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William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, is a dashing historical figure whose biography has been so celebrated in legends and ballads that the facts of his life can be hard to distinguish from the fiction. Although the true details of Derby’s story remain elusive, there is no doubt that he was an adventurer, a lover of the theater, and a man who represented the ethos of the Shakespearian age.
The Earls of Derby were generous supporters of culture for centuries. Derby’s father, Henry Stanley, was a patron of a troupe of players. Often, he put on plays at his country home at Knowsley, near where Knowsley Hall stands today. From an early age, William Stanley was immersed in the vibrant literary culture of Tudor England.
After studying at Oxford, Derby embarked on a three-year educational journey to France to learn about new cultures, master new languages, and study at the best French universities. He returned to England only to be sent back to France to assist his father on an important diplomatic mission. They traveled in grandeur to award Henry III the Order of the Garter. He remained in Europe on a clandestine journey through Catholic Spain and Italy. Legend has it that he was only able to journey through Italy by disguising himself as a friar. The great poet John Donne likely accompanied him on his travels. Derby is thought to be the addressee of Donne’s epistolary poems titled, “To E. of D. with Six Holy Sonnets.” A ballad called “Sir William Stanley’s Garland” first published in print c. 1800 embellished his European trip into 21 years of adventures. The ballad describes journeys through Egypt, Russia, and the Holy Land, and colorful escapades such as a near martyrdom in Turkey and his rescue by an Ottoman princess who desperately wanted to marry him. Ballads like these enhanced his reputation in popular culture for centuries after his death.
After Derby returned to England, he was an important sponsor of the theater. He had a claim to be the heir of Elizabeth I, which was a position so dangerous that it got Mary, Queen of Scots, killed, so he was careful not to be too involved in politics. He supported a group of players called Derby’s Men. His troupe performed both in the rural provinces, at court, and in London—the geographical heart of Elizabethan theater. Although no plays attributed to him survive, he was known to write plays himself, an unusual occupation for a nobleman of the highest rank. Legend has it that Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream to celebrate Derby’s marriage to Elizabeth Vere, the daughter of an earl. Their wedding would have been a grand court wedding deserving of a masterful play filled with marriage plots and centered around the mythological wedding of Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and Theseus, Duke of Athens.
By the mid-19th century, Shakespeare was universally proclaimed as the greatest writer in the English language. Amid all this praise, skeptics emerged who questioned that anyone with Shakespeare’s biography could have written such high works of literature. In particular, they felt that someone with his humble social roots, grammar school education from a local school, and limited access to high society could have attained the status of a literary genius. They pointed out that his father was a glove-maker and town official, and evidence suggests that neither of his parents were literate. As these detractors went on a historical hunt for a more likely hunt, an archivist named James H. Greenstreet nominated William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, as the real Shakespeare in 1891. He had found a letter wherein a Jesuit spy reported that Derby was “busied only in penning comedies for the common players,” a detail that he seized upon as proof that he was the true Shakespeare.
William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, was an attractive candidate for historical detectives looking for the real Shakespeare. He had the finest education money could buy. He studied at St. John’s College at Oxford and traveled the world extensively. He was the kind of man whose biography could explain how an author could have 30,000 words at his disposal, like Shakespeare did. Moreover, he had the same initials as William Shakespeare. Despite the tempting evidence, nearly all academic Shakespearians believe that William Shakespeare the author was the same William Shakespeare born to a glove maker and his wife in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Leo Daugherty, a Shakespeare scholar, does not ascribe to the alternative authorship theory, but has worked to prove Derby’s important role in Shakespeare’s work. He argues that Derby is the “Fair Youth” to whom Shakespeare addresses so many of his sonnets. The Fair Youth praised and admonished by Shakespeare in his sonnets is a selfish, handsome young man with all the attributes of a dashing young nobleman like Derby, but his identity will forever be a historical mystery.
Sources
“Sir William Stanley’s Garland,” ballad, printed c. 1800
William Shakespeare, Richard Barnfield, and the Sixth Earl of Derby by Leo Daugherty
“Stanley, William, sixth earl of Derby,” by Leo Daugherty, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
“William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby,” The Shakespeare Authorship Trust
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