involved in the purchase by Thomas Arden of Wilmcote of the Snitterfield estate that was passed to Shakespeare’s father John through his wife, Mary Arden. The 15thEarl of Oxford (de Vere’s grandfather) was married to Elizabeth Trussell, daughter of Margaret Don, whose family would produce the poet John Donne, and Sir Edward Trussell of Elmesthorpe, a small town located near Birmingham and in close proximity to the home of Edward Arden. The daughter of Elizabeth Trussell and the 15thEarl, Elizabeth de Vere, was married to Thomas Darcy, whose cousin Mary Darcy was the grandmother of the Jesuit Robert Southwell.
The kinship of Trussell and Southwell explains why a minor poet named John Trussell edited the 1595 quarto of Southwell’s Triumphs Over Death. The relationship of Trussell and Arden explains why Trussell’s own poem entitled “The First Rape of Fair Helen” and its preface bear shades of Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis. The kinship of Trussell and de Vere puts Shakespeare within the circles of both the Earl of Oxford and Southwell. Shakespeare biographer Charlotte Stopes has theorized that Mary Arden’s mother, whose name is unknown, was a Trussell. Indeed, Shakespeare’s two older sisters who died as infants were named Joan and Margaret, likely named for Mary Arden’s sisters, Joan and Margaret; records show that the Trussell family of Elmesthorpe includes the names of Joan and Margaret. These relationships would have given Shakespeare access to Southwell himself.
John Floyd and the Canon of Shakespeare
The writings of John Floyd not only include similar, if not identical, diction as the canon in some instances but deeply reflect hidden meanings of the plays and contain typically Shakespearean trademarks: the abundant use of parentheses; the use of wordplay, delighting in the double meanings of words; the abundant use of metaphors; a preference for sophisticated words; the reliance on the poetry and prose of Robert Southwell; the abundant use of exclamation points; the colloquial mixed with the figures of classical rhetoric; and the use of irony, parody, and even sarcasm. While Floyd clearly draws on Southwell, his writing is more often closer to the style of Shakespeare.
In the area of linguistics, recent studies of Shakespeare’s language have utilized software programs to scan different texts as a means to highlight instances in which the same words—as many as three consecutive words called “trigrams”—appear in both texts. These collocations show similarities in the arrangement of linguistic elements and can reveal Shakespeare as the sole author. On the other hand, the methodology can be especially telling when rare words are used together and found in both Shakespeare and another author. Mostly, this study will show similarity of thought between the work of Shakespeare and the Jesuits through interpretation of the text.
In another type of criticism, John Floyd seems to make appearances in the canon of Shakespeare as a character named “Flavius.” This name is a slight derivation of “Fluvius,” meaning “Fludd,” a name by which Floyd was known; Floyd has been identified as the character “Fluvius” in an early 17th century play written by Jesuit missionaries. In Measure for Measure, the Duke asks that letters be delivered, and he subsequently instructs Friar Peter, “Go call at Flavius’ house,/And tell him where I stay.” Then, invoking the alias of Richard Verstegan, “Rowland,” the spy and messenger employed by the Jesuit mission prefect Robert Persons, the Duke directs Friar Peter to do the same for the characters Valencius, Rowland, and Crassus. “But send me Flavius first,” the Duke says (4.5.10). A character named “Flavius” can also be found in Timon of Athens as a steward to Timon.
While these mentions hint at some sort of communiqué, perhaps directed to someone sitting in the audience who then knows to contact Floyd on behalf of Shakespeare, the Jesuit may appear in a more theologically substantive role in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as a republican tribune named Flavius, who seeks to disrupt the ceremonies of Caesar and calls for disrobing his statue. Although Shakespeare clearly draws on historical sources—Lucius Caesetius Flavus was a Roman politician and tribune of the people known for removing a decoration from the statue of Caesar and arresting those who saluted Caesar as King—Shakespeare changes the name of Flavus to the gentile name of Flavius. Shakespeare in general draws on his main sources of the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and Antony in Plutarch’s Lives, which had been translated into English in 1579.
Floyd appears as Fluvius in a complex allegorical play entitled Hierarchomachia or The Anti-Bishop.1This play, written around 1630, dramatizes issues related to the so-called approbation affair (1627-1631), the flare-up of a complicated controversy between Jesuits and secular Catholic clergy that involved the creation of an episcopal hierarchy to govern English Catholic clergy and to reconcile their duty and obedience to spiritual and temporal authorities. The origins of this affair can be traced to the beginnings of the so-called archpriest controversy in 1598, while the appointment by the Pope of the anti-Jesuit Richard Smith as Bishop of Chalcedon in 1625 reignited tensions. Floyd was given a role in the play because of his contributions to the pamphlet war over the controversy.
While the character of Fluvius in Hierarchomachia may seem coincidental to the character of Flavius in Julius Caesar, especially in view that Shakespeare appears to have named his character for the historical Roman person, it is more than noteworthy that the thought expressed by the fictional Flavius mirrors exactly a specific theological point made by Floyd in his tract of 1623 entitled A Word of Comfort. This point concerned the designs of God in relation to how princely rulers are perceived by men. Floyd in 1623 would have been recalling what had been conceived earlier; Shakespeare’s play was written around 1599 at the dawning of the archpriest controversy and close to the time Floyd likely arrived in England.
In Julius Caesar, the servant Flavius is the first character to speak, scolding idled workers for attending the triumphal parade of Caesar in celebration of his defeat of archrival Pompey. The fictional tribunes Flavius and Marullus seek to downplay the victory, suggesting that Caesar has failed to bring home a significant victory against a foreign enemy. The two tribunes scold disloyal plebeians for standing poised to celebrate Pompey’s defeat after previously cheering him in triumphant returns from battle.
The thoughts found in Julius Caesar neatly reflect the theology of John Floyd regarding the failure of men to properly show reverence for the designs of God in the human world. In A Word of Comfort, Floyd argued that men cannot act as a type of “Privy Council” and question why God decides to take a human life—especially a princely ruler—from the world. Instead, men must respect the mysteries of God’s ways and realize that an “accident” may have been permitted to occur as a way to steer their hearts toward the truth of the Catholic faith. If God takes the life of a wicked person, men should not begin to sentimentally view that person as good. Floyd also wrote of the inherent nature of men to envy innocent persons and downplay their virtues, while pitying the wicked, extenuating their faults, and easily recalling only minor attributes worthy of praise. As examples, Floyd cites the tears of remembrance shed by Alexander the Great of Macedon over the death of his former enemy Darius and by Caesar over the death of his adversary Pompey. In Hamlet, the literal remains of the great Alexander of Macedon and Julius Caesar are contemplated as dust utilized to plug a hole. Floyd scolds that “accident,” or the way life plays itself out through fateful circumstances, is part of a divine will aimed at reminding men of the sanctity of God’s holy church and a way for God to infuse nature with grace. He makes the theological point that God sometimes allows a good ruler to be slain by a tyrannical ruler, as a way to inform Christians that the prosperity of earthly life should not be gained by temporal comfort but by serving God.
Floyd seems to be additionally invoked in Julius Caesar through the word “flood” in a passage that reflects his views on how temporal rulers are perceived. Cassius, in a long speech on honor, attempts to persuade Brutus not to worship a temporal ruler who is merely an ordinary man, reversing the arguments of Protestant preachers that the Virgin Mary was no better than ordinary women, a claim against which Floyd consistently argued in his writings. Cassius recounts a time when, on a dare by Caesar, he and Caesar plunged into the roaring,
