The Literary Paper Trail

A document, school record, university matriculation, or contemporary account, showing the candidate received formal education. Grammar school attendance inferred from later achievement does not qualify.

Example: Marlowe’s Corpus Christi College Cambridge matriculation (1580) is recorded in the college register. Shakspere’s grammar school attendance has no surviving primary source record.

A surviving letter or documented exchange in which the candidate discusses literature, writing, or the works. Business correspondence and legal documents do not qualify.

Example: Mary Sidney Herbert’s literary letters to Samuel Daniel and Edmund Spenser survive. Thomas Nashe’s exchanges with Gabriel Harvey are documented in print. No letter of Shakspere discussing literature has been found.

A primary source record of payment for literary work, a fee for a play, a translation contract, a pension for literary service. Income from theatre shares or property does not qualify.

Example: Philip Henslowe’s diary records payments to named playwrights by title and date. John Florio’s payment for his Montaigne translation is documented. No equivalent payment for literary work has been found for Shakspere.

Note on aristocratic candidates: Payment for writing was generally beneath the social position of noblemen in the Elizabethan period. Aristocratic candidates (de Vere, Stanley, Mary Sidney Herbert) cannot be expected to have primary source evidence in this category; its absence does not carry the same weight for them as for commoners. The ~ score for aristocratic candidates on this criterion reflects the structural limitation of the category, not an absence of evidence of literary activity.

A primary source document placing the candidate in a patron relationship specifically for literary work, a dedication acknowledged, a household position for literary purposes, or documented literary patronage received.

Example: John Florio is named as one of Southampton’s servants in a 1594 deposition, and his own A World of Words dedication (1598) confirms he lived in Southampton’s patronage for some years. Samuel Daniel’s service to Mary Sidney Herbert at Wilton House is documented in Daniel’s own dedications. No patron document names Shakspere as a literary client.

A surviving manuscript in the candidate’s hand of a literary work, or a manuscript forensically attributed to them by specialist examination. Fair copies in the author’s own handwriting qualify, Jonson and Middleton both left fair copy or presentation copy in their hand. Scribal copies do not qualify.

Example: Mary Sidney Herbert’s Psalm translations survive in her hand. Francis Bacon’s Promus notebooks (British Library, Harleian MS 7017, c.1594–96) survive in his hand. The Audley End annotations are forensically attributed to de Vere (Stritmatter, Journal of Forensic Document Examination, 2023). No literary manuscript in Shakspere’s hand has been found. The principal counter-claim, Hand D in Sir Thomas More, is contested at both of its evidentiary steps; if its attribution were established, this cell would change. See the Hand D objection, and the full analysis on the Hand D page.

Marginalia in books, personal annotations of a literary character, or other handwritten material touching on literary content, correspondence falls under Category 2. Legal signatures alone do not qualify.

Example: John Florio’s annotated working documents for his dictionaries survive. The Audley End annotations (de Vere, forensic attribution) are the most forensically rigorous example in the debate. Shakspere left six signatures on legal documents only; no handwriting touching on literary content has been found, subject to the same Hand D caveat as Category 5.

A primary source record of the candidate contributing prefatory verses to another writer’s work, or receiving such verses, evidence that the literary community recognised them as one of its own.

Example: De Vere’s verses appear in Elizabethan miscellanies. Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598) names writers including de Vere and Marlowe as England’s best. No commendatory verse by or for Shakspere during his lifetime has been found.

Contemporary documents, not dedications or commendatory verses, that name the candidate as an author, playwright, or poet. Posthumous attribution does not qualify.

Example: George Puttenham’s Arte of English Poesie (1589) names de Vere as best for comedy. Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (1598) names Marlowe, Nashe, and others as playwrights. No surviving document during Shakspere’s lifetime names him as the author of a specific play or poem.

A will listing books, a library catalogue, documented loans, or books with the candidate’s provenance established by inscription or record. Inference from the works does not qualify.

Example: Francis Bacon’s library is documented in his papers. Mary Sidney Herbert’s access to the Pembroke library at Wilton House is documented. Shakspere’s will, a surviving primary source, itemises household goods, money, and property. It mentions no books, papers, or literary material of any kind.

A contemporary elegy, mourning verse, or published notice recognising the candidate as a literary figure within twelve months of their death (Price, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, p. 309).

Example: Christopher Marlowe received a mourning verse from George Chapman in Hero and Leander (1598). Shakspere died in April 1616; no literary elegy appeared. The First Folio, with its commemorative verses by Ben Jonson, appeared seven years later in 1623.