The Master of the Ceremonies

A close examination of Sir Lewes Lewkenor’s extraordinary career, his writings and his influence upon the plays of William Shakespeare opens a treasure trove of new insights into their themes, staging and purpose—and the magnificent theatrical entertainments presented before Elizabeth I, James I, foreign ambassadors and visiting princes at the English court.

Born into a prominent Sussex family, Lewkenor entered the Middle Temple in 1579 before embarking upon a military career in the Low Countries. He served in the armies of the Duke of Parma, witnessed the savage struggle between Protestant and Catholic Europe, and knew soldiers whose exploits would find remarkable counterparts in Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies. Among his commanders was Baptista del Monte, whom Lewkenor later identified as Captain General of Venice. His experiences brought him into the company of professional soldiers, exiles, adventurers and men whose loyalties crossed the political and religious boundaries of Europe.

Returning to England, Lewkenor transformed these experiences into literature. The Resolved Gentleman (1594) explored courage, Fortune, conscience, mortality and the great examples of classical history. The Estate of English Fugitives (1595) exposed the lives of Englishmen serving foreign powers, recounting episodes of military treachery, religious persecution, usury and exile. In 1599 he published The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, introducing English readers to the republic’s extraordinary political institutions, laws, officers and military organisation. His Spanish Mandeville of Miracles(1600) opened another world of supernatural wonders, prophecy and extraordinary adventures.

These books lead directly into the Shakespeare investigation. For more than two centuries, scholars have recognised Lewkenor’s Venetian translation as an important source for Othello. Its descriptions of the Venetian Senate, the officers of the night and the employment of foreign generals find striking counterparts in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Lewkenor’s own military language offers further comparisons with Othello’s account of his life in war. And The Merchant of Venice raises an even more intriguing question: could Shakespeare have encountered Lewkenor’s knowledge of Venice before the translation appeared in print? Christopher Whitfield proposed precisely such a connection, drawing attention to Lewkenor’s Middle Temple relationships and his kinship with the Combe family of Stratford, who were themselves connected with Shakespeare.

The connections extend far beyond Venice. Lewkenor’s writings on Vienna, Maximilian and the disguise of a soldier as a friar illuminate Measure for Measure. His accounts of conscience, death, Providence and resolution invite comparison with Hamlet. His experience of the Low Countries wars brings us towards Henry V, Falstaff, Fluellen and the professional soldiers of Shakespeare’s histories. His classical narratives anticipate incidents in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, while his descriptions of exile, divided allegiance and Fortune offer fascinating parallels with As You Like It, Coriolanus and King Lear. The historical and geographical worlds of Shakespeare’s plays repeatedly intersect with those described by Lewkenor.

But Lewkenor was not merely a writer whose books Shakespeare may have read. He belonged to Shakespeare’s social and theatrical world. Edmund Spenser praised his literary style. His family connections reached into the aristocratic households of Sussex and the circles of Southampton and the Herbert brothers. His association with the Middle Temple and the Combes offers a route towards Shakespeare’s Stratford acquaintances. His career placed him among courtiers, diplomats, writers and patrons whose names recur throughout the history of the Elizabethan theatre.

In 1603 James I appointed Lewkenor Master of the Ceremonies, an office he retained until his death in 1627. He became responsible for receiving foreign ambassadors, arranging royal audiences, resolving disputes of precedence and attending distinguished visitors at court. It was a position at the very centre of Jacobean diplomatic society, where theatrical performances, masques and entertainments were an essential part of royal hospitality. Shakespeare’s company, now the King’s Men, performed for the same court and for the foreign dignitaries who passed through it.

The surviving records provide extraordinary glimpses of this world. Lewkenor appears among those appointed to attend the Duke of Bracciano at the Whitehall Twelfth Night entertainment of January 1601. In 1609 he arranged a private play for himself and his friends at the Goldsmiths’ Company. In 1610 he received Prince Louis Frederick of Württemberg, whose party subsequently visited the Globe Theatre and witnessed a performance of The Moor of Venice. Here the circle becomes almost complete: the man whose book had helped explain Shakespeare’s Venice was officially receiving a foreign prince who went to Shakespeare’s own theatre to see Othello.

Lewkenor’s diplomatic career continued through the reign of James I. He received ambassadors from across Europe, moved between the royal palaces and the capital’s diplomatic households, and remained closely involved in a world where politics and theatre continually overlapped. In 1626, the French ambassador François de Bassompierre recorded Lewkenor’s involvement in arranging an English theatrical entertainment. From the military adventures of Elizabeth’s reign to the royal playhouses of the Stuarts, Lewkenor’s life had passed through the very landscape of Shakespearean drama.

This website presents the evidence for that remarkable relationship, play by play. Rather than asking readers to accept a single sweeping proposition, it invites them to examine twenty individual investigations. Begin with Othello, where the documentary connections are particularly compelling, then move through The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Macbeth, The Tempest and the other plays. Follow the original quotations, explore the contemporary biographies and consult Lewkenor’s surviving books.

The cumulative argument is the heart of the investigation. One connection may be explained as coincidence, another as a shared literary source, another as the natural consequence of men living in the same age. But when military experience, literary language, personal relationships, diplomatic appointments and documented theatrical occasions are assembled across Shakespeare’s works, an extraordinary picture emerges.

Sir Lewes Lewkenor was not a peripheral figure in Shakespeare’s England. He stood at the intersection of the worlds from which Shakespeare drew his plays. This website sets out to show just how extensive those connections were.

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