Category: Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Welsh literary police

Further ‘Shakespeare portrait is a fake’, (Catriona Davies 28/10/2005) et al., octogenarian Welsh vicar, author and broadcaster, the Rev Aelwyn Roberts of Llandegai, North Wales, has told me there is nothing new about mysteries surrounding Shakespeare. He says that in his whodunnit ‘Operation Woolsack’ (later on ITV as the “Swan of Ogwen” in the early 90s) he used police investigation techniques, not academic textual criticism, to establish who the genuine bard might have been — perhaps even the Welshman, Archbishop John of York, buried at Llandegai church. He tells me that King James I was John’s patron (and perhaps more), and gave him many royal gifts and honours for his ‘services to English literature’ while he was secluded for nine years in Walgrave, Northamptonshire. He says the first ‘Shakespeare’ folio was published precisely when (1623) John left Walgrave for Westminster. But where are John’s writings? There was a mysterious fire, 40 years after John’s death, at Westminster Abbey library, opposite Parliament. Only John’s books and two bundles of handwritten English poems were destroyed — a mediaeval, spin coverup? Aelwyn says he still has a few early proof copies (signed in green by himself) of ‘Operation Woolsack’ and you can email him for one at aelwyn@aelwynroberts.wanadoo.co.uk — £6.50 inc p&p.

Dr P.D. O’Neill