Percy Allen

Percy Allen (1872–1959) was a British writer, journalist and specialist in Elizabethan theatre, known for the Prince Tudor theory and the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship.

Early life Allen was born on 13 October 1872 in Croydon to James Allen, a solicitor, and Frances Mary 'Fanny' Stirling (1842-1929), an actress. Allen's maternal grandparents were Mary Anne 'Fanny' Stirling (née Hehl, later Lady Gregory), an actress, and Edward Stirling, a playwright.

Allen's twin brother, Ernst Stirling Allen (1872–1939), was a solicitor and fellow advocate of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship. At the same time Allen became interested in Spiritualism, after having read several books on the subject. He was convinced of the veracity of spirit-communication by Arthur Conan Doyle. Allen argued that the Ashbourne portrait depicted de Vere in the guise of Shakespeare, asserting that the features of the man in the portrait corresponded to those of de Vere and that the costume implied a date earlier than 1611, the one signed to the image. He believed that the portrait dated from 1597, but had later been retouched as part of "an elaborate plot". Allen also believed that the Grafton portrait depicted de Vere.

Allen argued that George Chapman was a bitter enemy of Oxford and that many of his writings were attacks on Oxford/Shakespeare. He is the "Rival Poet" mentioned in the sonnets. According to Allen, his play The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois is in fact a sustained criticism of Hamlet. Oxford wrote Troilus and Cressida in response, an attack on Chapman's translations of Homer, in which Chapman is caricatured as Thersites. This was the suggestion that the queen had a son by Oxford, which first appears in an appendix to The Life Story of Edward De Vere. The child is not identified. Allen argues that a passage in Two Gentlemen of Verona is a reference to the queen's pregnancy, which could easily be concealed in those days by the "fashion of dress of great ladies". A later book claimed that the child was an actor named William Hughes, and then finally Allen argued that it was Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, the dedicatee of Shakespeare's poems.

Allen's theory was not well received by many Oxfordians. Among those who rejected it was Sigmund Freud, a strong supporter of Looney. Freud wrote personally to Allen to express his disapproval.

These revelations were published in Talks with Elizabethans in 1945. The controversy caused by the events forced Allen to stand down as president of the Oxfordian organisation the Shakespeare Fellowship, to which he had been elected in 1944.