It has been a long-held belief among Shakespeare authorship doubters that Audrey, the character in As You Like It, is a symbol for Audience. Quoting Oxfordian Alex McNeil, who writes: “The very name Audrey is significant. Although, as a proper name, its derivation is Anglo-Saxon, Shakespeare may be suggesting a connection to the Latin verb audire—to hear—from which the familiar words “audience,” “audit,” and “auditory” are derived. Shakespeare’s dramatic words were written, of course, but they were written to be heard by an audience."Some Marlovians concur with McNeil's belief, including Wraight. But as McNeill points out the two words come from different roots. Audrey is actually a form of the name Ethelred or Ethel. Although some critics are awed (so to speak) by the sound of the word, there is no need to ignore or dismiss an obvious biographical connection: the name of the wife of the author's best friend to whom a recent continuation of his masterpiece, Hero and Leander, had been recently dedicated!
