Shakespeare's Mothers

The summary in the August 18 issue of a paper on mothers in Shakespeare's works by Dorothy Grunes, M.D., and Jerome Grunes, M.D., was fascinating. Readers may be interested to know that Freud believed“ Shakespeare” was the pen name of Edward de Vere. De Vere lost his father when he was 12 and rarely saw his mother after that, since the guardian to whom Queen Elizabeth assigned de Vere raised him. De Vere had a poor relationship with his first wife and their children.

At the same meeting where the Grunes gave their paper, I gave a paper titled “Shakespeare's Identity Crisis: Revisiting Freud's Opinions on the Authorship Debate.” An excellent resource on de Vere is the superb new biography by Mark Anderson, “Shakespeare” by Another Name. An impartial review of the evidence will convince anyone that de Vere's claim is considerably stronger than that of Shakespeare of Stratford. Although we can't yet be certain, in my opinion it is time to re-Vere Shakespeare!