Author’s Note

The possibility that Shakespeare was murdered was first floated back in the 1970s by handwriting expert Charles Hamilton. The academic community condemned him because he was not one of them. But he did read secretary hand (that form of writing prevalent in the Elizabethan/Jacobean Age). And he was an acknowledged expert on handwriting. Hamilton was a key figure in exposing the purported Hitler diaries as forgeries. I would be inclined to listen to him, but the academic world is so territorial that they refused even to countenance Hamilton.

A few years ago, the theory popped back up, brought to the forefront again by…an academic. However, this time it was a university pathologist who had been involved in the exhumation of famous post-Civil War outlaw Jesse James. He proposed exhuming Shakespeare to test the poisoning theory. But he indicated that the family’s permission would have to be obtained. As anyone even remotely familiar with Shakespeare would know, the famous poet and playwright has no direct descendants. As I write this, yet another attempt is being made to exhume Shakespeare, this time to see if he smoked marijuana and also to try and answer questions about his death.

At any rate, this is a novel built around the idea that Shakespeare may have been murdered. The only cause of death over the centuries has been the old story about him, Ben Jonson, and Michael Drayton drinking, after which Shakespeare contracted a fever and died.

Of other matters, some are true, some are not. Shakespeare did suffer financial reversals in the first years after he returned to Stratford, and he came into a good deal of money in the months surrounding Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder. I have linked the two, though there may be no connection.

Charles Hamilton’s favorite suspect in the supposed murder of William Shakespeare was Thomas Quiney. And Quiney was much the way that I have portrayed him. He came from a respected Stratford family, but apparently none of that respectability rubbed off on him. The changes in Shakespeare’s will did indeed keep Quiney from profiting from his father-in-law’s estate while preserving Judith’s inheritance.

Sir Thomas Overbury was murdered. Frances, countess of Somerset, admitted her guilt. Robert Carr, earl of Somerset, proclaimed his innocence but was convicted at trial in late April 1616. According to contemporary records, Sir Edward Coke and Sir Francis Bacon did indeed find letters from the king to Carr in the earl’s rooms at Whitehall Palace. And Coke did turn them over to the king without revealing their contents.

For the record, I am not an Oxfordian or a Baconian. I believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the poetry and plays historically attributed to him. I find that those who refuse to believe that a simple boy from Warwickshire could write such masterpieces as King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello are embarrassingly narrow-minded. Genius is not restricted to the nobility or wealthier classes. Genius comes from every walk of life.

The last paragraph of the book contains quotations from Hamlet and Measure for Measure, and “obstrution” is not a typo­graphical error. As I am certain that there are errors elsewhere, they are mine and mine alone.