DAVID EWALD writes:

The following is somewhat interesting in light of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex move to Frogmore Cottage and now to North America:

If you open up a copy of the 1623 First Folio to the play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, page 44 you will see George Page asking his wife Margaret: “How now Meg?”. Turn to page 48 and you will see three references to Frogmore (two of them associated with Anne Page). Finally look on page 49 and you will see George Page referring to the “wilde Prince and Pointz” (the Prince of course being Prince Hal/Harry). The only other times that the name ‘Meg’ occurs in the First Folio is twice in Much Ado About Nothing (Margaret) and once in The Tempest, Stephano drunkenly sings a bawdy song (where coincidentally Meg is preferred to Kate; though I personally like them both equally). Frogmore only appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

How now, Meg? This question was asked of Margaret Page by her husband soon after she was reading a letter sent to her by Falstaff, when she then pondered the elevation of Alice Ford’s status to Knighthood (Sir Alice Ford?; page 43). Meghan Markle was married in the Chapel where Knights of the Garter are elevated to that status (Prince Harry is not yet a KG). How now Meg, indeed!

Frogmore plays a key role in being the place where peace is brought by the Host of the Garter between Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans in their dispute with each other pertaining to the suit for the hand of Anne Page. The Sussexes desire to retain Frogmore Cottage as their own Haven of Peace while they are living in the UK resonates well with Shakespeare.

George Page’s disdain for Fenton’s companionship with the “wild prince” as it pertains to his daughter only suggests that Fenton is too highly connected for the good of his daughter, “he is of too high a Region, he knows too much”. Sound familiar?

Prince Harry’s grandfather, Prince Philip, believes that Sir Henry Neville wrote at least some of the Shakespeare Canon (as do I). Sir Henry was the Ambassador to France from 1599 to 1601 before he became entangled in the Essex Rebellion. He was sent to the Tower of London with his friend Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. In 1602, while in the Tower, Southampton commissioned the 1602 Gosnold voyage to North America, likely with the aid of his friend, Sir Henry Neville. The first English building in New England was erected at Cuttyhunk, MA, in the hopes of creating a permanent trading post there, though it was immediately abandoned in 1602. Earlier, in 1599, while serving as Ambassador in France, Neville was approached with a plan to attack the Spanish held Havana, a plan that he supported and passed on to Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Robert Cecil. Later Neville was a high level officer in the Gosnold led London Virginia Company Jamestown settlement (becoming one of only a few to oversee both the Northerly and Southerly Companies), along with the Earl of Southampton. Interest in North America is in Prince Harry’s blood as he is a descendant of both Neville and Wriothesley through the Spencer line. Neville married Ann Killigrew, the daughter of Katherine Cooke Killigrew, the daughter of Anthony Cooke, the man that famously educated his daughters to the point where they are now considered to have been the most educated women of the Elizabethan Age. The Mayflower’s Francis Cooke (my own ancestor) appears to have been a descendant of Anthony Cooke, and he is an ancestor of Prince Harry through his mother Lady Diana Spencer.

Mr. Ewald is featured in the 2018 book: My Shakespeare: The Authorship Controversy (Experts examine the arguments for Bacon, Neville, Oxford, Marlowe, Mary Sidney, Shakspere and Shakespeare), edited by William Leahy. He argues that Sir Henry Neville is an author of at least some of the Shakespeare plays.

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