and Stevens good ground for another “gnawing doubt.”
