You may have been closer to the truth than you thought in your book Fools and Mortals.  Something is going on with Leonal Sharpe and Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech.  A cursory internet search will demonstrate that Leonel Sharp provided the canonical copy of the Tilbury speech to the Duke of Buckingham in an undated letter of about 1623 and was at Tilbury and was instructed to redeliver the speech to the army at Tilbury.  Leonal Sharpe can be connected very closely to William Shakespeare.  Reading between the lines, he literally says that Elizabeth lyed (in camp) and that no man hath the speech but from himself, which could be interpreted to mean he wrote it and she lied when she said she did.  There is much more.  His family was from Stratford and had the Falcon’s Head crest.  Shakespeare had the falcon’s wings crest holding a pen.  In 1606 he was summoned to appear for causing trouble between the English and Scottish factions at court – Macbeth the Scottish play was from 1605.  There is much, much more, including a possible code in Leonal Sharpe’s memorial.  It is a true story and would make a great novel or book, notwithstanding your comments about book ideas – apologies.  I would be happy to provide more evidence, of which there is a lot, but I have summarized it in 2000 words.  It is by no means certain, of course, but it is very plausible and I suspect there is something significant in regards Leonel Sharpe, Shakespeare and/or the Tilbury speech.  You probably know that Richard Sharpe was an actor in Shakespeare’s company the King’s men.  He first acted when Leonel Sharp was imprisoned and went out of favour in 1614 (just after Shakespeare stopped writing) and died about a year after Leonel Sharpe died.  Does this interest you?

John Williams