What’s in a name?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

–Shakespeare

Why should this rose be better esteemed than that rose, unless in pleasantness of smell it far surpassed the other rose?

–Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Ever the Same

Shakespeare wrote, in Sonnet 76, “Why write I still all one, ever the same…”

Semper eadem was Elizabeth’s motto.  It means ‘ever the same.’

Would the poet have referred to the Queen’s motto in relation to himself if he did not know her?  Why would he even think of it?

Who was Shakespeare, if he was an intimate of the Queen?

Did they ever meet?

The notion of a relationship between the Virgin Queen and the poet Shakespeare is traditionally thought to exist only in the imagination of playwrights and novelists. However appealing one might find the idea, there is simply no evidence that the Stratford shareholder and grain dealer traditionally thought to be the poet ever even met the Queen. Yet study of the Shakespearean works in concert with study of Elizabeth’s life and writings reveals that the poet knew the queen intimately; and that the stages of their relationship chart a course through the canon, that in the early years of her reign he praised her and wrote tributes of love, and that later his pen would give voice to ridicule, to horror at her betrayals of trust, and finally, to his heartbreak and treason.