DiscoveringShakespeare.com Evidence "Discovering Shakespeare" is a new examination of the problem. It offers evidence which will be unfamiliar to the reader and which, we believe, will be seen as decisive in the controversy. You cannot understand what is going on in "All's Well" unless you have read Lambin, for instance; and he remains untranslated after forty years. Edward Holmes has assembled crucial material which enables the reader to grasp the facts behind the story. None of this unfamiliar data features in editions prepared by orthodox editors. Mycroft has furnished the editors of Cambridge, Oxford and Arden with pre-publication excerpts of his work. He received no direct response to what might have been seen as a generous escape clause! The challenge was met by sidestepping evasion. The Folger editors of "Shakespeare Quarterly" thought the evidence "tenuous". Readers may judge for themselves. The upshot of Lambin's research was that Mycroft was enabled, over the years, to develop an understanding of the detailed background to the play. "All's Well" turns out to be built out of, in part (as the Stratfordians suppose) a flimsy frame of fiction derived from Boccaccio's "Decameron"; but essentially from solid historical events and personalities. And the central character is modelled directly on Edward de Vere. At the heart of the plot lies an autobiographical anecdote from the marriage bed of the Earl of Oxford himself. Lambin's research made Mycroft's analysis possible. But the French scholar was working in support of the idea that the true author of Shakespeare was, in fact, William Stanley, later Earl of Derby. It was a wholly fortuitous stroke that gave an Oxfordian his cue. For Bertram in "All's Well" is made out of Edward de Vere and his adventures in Florence in 1575. One cannot imagine less "tenuous" support for an idea. Like Bertram in the play, Edward went to Florence because the Duke had become embroiled in quarrels with Genoa in 1575. He, too, was received with great honour and given command of the Horse. Both were reported as settling the quarrel by diplomacy rather than war. Both had left home to escape their wives and both were subjected to a "Bed-Trick" on the part of their resentful spouses, who secretly replaced their mistresses in order to breed an heir. Shakespeare provided for this story a comic sub-plot, which has no place in Boccaccio. It contributes nothing of dramatic value and serves only to confirm the historical context. More than a dozen most oddly-named soldiers are brought into the play for no good dramatic reason. They are not very funny and do not help the plot's progress. No editor makes any serious attempt to identify them. Once initiated into the simple art of deciphering the puzzle (by reading Lambin), the process operates at the level of a moderately easy crossword puzzle. Lambin had a head start, of course, being French, so that the unveiling of a group of French Catholics under the leadership of the Duc de Guise presented less of a difficulty than it might have done to a Londoner. But Lambin published in 1962 - so none of us has any excuse - beyond the fact that he remains untranslated and we are all lazy about languages. The facts about "All's Well" have been in the public domain for forty years. It is the Establishment who have the explaining to do. If they did not know Lambin, they should have done. If they did they must justify not mentioning his work. Mycroft reminded them last year. They seem less than grateful....... "The Rest is Silence". "Discovering Shakespeare" A Handbook for Heretics By Edward Holmes I.S.B.N 0-9540719-1-3 Softback £ 14 Published by Mycroft Books. Check Distributor and Links Page for stockists.