Where Did Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford Go When He Vanished from Plague-Stricken Venice?
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Can Edward de Vere’s mysterious summer-long disappearance illuminate Shakespeare’s southern Italian plays?
For roughly four months in 1575, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford vanished without a trace.
One of the most celebrated young English noblemen of his generation simply disappeared from plague-stricken Venice on Italy’s east coast. Then, more than four months later, he reappeared in Genoa on Italy’s west coast. What happened in between? No one had a clue.
De Vere had arrived in Venice in May 1575 carrying letters of introduction from Queen Elizabeth I, Henri III of France, and Giovanni Morosini, the Venetian ambassador to France. Within weeks, plague engulfed the city. Ships were quarantined. Churches closed. The Rialto district was sealed off. Checkpoints ringed the lagoon. Tens of thousands would die.
Fifteen years later, one unexpected clue surfaced: a recollection of seeing de Vere in Palermo. But for months, even the extensive spy network of his father-in-law, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth I’s chief minister, returned only muttered excuses and chagrined silence on de Vere’s whereabouts.
CAMILLO:
“A cause more promising Than a wild dedication of yourselves To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores most certain To miseries enough; no hope to help you, But as you shake off one to take another; Nothing so certain as your anchors, who Do their best office, if they can but stay you Where you'll be loath to be.”
The Winter’s Tale, IV, iv
So where did de Vere go?
The surviving clues point toward one remarkable possibility.
🧭 The Only Way Was to Travel Farther from England
PORTIA: “In terms of choice, I am not solely led by nice direction”
The Merchant of Venice, II.i
You can find details of what de Vere faced in Venice here: What Would You Do if You Arrived in Venice Just Before the Great Plague of 1575?
He couldn’t go north, west or home. Plague had closed the Alpine routes, and cities he had passed through to get to Venice were infected. To the south lay the Papal States and the large stretch of Italy’s peninsula controlled by the Spanish. Elizabeth had been excommunicated by the Pope. How warmly would her “cousin”, bearing letters instructing that he be treated as if he were the Queen of England herself, be received there ?
Not with a welcome mat.
That left east.
⚓️ The Voyage to Illyria
VIOLA: “And what should I do in Illyria?”
Twelfth Night, I.ii
You may think that Shakespeare’s Illyria was an imagined place.
It wasn’t.
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Sixteenth-century Venice controlled a long chain of ports, fortified cities and islands stretching from Venice, across the Adriatic’s north coast and south down its east coast through what Renaissance maps called “Illyria” or “Illyricum”. Today, we know Illyria as part of the coast of Trieste, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania. That sea route, ending at Butrint, had carried trade for thousands of years.
Morosini’s letter offered de Vere unfettered passage within all Venetian territories. It wasn’t exactly safe. There was still plague. And pirates. But compared to Venice, growing more deadly by the day, Illyria had possibilities.
De Vere may have known something about Illyria from maps and history books. A very few English sailors and pilgrims had occasionally passed by it. But Illyria was far off the trail for English noblemen sent on state business to the courts of continental Europe like de Vere. But fortunately, this young English lord carried an encyclopedia of classical literature in his head.
And, decades later, Illyria shows up in two of Shakespeare’s plays.
Twelfth Night deposits Viola on Illyria’s sandy (called by Shakespeare “desert”) beaches and all the action takes place in Illyria’s palaces and grand homes.
The Winter’s Tale moves through the Adriatic world between Sicily and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), with Camillo, Perdita (and a bear) all landing on Bohemia’s shore. Today, Bohemia is landlocked. But in the thirteenth century, Ottokar II, King of Bohemia, also ruled Carinthia and Carniola, part of Illyria, extending his dominions south to the Adriatic near the Gulf of Trieste.
Shakespeare's seemingly impossible “seacoast of Bohemia” was historically true.
What's really interesting is that his plays that are set on sixteenth-century Venice’s Adriatic coast contain strikingly specific descriptions of its wildlife, beaches, topography, and flora, as if an eye witness were recounting a voyage.
📜 Following Virgil
“We cannot make our northing, seeing that Fortune has the upper hand. I say, give in and follow where she calls . . . the Sicilian ports.”
The Aeneid, Book V
A classically educated Elizabethan nobleman did not travel empty-headed.
Virgil’s The Aeneid, the great Roman epic describing Aeneas’ voyage after the fall of Troy, was one of the foundations of de Vere’s classical tradition. The poem traces Aeneas’s journey around Greece, to Butrint, now in Albania, on the Adriatic’s eastern shore. There, Aeneas sailed across the Adriatic, around the southern coast of Sicily, passing dangerous straits and volcanic islands, before he finally reached Cumae in Campagna on the west coast of Italy, and continued on to what became Rome.
Once at Butrint, De Vere had a decision to make: either to sail east towards Greece, or west, following Virgil’s route in The Aeneid towards Sicily. I think he chose to sail west, following Aeneas across the Adriatic, around Sicily, through the Aeolian Islands, and up the west coast of the Italian peninsula to land in the independent Republic of Genoa, since the Kingdom of Naples, Rome and the Papal States were highly dangerous for him.
This is also where the mystery deepens about Shakespeare. It isn’t just that he also knew Virgil. It is where he keeps coming ashore:
Venice (Merchant of Venice, Othello)
the Illyrian coast (The Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night)
Messina, Sicily (Much Ado About Nothing)
Syracusa and Ortygia, Sicily (The Comedy of Errors)
Palermo, Sicily (The Winter’s Tale)
the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily off of the coast of southern Italy (The Tempest)
🌞 And Then There is Sicily
FLORIZEL: I have from you Sicilian shores dismiss’d; Who for Bohemia bend, to signify Not only my success in Libya, sir, But my arrival and my wife’s in safety. Here we are.
The Winter’s Tale, V.i
Shakespeare’s plays are a Sicilian bonanza. The Winter’s Tale sails between Bohemia in Illyria and King Leontes’ Sicilian capital, likely the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo, where de Vere later was reportedly sighted. Beatrice and Benedict bicker in Messina in Much Ado About Nothing. All six principal characters in The Comedy of Errors hail from the ancient Syracusa on Sicily’s southeast coast. Even the island with sulfur pools and a strange volcanic atmosphere from The Tempest feels deeply tied to the volcanic Aeolian Islands between Sicily and the Italian peninsula.
Shakespeare keeps drifting towards the edges of this world: islands, ports, deserted beaches, exile routes, separations, shipwrecks, and storms at sea.
Remarkably like what a displaced traveler fleeing plague Venice by sea and circumnavigating the Italian peninsula and Sicily would have encountered.
🌊 Memories of the Sea in Shakespeare’s Plays
ARIEL: Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
The Tempest, I.ii
The deeper I looked into de Vere’s disappearance, the more it looked like an extraordinary bid to survive under extreme circumstances. Elizabeth expected the young noblemen whom she sent abroad to develop skills, use their wits and return ready to serve diplomatically or militarily. For more on her Majesty's expectations, see:
De Vere's time abroad was a baptism by fire.
We still cannot know exactly what happened during de Vere's summer-long disappearance. But the clues point towards a sea-change brought on by a Venice he desperately needed to escape; a viable route through Venetian Illyria; Virgil's ancient itinerary round Sicily; a later report placing him in Palermo; and finally Genoa, a neutral republic port where de Vere reappeared, sunburned and with an injured knee, but alive.
In light of de Vere’s trip, Shakespeare’s Mediterranean settings no longer feel random or scattered across a hazy Renaissance map. They feel focussed.
De Vere’s disappearance may have been a life-changing journey that Shakespeare turned from terrifying into something both “rich and strange”.
🎥 If this voyage intrigued you, you can find out more on YouTube: Shakespeare in Sicily
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