William Stanley as Shakespeare: Evidence of Authorship by the Sixth Earl of Derby by John M. Rollett (2015, www.mcfarlandpub.com)

Finally, a competent English language author-researcher has tried to revitalize the moribund Derby theory, likely the next best anti-Stratfordian theory to Oxfordianism. William Stanley, the 6th Earl of Derby (1561-1642), was the son-in-law of the 17th Earl of Oxford. Because of that kinship, Oxfordians benefit from nearly every legitimate discovery that the Derbyites have made, and to some extent they benefit from ours. Most particularly, evidence that Derby was literate enough to have continued his father-in-law's efforts to collect, edit, and preserve literary works originally written in the 1570s and 1580s (but that did not appear in print until the 1590s and 1600s) would help Oxfordians understand and explain literary events that occurred after 1604, the year Oxford died. Virtually every mainstream scholar confidently asserts that Oxford "died too soon" to have authored some of Shakespeare works. If one believes that some Shakespeare works were written after 1604, the notion that "Derby could have continued the effort" comes to mind. But do we really need Derbyism? The argument that Oxford died too soon ignores the scores of allusions in each play to personalities and affairs, foreign and domestic, including detailed travel information, that show Shakespeare was well acquainted with France and Italy of the 1570s, when Derby, Bacon, and Will of Stratford were still teenagers or preteens. Which should trump which? "Died too soon" (but posthumously assisted by relatives and friends), or "born too late" (having to rely on "osmosis" or "natural genius" for many detailed experiences)? (1)

From the beginning, the Oxfordian and Derbyite movements have had a symbiotic relationship. Indeed, in the 1920s Abel Lefranc, the founder of Derbyism, and J. Thomas Looney, the founder of Oxfordianism, cofounded and chaired (with Sir Granville George Greenwood) the original Shakespeare Fellowship. It continued to World War II, when opposition to the Stratfordian case was smothered by histrionics about Shakespeare being an "average sort of guy," whom all the "Tommies" fighting Hitler could relate to, and both movements essentially went dormant.

In 1956 A.J. Evans, in Shakespeare's Magic Circle, bravely attempted to continue the Fellowship's spirit with his "group" approach, with Derby as a "Mastermind," wherein "Bacon, Oxford, Rutland, Derby and several of that distinguished group of aristocratic scholars, linguists and poets formed ... an important part in bringing the plays to their full glory." (Perhaps it didn't help that the end panel of the dust jacket contained several advertisements, including Palmistry for Everyone and The Hamster Handbook.) It was one of the first anti-Stratfordian books that I ever read. Evans's ecumenical approach still affects my own thinking, because no single candidate has a flawless case, and all candidates benefit by presuming that they were the "Mastermind" in a group of collaborative authors and powerful sympathetic allies. Even Stratfordian scholars have to fall back on bizarre alliances (e.g., bisexuality or hidden Catholicism) in accounting for some of the many deficits in their...