John Neville

Leonel Sharp Spear John Neville

This book will startle the reader with its implications; read it and Shakespeare will have to give place to Sharpspear. In Leonel Sharp we find a man who claimed to have written Queen Elizabeth's Tilbury speech; a man who writes in the language of Shakespeare, but who routinely wraps his prose in the guise of a fool's prattle; a man described by a contemporary as someone who liked to play the fool. Sharp was a spy and here there are gripping codes found in his and Shakespeare's funeral memorials. Shakespeare dedicated 'these insu[lt]ing sonnets' to WH, presumed to be William Herbert, the son of the Countess of Pembroke, who wrote, 'the lion's brood --- whose --- teeth more sharp than shaft or spear.' It will be for every person to resolve if they may conceive of Shakespeare as Sharpspear.