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Stars or Suns?

By Richard Desper

Originally printed in the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter,
Volume 28, No. 2, Spring 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.

 

Since I became an Oxfordian, I find that, as I reread or again see a Shakespeare work, I experience it in a new light and now look forward to the new experience of first reading or seeing a play in the light of Oxfordian authorship. I expect to run across some obscure little passage or innocuous speech to leap from the scene and bring to my mind a single word: Oxford!

Such a thing happened to me recently when I saw the Kenneth Branagh film version of Henry V. A scene takes place in the French camp on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. French noblemen are in a conversation, and one of them asks the Constable of France, "The armour that I see in your tent tonight, are those stars or suns upon it?" [III,vii,74]. Five years ago the whole exchange would have meant little to me; perhaps I would have asked myself, "What on earth is that all about?"

This time, in light of what I have learned about the de Veres, the word came to mind: Oxford!

In light of what we know about the 17th Earl of Oxford, I suggest that this little byplay about "Stars or Suns" is not about King Henry V or the battle of Agincourt at all. Instead, it is about a later king, and a battle which took place some fifty years later, and another Earl of Oxford. It is also an example of a clue which Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, left in his plays as he went from being "anonymous" to assuming the nom-de-plume of "William Shakespeare".

As for the "Stars or Suns" remark, we find that, historically, there once was a battle whose outcome hinged upon the ability of a military commander to distinguish between the two on his opponent's insignia. Such was the battle of Barnet in the Wars of the Roses fought on April 14, 1471. As always, the men of John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, were arrayed on the side of Lancaster, and for this battle the men of the Earl of Warwick were on the same side.

However, disaster struck the Lancastrian cause on this particular day when the commander of the Warwick archers saw, through a mist, a body of fighting men approaching his position bearing what he took to be a sun on their accoutrements. The soldiers were those of the Earl of Oxford and they wore a star - the same star which the de Veres had carried into battle since the First Crusade. Mistaking it for the sun of York, Warwick's commander ordered his archers to fire, routing the Lancastrians and assuring victory for the forces of York who proceeded to restore Edward IV to the English throne.

Examining the passage in the light of Oxfordian authorship, we may be sure that the boy who was to become the 17th Earl of Oxford had been told, during his youth, about the day on which the fate of a throne rested upon a man's ability to distinguish between a star and a sun. When I heard this episode in Henry V, I chuckled and said to myself, "You sly old fox, you managed to leave an Oxfordian allusion in the play." You see, Henry V was not the first play about the heroic king.

That prolific Elizabethan playwright "Anonymous" had written an earlier play, The Famous Victory of King Henry the Fift [sic] which included not only the Agincourt campaign, but the highway robbery escapade on Gad's Hill which Charlton Ogburn, in his book The Mysterious William Shakespeare, [p. 529] has shown to have been a parallel to an actual episode in the life of Edward de Vere, even to the extent of identifying the exact date. The earlier play also featured a prominent role (having some degree of historical basis) for the 11th Earl of Oxford at the battle of Agincourt.

By the time Edward de Vere had written the later version and seen it staged and published as Shakespeare's Henry V, the role of Oxford was written out of the play completely. Perhaps de Vere was told by his royal patron to tone down the role of the Earl of Oxford in order to focus on the king. He did so, even to the extent of writing out his ancestor who had legitimately played a major role at Agincourt. And yet the playwright could not resist the temptation to leave his mark in the final play, in the seemingly pointless remark about "Stars or Suns".

 

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