Mary Sidney
Mary
Sidney Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke, was a hot-tempered redhead,
brilliant, multi-talented, strong, dynamic, passionate, generous, and probably
a bit arrogant. She was born three years before Shakespeare and died five
years after.
For two decades, she developed and led the most important literary circle in England’s history, Wilton Circle, taking the mantle from her mentor, her brother Philip Sidney, who died in the Queen’s Protestant war. Her work, the work of her brother, and the work of many of the writers in her circle were used as sources for the Shakespearean plays.
She was devoted to literature and to creating great works in the English language. This was a brave mission because English wasn’t considered a very useful language; there were great works in Italian, French, Latin, and Greek, but few of note in English. Nor was English spoken anywhere else in the world -- barely even in Scotland, Wales, or Ireland.
Mary Sidney had a lifelong passion and commitment to her literary goal. In her versification of 127 psalms, she used 126 different verse forms. Pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable for women, she was the first woman to publish a play in English (a closet drama), and the first woman to publish original dramatic verse. She was also the first woman who did not apologize for publishing her work.
She was trained in medicine and had her own alchemy laboratory where Adrian Gilbert (Sir Walter Raleigh’s half brother) was her assistant. Recipes she developed are still extant, including a recipe for disappearing ink. Mary had an active interest in spiritual magic and was close with the “magicians” John Dee and probably Giordano Bruno (we know her brother was close with him). Adrian Gilbert designed her garden at Wilton House in a “heavily geometric and symbolic nature” in which it was possible to read “both divine and moral remembrances,” a “personal iconographic program based on symbolic geometry.”
She was fluent in Latin, French, and Italian, and it is believed she knew some Welsh, Spanish, and possibly Greek. She was one of the most educated women in England, comparable only to Queen Elizabeth. She was politically involved and outspoken, although she disliked the fawning and superficiality of the royal court.
Mary was an energetic woman. She held large parties. She sponsored an acting troupe. She traveled, rode horses, hunted, hawked. She bowled (lawn bowling), danced, sang, was famous for her needlework. She played the lute and the virginals, and—if we can believe a German report—the violin. This German report also describes a musical code she invented with which she would send letters to friends in the form of musical compositions, each measure representing a letter of the alphabet.
The Sonnets
Scholars believe the Shakespearean sonnets tell the story of the poet’s passionate affair with a younger man, who then had an affair with a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman close to the poet’s heart. The dark-haired woman was newly married, perhaps to a man named Will. No one has ever been able to positively identify the younger man or the dark-haired woman in relation to William Shakespeare (or any of the other candidates).
But Mary’s documented love life has a striking resemblance to these sonnets. After her husband died, Mary (43 years old) had an affair with a younger man, Dr. Matthew Lister (33 years old), whom she could not marry because of their differences in social status, but she was with him for the rest of her life. There was strife in the relationship, however, when she thought her younger lover was having an affair with her dark-haired, dark-eyed niece, Mary Wroth (19 years old and newly married), whom Mary Sidney had helped raise. It turns out that Mary Wroth was not having an affair, however, with Dr. Lister, but with Will Herbert (also newly married), Mary Sidney’s oldest son.
The Incomparable Brethren
This same son acted as bawd for the King, effectively changing the power structure at court by providing King James with a new lover, George Villiers, and thus procuring for himself the office of Lord Chamberlain. Mary’s younger son, Philip Herbert, acted as whore to the King in exchange for an earldom, a rare honor for a second son.
Interestingly, in the First Folio (the printed collection of the works of “Shakespeare” printed seven years after his death), Ben Jonson writes a eulogy, “To the Memory of my Beloved, the AUTHOR,” in which he complains how certain people might pretend to praise someone while really trying to destroy that person. “These are, as some infamous Bawd, or Whore, Should praise a Matron. What could hurt her more?” There has never been an explanation for why Ben Jonson (considered to have been a protégé of Mary Sidney’s and well-documented as a close friend of William Herbert’s) mentions a bawd (pimp) and a whore and a mature gentlewoman in the eulogy’s introduction.
This First Folio is dedicated to Mary Sidney’s two sons, the "incomparable brethren," neither of whom has otherwise been connected to the man named William Shakespeare.
Just the Beginning
These few documented facts are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg of Mary’s story. Unlike every other proposed authorship candidate, Mary Sidney has no anomaly (like being dead) that needs an elaborate explanation to justify. Everything about her fits neatly and remarkably into the authorship of the Shakespearean plays and sonnets—she is the most articulate, literate, educated, and motivated writer of the times with hundreds of connections to the source materials of the plays, and her love life matches the sonnet story. Because she was a woman, however, she was not allowed to write plays for the public theater.
I believe her son, William Herbert, was Mary’s greatest antagonist and the one responsible for the ultimate cover-up.There isn't any reason to believe her authorship was a huge conspiracy that needed to be covered up by many people; my research indicates that possibly only her oldest son knew, and perhaps he told Ben Jonson during the production of the First Folio. This same son also covered up his two illegitimate children with his first cousin, Mary Wroth, a fact that wasn’t discovered until 1932.