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In THE AMERICAN IMAGO of June 1952 I presented some observations on the psychology of Shakespeare's Othello without any reference to the biographic background of his tragedy. I should like now to offer a series of facts which, in my judgment, account for the creation of the Moor and give us some insight into the unconscious that generated the play. These facts come entirely from the records of the life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), the poet and dramatist who for various reasons, both merry and serious, chose to hide himself behind the mask of “William Shakespeare.” (1)
From boyhood Edward de Vere was convinced that his true role in the history of his country would be played in the profession of arms, in which many of the Earls of Oxford had excelled. He dreamed of performing military feats comparable to those of the famous generals and heroes in the books that he loved to read. When he was fourteen years old his uncle Arthur Golding dedicated to the boy The Abridgement of the Histories of Trogus Pompeius, and informed the literary world “how earnest a desire” the little Earl had to peruse “and communicate with others as well the histories of ancient times, and things done long ago, as also of the present estate of things in our days, and that not without a certain pregnancy of wit and ripeness of understanding.” This interest in history, Golding wrote to his nephew, rejoiced the hearts of all men who felt “faithful affection to the honorable house of your ancestors,” and stirred up “a great hope and expectation of such wisdom and experience in you in times to come, as is meet and beseeming for so noble a race.” He urged the young nobleman to