Will the Real William Shakespeare Please Stand Up?

• Sir Henry Neville lived from 1562 - July 10, 1615.



• English politician



• Diplomat



• Courtier



• Distant relative of William Shakespeare



• Descendent of Plantagenets, however, cousin William Shakespeare is not



• Was educated at Merton College, Oxford and sat in Parliament as the member for New Windsor, Sussex, Liskeard, Kent, Lewes and Berkshire.

• Willam Shakespeare only attended the King Edward VI Grammar School in Stratford

Shakespeare/Neville Parallels

•Birth and death dates (1564 - 1615) are identical to those of his pseudonymous front-man, William Shakespeare.
•THUS, WITH SIR HENRY NEVILLE, THERE IS NO IMPLAUSIBLE MIS-MATCH WHEN IT COMES TO DATING THE PLAYS AND NO IMPLAUSIBLE STRETCHING OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE SPAN, ETC.
•The chronology of the plays coincides with the emergence of Neville’s important life events.
•They say that Neville, a rotund man nicknamed "Falstaff" by close friends, had the virtue - unlike Shakespeare, who lacked an appropriate background - of being an educated man of culture, a courtier and a well-travelled linguist
•Professor Brenda James, a former English lecturer at Portsmouth University, and Professor William Rubinstein, professor of history at Aberystwyth University stumbled across Neville after cracking the secret of the mysterious dedication to Shakespeare's sonnets. They claim that hidden in the text is a clue that points to Neville
•Neville was familiar with details of court life in a way Shakespeare was not.
•When Neville was imprisoned in the Tower for his part in Essex’s rebellion, the plays suddenly turn from being light to being somber.
•Neville, unlike Shakespeare, had access to a detailed story of the Bermuda shipwreck of 1609, which seems to be the base of The Tempest.

Ghost Writer?

• There is evidence to suggest that Neville wrote many of the Sonnets, including the ones that were addressed to Lord Southampton, while confined to the Tower.




• It is also here that Neville wrote the play, "Hamlet." Later, he published "Shake-speares Sonnets" and wrote the dedication himself. He dedicated the sonnets to Lord Southampton.




• A notebook kept by Neville while in the Tower contained detailed notes that ended up as part of the play, "Henry VIII."




• The Tower experience also explains the shift in the focus of Shakespeare's plays from histories and comedies to the great tragedies, all of which were written after Neville was released from the Tower when James I became the king.




• A document was discovered in 1867 that shows that Neville practiced writing William Shakespeare's name.

Can You Spot the Difference?

• Neville had access to restricted sources witnessed in the plays: e.g. the documents of his Plantagenet and other ancestors including John of Gaunt in Richard II, Warwick the King Maker in Henry VI parts II & III, and King Duncan of Scotland in Macbeth. As an officer in the Virginia Company, he was able to use a private letter as a source for The Tempest.
  
  


• Neville was multi-lingual, (some sources used for the plays were only available in French/Italian/Greek/Spanish etc, which we have no reason to believe Shakespeare knew.)






• Neville became French Ambassador at just the time the French-based Henry V was written.

• 1601 marks an abrupt change in the plays from histories/comedies to the great tragedies. In 1601Neville was in the Tower - under threat of execution for his part in the Essex Uprising.






• The Northumberland Manuscript, discovered in 1867, has Neville’s name and ‘family motto poem’ at the top, plus repeated practising of William Shakespeare's signature lower down.






• My research uncovered some ‘lost’ documents, including one he wrote in theTower of London (1601-1603). Its contents tie in with the plays, including passages later used in Henry VIII, but the notes had been written by Neville eleven years before that play was performed.






• In 1623, the writer Ben Jonson was involved in putting Shakespeare's name on the First Folio edition of the Plays. Jonson was then employed by a college in London associated with the Neville family. Brenda James has now discovered an extensive document by Jonson suggesting he knew about the 'front man' arrangement and that he helped promote the fiction of Shakespeare's authorship at the behest of the Nevilles.






• The character Falstaff was partly based on Neville himself. Falstaff was initially going to be called 'Oldcastle', an antonymic pun on Neville's (‘New Town’ or ‘New Villa’) name.






• Neville was an international trader: this is reflected in The Merchant of Venice and The Comedy of Errors. Neville resided on the Continent (1578 - 1583). Brenda’s recent research proves that he had overwhelming reasons, during those years, to visit the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, and Elsinore (Denmark) in pursuit of his newly-inherited iron and ordnance business.

The Jacobean CODE

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF .
THESE . INSVING . SONNET S .
Mr .W. H . ALL . HAPP INESSE .
AND . THAT . ETERNITIE .
PROMISED .
BY .
OVR . EVER-LIVING . POET .
WISHETH .
T HE .WELL-WISHING .
ADVENTVRER . IN .
SETTING .
FORTH .

The Matrix