Thomas of Woodstock: An Elizabethan Murder Mystery
By Anonymous

The Elizabethan thriller, Thomas of Woodstock, has long tantalized and mystified Renaissance scholars.  A taut, dynamic five act drama written in the mode of the young Shakespeare, it features a charismatic nobleman, the youngest brother of John of Gaunt, who is murdered onstage in full view of the audience while penning his eloquent defense against the judicial inquest of Richard II's rapacious Government, which seeks his life for supposed crimes against the state.

By turns outrageously comic, phantasmagoric or touching, the play is sustained by a lyrical undercurrent of psychological realism and a dark brutality which foreshadows masterworks such as Macbeth or Richard II.  Although unknown to modern audiences, it remains among the great classic dramas of the Golden age of English theatre.

The history of the play may seem stranger than fiction.  The death of the historical Woodstock, the youngest of the seven uncles of Richard II, shocked the nation and remained a scandal, not unlike contemporary political disputes over the murders of John and Robert Kennedy during the 1960's in America, for many centuries.  So great was Woodstock's threat to Richard II's reign that after his death, his "confession" was published in butchered form -- removing the exculpatory clauses in which he justified his actions -- in every English Shire.

But while the protagonist's writing was published, the play which now bears his name survives in only one manuscript copy (dated circa 1592 or earlier) owned by the British Museum.  Packed with subversive political innuendo about censorship, taxation, conspiracy, the telling and retelling of history, and the causes and methods of popular revolt, it apparently caused an uproar when first staged.  Banned from publication, it inspired parody by Shakespeare's young contemporary Ben Jonson and survived only via literary underground, in private manuscript collections, until finally published in 1870 by the great Shakespeare sleuth James Orchard Halliwell Phillips, under the suggestive title: Richard II Part 1: A Composition Anterior to Shakespeare's Tragedy.

Who wrote Thomas of Woodstock?  The question is no more resolved in the twentieth century than was the question of who killed him in the 16th century.  Long suspected as "Shakespearean" juvenilia, the play resists canonization as the bard's because of its many telling and significant links to Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, now thought by a growing minority of Shakespeare scholars to be the true name behind the nom de plume "Shakespeare."

But whoever wrote Woodstock, it is dynamic and entertaining drama long overdue for a breathtaking revival.  Among other unique features, it may be the only drama in the history of the world to feature a long conversation between the protagonist and his horse.

Has Woodstock been staged in the last four hundred years?

Hampshire Shakespeare Co. is willing to bet two season tickets to our season's run (Woodstock and Comedy of Errors) that this play has never been staged in North America at all.  We'll be glad to be corrected, but we think this is the 20th century world premier of this spine-tingling murder mystery.

Come, listen, and form your own opinion:  Who killed Thomas of Woodstock?

And:  Who wrote Thomas of Woodstock?