Rosemary is a lawyer and solicitor originally from Cork, now living in Dublin, where she works as an assistant parliamentary counsel drafting legislation in the office of the Attorney General.  

In 2003 she took up acting lessons as a hobby and enjoyed participating in some dramatic productions.  After witnessing a brilliant and moving production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar by director Andy Hinds in 2008 she joined his weekly classes in learning to perform classical acting. Deeply immersed in wrestling with and appreciating Shakespeare’s language and core themes, she came across the Shakespeare Authorship Question around 2012. Intrigued and sensing from both an experiential and intellectual level that she needed to further research this astonishing yet plausible claim, she became convinced by the lack of factual support for the Stratford business man being a writer and the sheer weight in favour of Edward de Vere being the hidden author behind the name “Shakespeare”.

That led her to deciding to travel to those places associated with the Earl of Oxford. Such were her adventures that she wrote them up in the form of a one woman show – A Rose by Any Other Name – which she debuted in Edinburgh Fringe 2022 to the delight of audience and positive press reviews.  This show details her journey with Shakespeare from childhood to recent times and includes some wonderful discoveries, one of which  was a beautiful sculpture dedicated to Catherine Glyndwr, a character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1, which sculpture is located on the site of one of the Earl of Oxford’s London residences – Oxford Place by London Stone. Another discovery was a fresco dating from the 1560s of Portia, wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato, on the wall of Villa Foscari, the real life likely location for Belmont! 

‘Coincidences’ are a regular feature in Rosemary’s life and she feels great support from these whilst on this completely unexpected journey. One such coincidence led her to a directing course dissecting various well known plays. Amongst these was Translations by brilliant Irish playwright Brian Friel and she was astounded to find magnificently woven surreptitious references to the Shakespeare Authorship Question and Edward de Vere in that play. Rosemary’s research was published in the de Vere Society newsletter and on its YouTube channel. 

Rosemary hopes to continue to produce her play and write more about her journey as an Irish woman exploring the fascinating question of Shakespeare authorship.