Clare Asquith

Clare Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith (born 2 June 1951) is a British independent scholar and author of Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare,[1] which has posited that Shakespeare was a covert Catholic whose works contain coded language which was used by the Catholic underground, particularly the Jesuits, in Reformation-era England, but also appealed to the monarchy in a plea for toleration. Her book was the first to claim the existence of the code as a subtext in Shakespeare.[2]

Clare Asquith
Born (1951-06-02) 2 June 1951
United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
OccupationIndependent scholar
Known forShakespearean Research
Notable work
Shadowplay: the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare

Works

Her work was hailed by some, including the Catholic writer Piers Paul Read, as "dramatic, important" and "painstaking scholarship".[2] It was, however, reviewed unfavourably by Dr David Womersley, Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, who deemed it "a ridiculous book".[3]

Her second book, Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, the Essex Rebellion, and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny, follows the same themes of her first book focusing on Shakespeare's Poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. It was reviewed favorably by Michael Thomas Barry, in the New York Journal of Books, who hailed as "a must read for anyone interested in the study and interpretation of Shakespearian era politics or literary criticism,"[4] but unfavorably by James Shapiro in the New York Review of Books: "But Asquith blithely ignores every fact that might qualify or undermine her claims. And because she prosecutes her case so skillfully, there’s no way for general readers to distinguish solid arguments from fantastic ones."[5]

She has lectured on Shakespeare in both the UK and North America. Her ideas about sixteenth-century code were first raised while observing coded messages in Soviet dissident plays while her husband served as a diplomat in Moscow during the Cold War,[6] and were first published in The Shakespeare Newsletter and The Times Literary Supplement.

Personal life

Lady Oxford was born Mary Clare Pollen, the eldest of the five children of the architect Francis Pollen (1926–1987) and Marie Therese Sheridan (later Viscountess Sidmouth, wife of the 7th peer).[7] She lives in Somerset with her husband, former diplomat Raymond Asquith, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Asquith (whom she married in 1978) and their five children.

Selected Works
  • Shadowplay:the Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (Hachette Book Group, 2005)
  • Shakespeare and the Resistance: The Earl of Southampton, the Essex Rebellion, and the Poems that Challenged Tudor Tyranny (Hachette Book Group, 2018)
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References
  1. Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare Google Books reference
  2. Thorpe, Vanessa Shakespeare was a political rebel who wrote in code, claims author The Guardian, 28 August 2005. Retrieved 6 November 2011.
  3. Dr Womersley's review of Shadowplay
  4. New York Journal of Books Review
  5. James Shapiro, "The Winter of Our Discontent," New York Review of Books, December 6, 2018, p. 32.
  6. Shadowplay, pp. xiii-xiv.
  7. Profile at thePeerage.com
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