Book Description
The debate over the true author of ShakespeareÂ's body of work (some of which was published under the name “Shake-speare”) began not long after the death of William Shakespeare, the obscure actor and entrepreneur from Stratford-upon-Avon who was conventionally assumed to be the author. There were natural doubts that an uneducated son of a glover who never left England and apparently owned no books could have produced some of the greatest works of Western literature. Early investigators into the mystery argued for such eminent figures as Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon as possible authors, but recent scholarship has turned to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare” by Another Name is the first complete literary biography of Edward de Vere that tells the story of his action-packed life—as student, soldier, courtier, lawyer, political intriguer, sophisticate, traveler, and, above all, writer—finding in it the background material for all of ShakespeareÂ's plays. Anderson brings to bear a wealth of new evidence, most notably de VereÂ's personal copy of the Bible (recently analyzed to show the correlation between his underlinings and the biblical allusions in ShakespeareÂ's work) and has employed it all to at last give a complete portrait and background to the man who was “Shakespeare.” BACKCOVER: “Makes a compelling case. . . . AndersonÂ's demonstration of how de VereÂ's real life matches the characters and circumstances found in the plays attributed to Shakespeare is especially impressive.”
—THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
“Deserves serious attention. . . . Mr. Anderson shows there are myriad Shakespeare authorship connections for de Vere.”
—THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Tantalizing parallels between the plays and OxfordÂ's life certainly exist. . . . Anderson has a knack for finding fishy aspects of the traditional view that Shakespeare was Shakespeare.”
—NEW YORK SUN
Customer Reviews:
The Man Who Most Probably Was Not - Shakespeare.......2007-08-25
This book is very much of the type that used to be called a 'rollicking good read' in the old days; fairly light on the facts, but with a damn good plot. Rather like books about the Bermuda Triangle or Atlantis or the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, it presents its story as if it were a thriller or detective story. Perhaps it is?
The book itself is really not so much a biography of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as a new demonstration of the thesis that the Earl was really the author of Shakespeare's plays. As such, if the reader if looking for a scholarly, thorough, well-researched and historically informed account of the Earl's actual life, then they should really turn to Alan H. Nelson's magisterial biography: 'Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.' (Liverpool University Press, 2003). Thiis likely to be the standard work for anyone interested in the historical man for many years to come.
While Anderson doesn't really add much to a large number of other books that make broadly similar claims regarding Oxford's authorship of Shakespeare's plays, one cannot fault the author for his vigorous story-telling abilities: 'ON APRIL 12, 1550, IN THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS OF A BRITISH stone-walled medieval fortress, a lord and lady welcomed their heir into the world...'. Being British, I had a slight chuckle over the fairy-tale style opening lines, and I always thought we just called them 'castles', but perhaps this represents an American usage. Apart from the books very popular style, its other strength is to make the argument in an economical and straightforward way.
Yes, the author provides much detail to match elements of Shakespeare's poems and plays against Oxford's life, but these often seem peripheral and conjectural. Take 'Hamlet', yes it is true that Oxford's mother remarried when his father died - but there's no evidence he resented his stepfather, or that his father died of anything but natural causes. James the 1st is a better bet than Oxford for Hamlet, if you consider who killed his father, were the King a contender in the 'was he really Shakespeare?' stakes.
Likewise the argument that Oxford knew about Italy which Anderson demonstrates at length. Well, the problem here is that a great many Elizabethans went to Italy and so had first hand knowledge of the area. Anderson is therefore making a case against Shakespeare, much more than he is making a case for Oxford as Shakespeare. In any case bearing in mind there were Commedia Del'Arte actors in London who had travelled from the Continent, it needs to be a stronger case that it is: otherwise it could just be that the playwright had talked to someone who knew Italy very well, such as an Italian actor. He seems to assume that once he has demonstrated the plays aren't by what he calls the 'actor from Stratford', then it necessarily follows they must necessarily be by Oxford. But it doesn't.
What, I think is a shame is that Anderson doesn't really attempt to deal with some of the obvious objections to be made against the case for the Earl being the author of Shakespeare's plays, which would have made it a much stronger book, but relies on the 'conspiracy of silence' thesis.
Bearing in mind that many aristocrats eventually found their work published either during or after their deaths during in this period, it has never made much sense that if the Earl of Oxford had really written Shakespeare's plays, why the secret hadn't come out after his death, when he wasn't around to be shamed by it all? Though the claim there was a stigma against aristocratic publishing is quite slender when you consider both Oxford's actual character - as Nelson makes clear he did not much care what people thought of him and so many people said unpleasant things about him as it was- and the fact that the many people who must have known the secret would have realised by about 1610 that these works by Shakespeare weren't going to disgrace his memory in any case. So why weren't they published under his name by his friends? Elizabeth and James I had a tremendous passion for plays, so would either have been scandalised to discover one of their Earls had become a famous playwright.
However, there are a also number of other objections that the book doesn't address which it should have, as they would have made for a rather more solid work.
1. Oxford's published poetry is generally judged by literary critics as fairly mediocre, if competent, by Elizabethan aristocratic standards, so how exactly does he rise to become the greatest poet of his age in so short a time? If his published poetry represent his early work, then his rise to be able to write Shakespeare's plays is really quite unprecedented in world literature? Are there any other examples of such development?
2. As Nelson shows quite conclusively, there isn't much evidence that Oxford is very well educated (although he had expensive home tutors, that doesn't actually mean much unless he was learning). He left University when he was still a child and both of his University degrees were honorary, awarded when he visited Oxford and Cambridge later as part of royal parties. In any case a degree at Oxford and Cambridge basically marked attendance during a period at this point in history - and there's no evidence that he was any kind of University star like Marlowe. From his extant letters, Oxford doesn't seem very much interested in literature, beyond the typical patterns of aristocratic patronage. How can we reconcile this with his writing of Shakespeare's plays that seem to demonstrate the type of learning you would expect from someone educated to at least good Elizabethan grammar school standard and where you either learned in school, or else you suffered? Though Nelson in his book on Oxford does demonstrate convincingly that his Latin wasn't very good, which might suggest that Jonson's famous comment about Shakespeare's 'Litle Latin' has an applicability, Oxford's published letters don't suggest he had much feel for English either and he invariably refers to himself as Oxenford, not Oxford.
3. While Oxford certainly knew about Elizabethan court life, is there really anything in Shakespeare's plays representing court life in general, that isn't in the works of a host of other middle class playwrights of the period from Marlowe to Webster etc.? More significantly, Shakespeare's plays are filled with depictions of the everyday worlds of rural and urban life and the big question is how would an aristocrat such as Oxford have easy access to that kind of knowledge? There was plenty of material available in books and in plays about court and aristocratic life, some of it written by playwrights further up the social scale than Shakespeare, but very much less was avilable on the inside life of farmers or workers.
4. It is a common truism, but very much proven by the dramatic qualities of Shakespeare's plays over the years of performance, that he is the supreme example of the actor's playwright - no one writes as well for actors. You see this in similar figures like Sophocles, Moliere, Brecht, and the playwrights who weren't actors have spent sustained periods of time in the theatre - Checkhov, Beckett, etc. It is usually assumed that this means that Shakespeare must have been an extremely experienced actor to have that kind of insider knowledge of how plays worked. If so, where is the evidence of Oxford working in the theatre in that hands on kind of way?
5. Whatever autobiographical facts Shakespeare's plays may conceal - one of the most obvious things about them is their ability to present a wide variety of different kinds of people in wholly sympathetic and convincing ways. Shakespeare can present sympathetically anyone from a murderous Macbeth, to a jealous Moor, to a maligned Jew. Focusing on proposed autobiographical facts is one thing, but the book doesn't provide any evidence that Oxford had that kind of amazing ability to enter into other's lives so convincingly that is often cited as one of Shakespeare's trademarks.
Stephen Greenblatt's 'Will in the World', his recent biography of Shakespeare makes this point again, though John Keat's did it better than anyone else when he spoke of Shakespeare's 'negative capability', implying that was the reason it was so hard to get an idea of the person behind the drama. Yet, Oxford's life and published writings don't seem to give any of that impression that he can see things from other people's radically different and often conficting points of view.
6. Last, there's a long critical tradition of critics perceiving Shakespeare's work as being subtly ironic and subversive of the feudal world order and therefore the power structures of the Elizabethan world. That is why a whole series of radical thinkers from Marx and Engels to generations of the European Left have thought Shakespeare was quietly but consitently undermining the whole of the social structures he lived in.
How can we square this with an aristocrat writing as Shakespeare using a nom de plume and in addition, one who seems to accept the social status quo as right and natural? Wat evidence is there that he isn't confined to the narrowness typical of his social class - bearing in mind that almost all of the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights came from middle-class, professional and gentry families and none (that I can think of) from the aristocracy, let alone the highest and most socially elevated and isolated aristocracy like Oxford? It is more of a leap to see an aristocrat capable of this than one of the bourgeois Elizabethan playwrights who'd experienced poverty as a child or as an artist.
If there is a second edition of this book, or another one with he same thesis. then these are the kinds of questions it will really need to be able to answer, to make a more convincing case for Oxford having anything to do with Shakespeare's plays. Identifying possible allusions and references just isn't enough - the literary qualities of the plays and poetry and the theatrical quality of the drama need to matched against what we know of Oxford. Or a contemporary Elizabethan document announcing that Oxford wrote Shakespeare's poetry and plays.
In the meantime, it is a fun read, but treat it more an an enjoyable work of fiction that anything more substantial.
REVIEW OF MARK ANDERSON'S SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME BY JOHN CHUCKMAN.......2007-08-23
This is a biography of Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, but the focus of this book is not so much to document the Earl's life as to demonstrate that the Earl was the author of the plays and poems we ascribe to William Shakespeare.
The known facts of Shakespeare's own life are few and seemingly unpromising to have produced the language's greatest poet. Many scholars and critics over the centuries have speculated that others were responsible for the plays and poems.
In de Vere, Anderson does have a fairly strong candidate. The author does show many connections between events in the life of Edward de Vere and facts and references in Shakespeare's work.
I think Anderson's strongest argument is the idea that a man like the real William Shakespeare, actor and theater producer, a man without any access to high levels of government, a man who so far as we know never traveled to any extent, and a man who would not have had access to any great library, simply would not be familiar with all the sophisticated matters touched on in the plays.
To bolster this general argument, Anderson identifies many circumstances from the plays that may be explained in terms of de Vere's experience, but they all remain suggestive, and in many cases Anderson does go through a rather tortured effort to make what he regards as a strong point.
Anderson offers many other supporting suggestive bits such as anagrams and drawings seeming to reveal another as the actual playwright and passages annotated by de Vere in contemporary books. The whole of this is suggestive, at times powerfully so, but it is somewhat less than convincing.
Although I enjoyed this book, nevertheless, in the end, I remain unconvinced. As Anderson says himself, there is no "smoking gun" - and, God, how I wish a scholar writing about our greatest writer would avoid such clichéd American expressions.
The most important doubt for me is found in de Vere's own known writing. While his letters show a man of learning and eloquence, I just do not hear Shakespeare in his words. There are times when Anderson says a reference in a letter is the same matter as a reference in a play or poem, but the magic of the language just isn't there to my mind.
Several interesting thoughts come to mind with the de Vere thesis. First, de Vere - wastrel and swashbuckler, was not a particularly pleasant or even ethical man, quite different to the figure most of us imagine Shakespeare's being.
Second, de Vere was not just a failure as a businessman, he was a total failure at being even the keeper of his inheritance. He had no commercial sense at all.
In the American national battery of tests for teachers some years ago, I noticed an odd question about Shakespeare in which the "correct" answer was about his being a good businessman - running a successful theater company, etc - rather than the romantic ideal of the artist. I thought the question heavily biased by America's focus on making money. If de Vere was Shakespeare, the question is not only odd, the desired answer was altogether wrong.
Despite my reservations, this is a book that should be read by all admirers of Shakespeare and by all who are fascinated by the Elizabethan period.
A curious dislike for Oxford.......2007-05-23
Mark Anderson's book is best understood within the context of Oxfordian history to better reveal its strengths and weaknesses. The seminal book was Shakespeare Identified by the English schoolteacher J. Thomas Looney (pronounced Lohney).
This was followed by The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford by B.M Ward in 1926. Nothing was published until after the war years when Charlton and Dorothy Ogburn wrote This Star of England, which was followed by their son's The Mysterious William Shakespeare. There were also some smaller books arguing the Oxford case, such as Shakespeare Who Was He by Richard Whalen and Alias Shakespeare by Joseph Sobran.
Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography by Diana Price is a detailed account of the life of the man from Stratford-upon-Avon.
The Ogburns in their biographies of Oxford advanced the notion that Henry Wriothesley was the son of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth I. They provided evidence that the Queen and Oxford were a romantic couple and interpreted Venus and Adonis and Shake-speares Sonnets as a literary record. This was followed by Elisabeth Sears Tudor Rose, which details the mysterious circumstances of Southampton's birth. This is known in Oxfordian circles as the PT Theory (Prince Tudor).
However, if PT and PT II are true, this means that Queen Elizabeth had an incestuous relation with her own son, producing Southampton. And this is what every orthodox Oxfordian avoids. Yet, the works of Shakespeare abound with what Hamlet says is "incest that abomination."
My book, Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I, asserted that Princess Elizabeth had a child in 1548 by her stepfather, Thomas Seymour, and this child was placed in the home of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford. He was raised as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This is known as PT Theory Part II.
The book further asserted that Elizabeth had a total of six children, Robert Cecil, Robert Devereux (Essex), Henry Wriothesley (Southampton), Mary Sidney and Elizabeth Leighton. Elizabethan history had to be rewritten to understand Shakespeare and Oxford.
Second, that Oxford did not die in 1604, but was exiled to the Isle of Mersea in the English Channel and there he wrote The Tempest, Shake-speares Sonnets and created the King James Bible. Subsequent, articles have shown that there is no acknowledgement of Oxford's death until January 1609 and an article that compares the topography of Mersea to the island described in the Tempest.
Mr. Anderson has chosen to ignore the main themes developed by Oxfordians and other historians over the decades and presents a rather sanitized version of Elizabethan events. For example, it is simply a known fact that Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester) was the Queen's lover and rumors abounded that she had children with him. This Mr. Anderson ignores.
It is further known that Robert Dudley was married when the Queen ascended the throne, but Robert Dudley was married. His wife was found at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck and everyone in England thought Dudley murdered her. The clamor prevented the Queen from marrying Dudley.
Mr. Anderson makes many comparisons between the characters of Shakespeare, and the life of the Earl of Oxford. Yet, in the most autobiographical of all the plays, Hamlet, he states that Polonius is William Cecil, Ophelia is Anne Cecil, Oxford's wife, the Queen is the Queen, but he fails to draw the logical conclusion that Hamlet, the prince, is Oxford, the Prince of England.
He posits this strange interpretation of the Venus and Adonis and the Sonnets as a literary recreation of Southampton's seduction of Oxford's wife. This seems to be the only way he can avoid the directly dealing with Oxfordian thinking on the Earl of Southampton as the son of the Queen and Oxford.
Mr. Anderson's has many strengths, in particular is account of Oxford's trip through Italy is worth the price of the book. He shows that the Earl of Oxford could have only written the Italian plays of Shakespeare. However, his description of the relation between Oxford and the name "William Shakespeare" and the man from Stratford named "William Shakspere" is so confusing that no one is ever going to figure out what Mr. Anderson means.
Finally, Mr. Anderson has a curious dislike or disgust with Oxford throughout the book that becomes stronger toward the end. His final description of Oxford "from a preening and prancing young champion to a betrayed and jealous middle-aged skeptic to a resigned and bitter old man."
The book has its virtues, but many other books on the subject are clearer explanations of the life and works of the Earl of Oxford, better known to the world as "William Shakespeare."
Paul Streitz
Author: Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I
Superb biography of Edward de Vere.......2007-04-28
The book is a detailed and fascinating account of the life of Edward de Vere, probably the best candidate for the true authorship of the works of William Shakespeare. It is in truth highly unlikely that the man from Stratford-on-Avon, often called "Shaksper", wrote any of the Shakespearean plays, although four hundred years on even raising the authorship question continues to elicit violent emotional protests from untold thousands of supporters of the "Shakespeare myth".
The advocacy of Edward de Vere is indeed blessed by a huge amount of largely circumstantial evidence, most of which comes clearly to light in this volume. Among the most impressive evidence is the litany of detailed parallels between many of the plays and the life of Edward de Vere, including the multitude of colourful characters that surrounded him at the court of Elizabeth. And Mark Anderson does a superb job of spotting very specific references in the plays to events, places, and stories that de Vere for certain knew of first hand.
Two other things that Mark Anderson does very well and with great gusto: Firstly, the book pre-supposes that de Vere is in fact Shakespeare, and thus follows a strategy of seducing the reader rather than battling the adversaries in the authorship question. This "fait accompli" approach is extremely effective. I dare anyone to read this book and not agree that de Vere in all probability was Shakespeare.
Secondly, Mark Anderson never directly tries to discredit the Stratford man. In fact, with the "fait accompli" approach it becomes unecessary, the darkness of doubt closes upon his head quite automatically the deeper you get into the biography. This also means that no advocates of other Shakespeare authors - including the Stratfordians - are ever ridiculed. A clever tactic unless you are out to make a lot of enemies!
I think about 95% of the arguments and details presented in the book are readily believable, although there are a few that are hard to swallow for me personally, such as the interpretation that Prospero's Island (of the Tempest) should represent England - this to me is too far gone. However, a lot of the other parallels seem to make sense and are, if you will, probably true in that they reflect the relations and real life stories surrounding de Vere in great and consistent detail.
The book certainly leaves the lasting impression that de Vere is a very likely Shakespeare. That the plays to a great extent are autobiographical should surprise noone. After all I cannot think of a single author, greater or lesser, who does not write based on personal experience.
Does it have to be either/or?.......2007-04-10
I really enjoyed this book, even though I came away from both more confused and more knowledgeable about the authorship problem. But what a wonderful confusion this is - an intriguing whodunit with great literature at it's centerpiece! What I unequivocally liked about Shakespeare By Another Name was its vivid evocation of Elizabethan history by following the life events and adventures of Edward de Vere.
The circumstantial evidence that Mark Anderson marshals to his thesis that De Vere is the author is really quite remarkable, and the weight of it cannot be ignored. On the other hand, this evidence is by its nature speculative and is really not enough to base a definitive decision on. Just like someone can sure "look" guilty, De Vere sure "looks" like the author of the Shakespeare works.
However, there are bits of circumstantial evidence that work against De Vere as well, chief among them Ben Jonson's comment about the "Sweet Swan of Avon" in the First Folio. (Not adequately explained away by De Vere's former property in the area.) And then there are the poems of De Vere that were attributed to him and published under his name during his lifetime. Many folks will say they are not poetry experts and decline to evaluate them, but after looking at them, I encourage you to do the same and see for yourself what unremitting schlock they are. The spirit of Shakespeare is nowhere to be found in De Vere's published poetry. He comes across as what he was, an extraordinary Renaissance man and adventurer living life to its fullest, but far, far from a man of letters.
So what are we left with? Shakespeare's plays seem to be about De Vere's life, but there seems to me no way that he could have written them. I don't know who actually wrote them, maybe it was the Bard of Stratford, but to me they are clearly the coordinated work of two people. Shakespeare never left England and had little access to books. As great as his imagination was, he would have needed content from somewhere. I think De Vere provided that content to the writer of these plays. Even though De Vere's mark is all over the Shakespeare works, it is the writer "Shakespeare", him or herself, who is the true genius here, not De Vere.
I don't think this kind of collaboration is either unprecedented or unheard of. Goodness knows, there was plenty of mystery about authorship in those days.
In Mark Anderson's book, one gets the continual sense that he is reaching just a bit beyond himself to make a case for something he wants to be true. He may have come closer to the truth of the matter if he had just been satisfied with seeing De Vere as a content provider for Shakespeare. The role of Edward De Vere in the Shakespeare plays was indispensible, but the genius of the plays lies somewhere else.
Average customer rating:
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"Shakespeare" identified in Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford
J. Thomas Looney
Manufacturer: Duell, Sloan and Pearce
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
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| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| Classics
| Contemporary
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| Humor
| Letters & Correspondence
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ASIN: B0007DME6S |
Book Description
In the summer of 1548, the thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth Tudor was secluded at Cheshunt, England. There she gave birth to a boy, whose father was Thomas Seymour, Elizabeth's stepfather. The child was placed in the household of John de Vere, 16th Earl of Oxford and the changeling baby was raised as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.
Edward de Vere was an acknowledged playwright, poet, theatrical producer, musician, dancer and literary figure of the Elizabethan era. He wrote under several pen names and also under names of living persons.
His most famous pen name was "William Shakespeare."
Customer Reviews:
He's got something here, but..........2007-05-23
First of all, this book isn't worth fifty bucks. I spents all my birthday money on it, and I was disappointed.
Second of all, it's pretty obvious this guy doesn't like Elizabeth much. I don't know if it's anti-feminism, or what, but he makes some pretty rotten accusations against her. He seems to use Mary Queen of Scots as his main source that anything happened between Elizabeth and Oxford. In case no one noticed, Mary isn't a very good source. Mary and Elizabeth didn't like each other and they both loved to say nasty things about the other one. Philip II isn't a good source either. Using Mary and Philip as sources is like calling up Severus Snape and asking for a biography of Harry Potter. You aren't going to get very goood info. She was a decent woman, and a decent ruler, but Mr. Streitz seems bent on proving she wasn't.
Second of all, it's pretty obvious he didn't do his research. He can't seem to remember how old these people are at given times. He says Elizabeth was 13 when she had Oxford. Actually, she would've been 14 or 15 depending on whether or not she had him after her birthday. I'm just a kid, but even I know basic math. And he said Jane Grey was Mary Tudor's daughter, but she was her grandaughter. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Tudor history would know that right away.
Third of all, he does actually have something here. It seems to me that he found a bunch of wholes and history and decided to fill them up with one answer. I don't think Elizabeth had all those kids he talked about, I mean maybe she was pregnant after what her step-dad did to her, but I don't really see any proof it was Oxford. However, Oxford could of thought he was King of England. Not because of who his parents were, but just cause of his ego. Essex probably wasn't her kid (despite what the book says) but he seemed to think he was king. The only concrete evidence he had was the play in 1609: "To our ever-living poet" They tend not to say that about people who aren't dead. So maybe Oxford was Shakespeare, or atleast he wrote some stuff for him (I think it was more than one person). But I don't think he was the Queen's son, and I'm a little offended by his Elizabeth dissing and his elitist attitude "Shakespeare was poor and poor people can't write!".
In conclusion:
Don't buy it, borrow it if you get the chance.
Try another Oxfordian book for a better look at things.
Mr. Streitz should learn his dates. (hey that rhymed!)
- J.
[...]
Shakespeare by Another Name.......2006-10-26
Try Shakespeare by Another Name first... And the Wives of Henry the XIIIth and then go back to this one.
Oxfors: Son of QE I, by Paul Streitz.......2006-10-12
Paul:
I finished reading it and I am somewhat at a loss for words to express my opinions.
* Absolutely fascinating book.
* Remarkably interesting for me.
* Almost unbelievably detailed.
* Astonishingly insightful, superlatively written with a fabulous command of the English language and a profound intellect.
I cannot imagine how you found the time to absorb so much information and then detail it in writing. Meticulous.
I spent my career in areas of Earth Science and geology so I am accustomed to "detective work" fossil identification, geological sequences, unraveling the past, using clues to seek out facts. Further, I have an intense interest is archaeology and anthropology as well as history so this book provided an abundance of information about life in the Elizabethan era that I knew little about. Now a void has been filled.
My other readings attributed the KJV bible to Sir Francis Bacon so I will have some reconciling to do.
William E. Tibbe, Sr. Chestnut Ridge, New York
It makes you think.......2006-04-26
It sounds plausible. Compare the pictures of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Edward de Vere, Sir Henry Neville, and Henry Wriothesly, the Earl of Southampton. They all have red hair, and look remarkably similar. It is begining to look like Edward and the two Henrys could have been brothers!! Sir Henry Neville became very fat in middle age - like Henry VIII. He was an only child - rather rare in those days.
Read "The Truth Will Out" by Brenda James - who makes a very good case for Sir Henry Neville being Shakespeare. He was tutored by Sir Henry Saville, top Oxford scholar, and several hundred coincidences link him to the works of Shakespeare.
The two Henrys were put in the Tower together, under sentence of death for their part in the Essex plot to depose Elizabeth.
But why were they were not put to death like the other plotters? - because they were Elizabeths children?
I wonder if the skeletons of all these people are available? We could test their dna!
If Sir Henry Neville was the son of Elizabeth, and wrote the plays - and also wrote the sonnets to his "brother" the Earl of Southampton - it is not surprising that it was kept secret - a state secret no less. Hamlet, and To Be or Not To Be, was written while the two Henrys were in the Tower under sentence of death.
Worth reading.
Important work........2006-03-14
Elizabethan history is much less popular than the Shakespeare plays, but the more one can learn about that history, the more one can see into the meaning of the plays, whether or not their authorship is in question. Streitz provides much relevant detail about the early lives of Elizabeth, Oxford, William Cecil, even Henry VIII; his theory of the Queen's parenthood of Oxford is strongly supported. Many problems in the plays are plausibly explained by reference to the lives of Oxford, Cecil, and the religious/political problems faced by the English during Elizabeth's reign. Obviously, this is a bigger story than one book can cover in complete detail. Streitz has made a very good start on re-telling what must be one of the biggest scandals in European literary history.
Book Description
William Shakespeare is the only literary figure whose very identity is a matter of long-standing and continuing dispute. Was he really the glover's son from Stratford-on-Avon? Or was he someone else writing under the pseudonym William Shakespeare? The question has been called the foremost literary problem in world literature and "history's biggest literary whodunnit." Interest in it has never been greater, and that interest is growing now that a consensus has formed for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, as the leading candidate. Oxford, a recognized poet, playwright, and patron of acting companies, has eclipsed Bacon, Marlowe, and all the other candidates. The Oxfordian challenge is now being covered in scholarly books, in articles in magazines such as The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, and on television, including an hour-long PBS FrontLine program. The issue has even been debated in a moot court before three justices of the Supreme Court--with an intriguing outcome. Whalen's book is the first to provide a clear, concise, readable summary for the general reader, one that analyzes the main arguments for both the man from Stratford-on-Avon and the earl of Oxford. His conclusion? The case for Oxford is much more persuasive. Oxford's life in general and in its particulars is mirrored throughout the works of Shakespeare in many striking ways, particularly in Hamlet, the most autobiographical of the plays. Many who have examined the case for Oxford have had their appreciation of Shakespeare transformed and immensely enriched. This book will be required reading for those who love Shakespeare and want to know more about why the authorship controversy persists. The main narrative, which takes the reader easily through the pros and cons for each man, is supplemented by extensive, entertaining endnotes and appendixes, plus a comprehensive, annotated bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
Read John Mitchell for an overview.......2004-11-01
This book by Whalen is not an overview of all competing Shakespeare Authorship Controversy books--the book by John Michell _Who Wrote Shakespeare_ is.
Rather, this book advances the thesis that the Earl of Oxford is the real Shakespeare.
(...)
Disclaimer: I haven't read this book yet.
Snobbery.......2004-01-24
No one in Shakespeare's lifetime, or the first two hundred years after his death, expressed the slightest doubt about his authorship. The "authorship controversy" only started when Shakespeare's plays were translated into other languages and European writers started to describe Shakespeare as a genius and a rival to Homer and the ancients. Academics then scooted off to Warwickshire to look for relics but came back embarrassed - Homer's English rival was the son of a glovemaker who had never even been to university.
That's when theorists started proposing various aristocrats as alternative authors (the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Oxford, etc, etc, etc). At the root of all these ridiculous theories there is nothing but snobbery. These "Oxfordians" just don't like the idea that the greatest writer of all time was a common man of the people.
Same old nonsense about Oxford.......2004-01-21
If I were to attempt to prove someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakepeare, just about the last Elizabethan nobleman I
would nominate would be the 17th Earl of Oxford. In fact, I
wouldn't nominate this murderer, depraved , writer of terrible
verse as having done anything of value, aside from abandoning his kids, running thru his fortune, getting syphillus abroad,
and ending up in virtually in the poor house. Whalen consistently avoids direct evidence and willingly accepts the most implausible scenarios, where conspirators keep up the conspiracy (which has no purpose, in any logical sense) even in their private diaries and personal copies of plays 25 years after the man is dead!!! By comparison, JFK conspiracy theories look plausible, all 2000 of them!
Lucid, balanced, thorough.......2002-12-28
This book is probably the best introduction to the Shakespeare authorship controversy available at the moment. What impressed me most about it was its tone of quiet logic, and its careful, balanced account of the facts and the arguments on both sides. The orthodox Stratfordians are given their due, and their arguments and their objections to the Oxfordian view are discussed in detail. I also liked the way that facts are put into context, rather than just baldly stated.
On the other hand there is a little repetition, and the chapters sometimes give the impression of being written as separate essays, and then tweaked a bit and put into book form. The first half of the book is devoted to the case against William of Stratford, and the second half to the case for Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.
I'm certainly not a person who is inclined to accept conspiracy theories. As someone who has always loved Shakespeare and is interested in Elizabethan history, I dismissed the alternative authorship theory for many years as a crackpot idea. However, once I actually started reading the details of the arguments in favor of Edward de Vere (and reading other books on the subject besides this one), I soon became convinced. I think that a careful, objective consideration of the evidence shows that it is far more likely that de Vere wrote the plays than that William of Stratford did. The Stratfordian arguments seem labored and clumsy, and based largely on guesswork, while the Oxfordian view fits into place very easly and effortlessly, and has ample factual evidence to support it. For me this has added a whole new level of insight and understanding to the plays and poetry, and a much deeper appreciation and enjoyment of them.
Whalen's book is highly recommended for anyone who wants a good summary of the issues and arguments.
Shakspere or Oxford?.......2002-08-17
Many people don't know that there's a controversy over the authorship of the plays. Many of those that know of the issue ask "Why bother? Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, and that's that." I used to feel that way until I fell in love with the works of Shakespeare in college and wanted to know more about the individual who wrote the plays. Was it Shakspere, the business man from London? or "Shake-speare," a pseudonymn used by the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere?
For me, part of the joy of reading the works of Shakespeare was finding out the history behind them. The more I read about the man, the more I found academia didn't know much about him. They had a handle on the times and the events, but not the man. This raised several questions in my mind:
1. Why is there little or no mention of William Shakspere amongst his contemporaries (Jonson, Dryden and Marlowe to name a few)?
2. Why is the only written documentation referencing Shakspere concern business dealings. For a playwright and poet as prolific as Shakespeare, you'd think someone would have "something". Yet in the centuries since his passing -- little or nothing.
3. How could an outsider (Shakspere) have intimate knowledge of the aristocracy? (i.e.: Burghley/Polonius) There were definite social boundries in Elizabethan times. Oxford (De Vere) was in that inner circle.
These are just a few of the questions readers of Shakespeare have had about the man from Stratford over the years. Mr. Whalen takes several of these questions and condenses them into a neat little volume, making this a wonderful place for someone interested in the authorship controversy to start.
Product Description
The Monument presents a new discovery about the form and content of "Shake-Speares Sonnets" of 1609. The book offers a new edition of the 154 verses to demonstrate that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford constructed a "monument" to preserve "the living record" of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton as the rightful successor by blood to Queen Elizabeth I of England. In the exact center of the elegant monument is a 100-sonnet diary from the Essex Rebellion of 1601 to the Queen's death and funeral in 1603, when the Tudor dynasty ended. This breakthrough edition shows why Oxford was forced to sacrifice his own identity to save the life of Southampton, his unacknowledged royal son, and secure the promise of his release from the Tower of London with a royal pardon. Here is the "smoking gun" of the Shakespeare authorship mystery, preserved in the Sonnets of Shakespeare.
Customer Reviews:
worst rubbish ever.......2007-09-26
It's about as miserable as possible, both as literary criticism and as history. Worst reading of the sonnets ever, and that is quite a remarkable achievement. A cringe-inducing embarrassment.
A Masterpiece of the Genre.......2007-03-16
Who am I to go against readers as obviously astute as the seventeen who have rated this book before me and unanimously given it five stars just because it is an insane book by a crank without the slightest idea of poetry, art in general, the creative process, the times of Shakespeare or Shakespeare himself? So: another five-star rating for this gem of the lunatic conspiracy theory genre.
--Bob Grumman
Making Sense of the Sonnets.......2007-01-12
While I always loved the language of Shakespeare's Sonnets, I had more or less given up on them. They were obviously deeply autobiogrqaphical, but to what and to whom did they they refer? Were they heterosexual love poems or, as commentators reluctantly came to assume, homosexual tracts directed to the Earl of Southampton who had been the dedicatee of the two long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece? But how did the latter jibe with the failure of anyone to come up with a connection between the man from Stratford and the Earl? And what sense did it make when the first thirty or so sonnets where addressed to a young man urging him to marry and reproduce himself? And what about the "rival poet" and the "dark lady" who appear in the later sonnets? Many commentators have given up in despair and the orthodoxy became that the autobiography was irrelevant to the poems which had to be read things in themselves without outside reference. So I gave up. Until, that is, I looked into Hank Whittemore's "The Monument."
Whittemore works from the assumption that "Shake-speare" was a pseudonym for Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. The reasonihg behind this has moved from "crank" status to a new kind of orthodoxy, and indeed is all that makes sense of the disrepancy between the life of the man from Stratford and the poems and plays. We can't look at all the evidence and argument here, but we can look at how this assumption helps to explain the content of the sonnets. Whittemore sees them as a chronological series directed by Oxford to Southampton, who was his son by Elizabeth I, secretly put out for fosterage with the Southampton family. This is the famous "Prince Tudor" hypothesis, and before readers throw up their hands they should look carefully at the evidence. I would have dismissed it as improbable except for the fact it does indeed make great sense of the sonnets. The first set about the failure of the young man to marry for example: directed by the Stratford man to Southampton they make little sense and are positively impertinent, but seen as directed by a father to the son he could not acknowledge, but whom he passionately wanted to perpetuate the Tudor dynasty and so ensure his own position as potential King (Henry IX) they fall into place. Add to this that the proposed bride was Oxford's daughter Anne (whom he did not believe was his biological child) and the matter becomes alarmingly obvious. The one hundred central sonnets that follow this series Whittemore shows to be a day by day chronicle of the days spent in prison (the Tower)by Southampton under sentence of death from Elizabeth for his part in Essex's rebellion - one of the jurors in the trial being Oxford himself.
The "dark lady" series refers to Elizabeth herself, and the "rival poet" is of course the adopted persona "Shakespeare" behind which Oxford was forced to hide.
Whittemore takes each sonnet and goes through it line by line showing the code or special language that Oxford used and which explains so much of the persistent imagery of the poems. He examines and cross-references the usages to all the "Shakespeare" works, and includes a detailed chronological history of the historical events that parallel the action of the sonnets, ending with the death of Elizabeth and the dramatic pardoning of Southampton by James I when he ascended to the throne of England. At this point Oxford, as part of the deal with Robert Cecil and James had to completely abandon any ambitions for his son ("I must not evermore acknowledge thee...") and leave the Sonnets as the only "Monument" to the truth.
This is a huge book and a huge enterprise. A shorter version evidently exists that leaves out the details and references, but the reader who is willing to be patient will, as I did, get thoroughly enthralled with the details of the evidence. As poem after poem emerges making complete sense in the context of its writing vis-avis the tormented life of the young Earl of Southampton and the agony of the father who could not acknowledge him but loved him with a moving and desperate devotion, and a picture of great drama and passion emerges. Given the unorthodox theory that he is supporting, Whittemore needs to go to these extraordinary lengths to be convincing. He will be challenged of course, and rightly so. Sometimes he might be overanalyzing and putting too much faith in the sonsistency of the "code." "Beauty" might always refer to Elizabeth, but sometimes, as Freud said, a cigar is just a cigar. Even so, any critic is going to have to show in the same massive detail why he is wrong. This is not a work that can be dismissed as the Baconian codes and cyphers were (rightly) dismissed. When, as in sonnets 30 to 35 for example, the exact reference to the trial of Southampton and Oxford's agonizing part in it become obvious, I have a vast sense of relief, of insight. At last it makes sense. The reader does not need to look at every last note to each poem. Once you get the idea it is enought to read the poem, read the Wittemore' "translation" and get the historical (day by day) context. The notes are there for further referrence and for the scholars. This is an immense work of scholarship, of a very rare kind, one that serves the reader as a source of revelation, and the scholar as a mine of information and dispute. You may not buy it all - and you will have to work at understanding the basic premiss and clear the mind of the cant associated with standard "Shakespeare" biographies, but for all those who like me have been frustrated by a failure to make sense of the most profound autobiographical sequence in any literature, this is a powerful breath of fresh air. If the poems were "Shake-speare's" Monument, then this magnificent book is Hank Whittemore's own Monument and will itself father many distinguished offspring as its possibilities are realized.
What fun.......2006-08-19
Read "The Truth Will Out" by Brenda James.
Then read the first line of Ben Jonson's two page dedicatory poem to Shakespear in the First Folio, which goes
"To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name"
Which can be written
"To draw no NV (Shakespeare) on thy name"
NV is NeVille - how Henry Neville sometimes signed himself.
Neville was in the Tower with Southampton, for the same offence and also sentenced to death, and Brenda James thinks HE is Shakespeare! To be or not to be ... was written when he was in the tower under sentence of death!
I think the three were brothers, Oxford (1548) 15 years older than Neville (1563) who was 10 years older than Southampton (1573). None of them would have discovered their true identity until they were in their late teens or early twenties. Elizabeth was 15, 30 and 40 when they were born.
Neville had even more experience of Italy and France than Oxford - and they had a great deal in common - Neville was also very interested in Italy, astronomy - I believe he actually met Tito Brahe in Vienna - and in plays. For 6 months of the year he lived in the middle of London, close to Oxford, and near Blackfriars, where the protoplays were performed. Neville and Oxford had relatives in common - Neville was closely related to Cecil. For some reason he has been completely forgotten about - even though he was thought by a number of his contempories to be the most bookish of his generation at Oxford. I think James I went for writing lessons with him in 1604. The King James Bible is almost certainly his work - written after Oxford died.
Oxford worked closely with several writers, and a great number of the plays concern him - and the proto plays of the 1570s and early 80s were probably by him - and although the text of the plays has not survived, some of the names and plots have, and they are very similar to Shakespeare's plays.
I think that most of the finished, polished, works of "Shakespeare" are by Neville, who would have worked closely with Oxford from 1586, or so, onwards. The history plays were an important political project, that would have been supported by Elizabeth and Cecil - from 1586 on Elizabeth paid Oxford £1000 a year - about $1m in todays money. The original plots of a number of the plays, and maybe the writing - before they were rewritten and polished by Neville - may have been by Oxford, and his assistants.
A number of people in the 16th century thought Elizabeth had children. One or two were executed - it was against the law to say she had children! The others that we know about wrote about the rumours in their diplomatic dispatches - I think there are records in Madrid, Paris and maybe one or two other European capitals. But not in England! Where state censorship was very effective. Elizabeth, who was highly sexed and had no access to effective contraceptives, probably had 5 or 6 children.
Henry VIII had several illegitimate children who were placed in noble families - and some of them were a similar age to Elizabeth, in her Court, and did work for her, during her reign. If her father could place his illegitimate children in noble families, why couldn't she? Do not forget that noble families NEEDED heirs - and Oxford, Neville and Southampton were only sons, with curly orange hair! How many people do you know with curly orange hair? I know that the gene for red hair is recessive.
Who knows - Elizabeth herself may have joined in the writing of the plays - she may have helped come up with some of the extraordinary plots - I believe that she was pretty literate herself, and really enjoyed the plays!
So there you go - the works of "Shakespeare" were a family affair! And Neville was a seriously interesting chap himself - one of the founders of two party democracy, a principal player in the London Virgina Company - which was one of the first large capitalist enterprises - it had more than 600 shareholders - and became the USA. Neville tried and failed to persuade James to change his finances from feudal to Parliamentary - we needed the Civil War to sort that out. The "New River" bringing clean water into London from Hertfordshire in 1613 was his idea I believe - and it is still there today, nearly 400 years old.
I will have to buy the book!
"Monumental" achievement.......2006-07-24
This is a monumental achievement. The author has re-read the sonnets in light of his realization of the actual author of the sonnets, and their existence as a diary of several critical years with historical reference.
Awesome. Comprehensive. Should be referenced and reviewed by everyone interested in the Oxfordian authorship debate.
Amazon.com
The debate over the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays has raged for more than a century, fueled by fans like the National Review's Joseph Sobran, who cannot accept that a country bumpkin like William Shakespeare could ever have written the rich plays full of high literary references, intimate knowledge of court politics, and familiarity with personalities in foreign lands. Like many before him, Sobran fingers Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Where Sobran makes a useful addition to the so-called Oxfordian debate is his sober, Holmes-like laying out of the evidence, especially as found in two useful appendices that contain the full text of the real Shakespeare's flatfooted will, contrasted with specimens of Oxford's own acknowledged poetry, which contains many locutions similar to those found in Shakespeare's plays.
Customer Reviews:
two mysteries:one solved, the other not.......2007-06-14
Lucid and logical. The only problem comes when Sobran tries to identify the subject of the sonnets (and comes up with ANYBODY!). Sobran's flavor of the day is some clown named Henry Wriothesley. You ever hear of him? Oh, sure, because people say he's the subject of the sonnets... But doesn't that sound like the same circular nonsense Sobran accuses the Stratfordians of? Also, what's with Sobran's desperate and idiotic theory that calling people "Will" was the same as calling them a catch-all name, like Jack or Mac? I never heard that before. Maybe the person de Vere wrote the sonnets to really WAS someone called Will. Maybe de Vere liked this Will guy so much he decided to incorporate his name into his own nom de plume. You ever think of that? It's someone whom we just don't know. God knows Henry Wriothesley never did squat with his life. You see any statues of him in Trafalgar Square?
well worth reading.......2005-04-05
Persuasively argued, and finely detailed, Sobran's work makes a strong and reasoned case for recognizing Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, as the author of the Shakespeare plays. One wonders whether the authors of many of the "reviews" posted on Amazon.com have even read the book.
Another, almost convincing, case for Oxford.......2004-03-11
If I were a betting man, I still wouldn't bet on any of the possible answers to the "Who Wrote Shakespeare?" question. There are just too many gaps in our knowledge. But there is surely a mystery to be solved, and "Alias Shakespeare" by Joseph Sobran lays out an effective case that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, is the most likely solution to that mystery.
The book dispenses with the usual ad hominem attacks, amateur psychology, and farcical searches for hidden anagrams that have too often characterized all sides' arguments. He instead approaches this third-rail subject with refreshing objectivity and an apparently sincere search for the truth.
Marshalling a series of arguments and associated facts that point to Oxford, the book is well-organized at the macro level. It fails at times however in structuring the particulars. Threads of the argument are sometimes introduced, developed to a certain level, dropped, and then picked up again at a later point.
For example, Sobran [speaking of an introductory letter Oxford wrote to a friend's translation of "Cardanus Comfort"] writes "The whole letter, which especially foreshadows the [Shakespearean] Sonnets, is of utmost importance to the authorship question." Having raised our utmost curiosity, he abandons this argument with the parenthetical "See Appendix 3."
But his logic, when ultimately reconstructed, seems unassailable. The aforementioned Sonnets are at the core of this logic, and he convincingly lays out the parallels between their content and the well-documented course of Oxford's life. He effectively exposes the circular reasoning used by the defenders of the man he calls Mr. Shakspere - that is, the actor from Stratford-on-Avon. Those defenders deny the obvious autobiographical nature of the Sonnets, on the basis that they don't match with the flimsy autobiography we have of Mr. Shakspere. In fact, this type of circular reasoning pervades their entire defense, whether dealing with the purported dates of the plays or the importance of the early long poems.
There are, of course, legitimate counter-arguments. The problem is that arguments and counter-arguments in this matter are almost always qualitative and very difficult for the non-expert to evaluate. Sobran takes a stab at what is probably the only possible relevant quantitative approach: that of linguistic analysis. But here his use of such an approach amounts to no more than extensive word listings that he has found in common between Shakespeare and Oxford.
The problem for his case is that a more sophisticated, computer-based linguistic analysis has already cast serious doubt on the possibility of Shakespeare's works having been written by Oxford. (Elliott and Valenza, 1991.) Of course, the specific methods used in that analysis are also very difficult for the non-expert to assess. But at least such an analysis takes us closer to a scientific approach with a testable hypothesis.
Nonetheless, given an open mind, it would be hard to read "Alias Shakespeare" without agreeing with Sobran's conclusion. At a minimum, I doubt if any such reader will be laying odds on Mr. Shakspere being the true author.
The one to read if you read only one about this topic.......2003-07-27
Most people accept the tradition that the plays and poems attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were indeed written by him, and they assume that doubters of the Stratford man's authorship (anti-Stratfordians) must be irrational elitists. They might also assume that anti-Strats have nothing to offer those who simply wish to understand and enjoy the plays. But all of these assumptions are either debatable or wrong. In any case, though both sides of the authorship debate have been known to engage in circular arguments based on questionable evidence and to hurl childish ad hominems at one another, this is not true of Joseph Sobran who is reasonable in his arguments and civil toward his opponents. (Reviewers here who accuse Sobran of mudslinging, bashing etc. merely betray the fact that they have not read this book!) Rather than ask whether anti-Stratfordians are elitists, Sobran suggests that we ought to be asking if Shakespeare was one. For example, Shakespeare often makes cruel, unfair fun of social-climbing commoners exactly like Will Shaksper (a common variation of his name in contemporary legal documents). Arguing from evidence in the plays and poems, Sobran also demonstrates that the authorship debate can and ought to be relevant to the enjoyment and understanding of the Works.
While I am not wholly on the side of the underdog anti-Strats, I believe that Stratfordian scholars (which too often means mainstream scholars) have done such a disservice to the general public's enjoyment and understanding of Shakespeare that I must take them to task. Some are so fanatical in their defense of the Stratford man's claim to authorship that they seem to believe that if there were no tradition that he wrote the Works, they could conclusively prove from scratch that he did; but they could not for the same reason that anti-Stratfordians can never prove beyond a shadow that he didn't or that one of their alternative candidates did: The trail is old, and the case is cold. If ever there was a smoking gun it has long since turned entirely to rust. The strongest and best evidence that the man from Stratford wrote the Works is the tradition that he did, which, while not being conclusive, is simply difficult to dismiss.
But this tradition is not much. Anxious to uncover any details to fill out his biography, overzealous Stratfordians have accepted and taught many dubious legends and read a fanciful biography of the Stratford man into the plays and poems. The anti-Stratfordians see through this mess because they have no desire to add more to the Stratford man's biography than the documentary record will bear or to connect the biography to the Works where such a connection is based on pure guesswork. (Of course, they have motive to see other things that are not there, but here I speak only of how the anti-Strats are right.) For example, it was an anti-Stratfordian who realized that the famous "upstart crow" quotation has nothing whatever to do with Shakespeare, but instead clearly refers to an actor who did not write plays but was merely guilty of adlibbing. (More often, each side is equally at fault. I know of at least one instance where both sides used the exact same piece of evidence to prove their opposite conclusions. Upon further examination, it turned out that the evidence in question proved nothing whatsoever regarding authorship, yet each side had found in it proof of what it wanted to believe.) Meanwhile the Stratfordians reject the clear evidence from the plays that Shakespeare had far more learning than could have been provided by any formal education available to the Stratford man. In and of itself, this might not rule out the possibility that he was self-taught-except that the mainstream scholars HAVE ruled this out. They long ago boxed themselves into a corner by declaring that Shakespeare could not have had a vast education and any evidence that he did, no matter how compelling, cannot be admitted. (Once they assume that the Bard had little formal education, many orthodox Shakespeare scholars underestimate Shakepeare's learning and assume that a degree in literature somehow makes them Shakespeare's betters in matters such as, of all things, sixteenth-century Italian geography where it actually turns out that Shakespeare is the master.) Students are misleadingly told that they should readily understand Shakespeare because he wrote in ordinary language, aside from archaic words and grammatical constructions (as if these were not formidable enough). This is belied by the demonstrable fact that Shakespeare employed abstruse legalistic metaphors, used idiomatic Italian phrases (that he only partially translated) and demonstrated arcane knowledge of such subjects as heraldry. This and much more is explained in Sobran's book.
My only criticism of Sobran is that he gets so caught up in his persuasive case for the candidacy of the Earl of Oxford (which understandably persuades him) that he leans too far toward assuming Oxford's authorship to be a proven fact. In this, Sobran is like other participants in the authorship controversy. The authorship debate is a good example of my maxim that wherever there are only two sides to an argument both are usually wrong. Just because there is reason to doubt that Will Shaksper authored the plays and poems does not prove that he did not, and just because a case can be made that someone else might have written them does not prove that he or she did. The anti-Stratfordians are correct to point out that the biography of the traditional candidate does not fit the apparent biography of the author of the Works, and the Stratfordians are right to point out that the anti-Stratfordians cannot prove that one of their alternative candidates is the true author. Part of the argument of each side is correct, but neither side is free of error.
That being said, Sobran's contribution to the anti-Stratfordian cause is extremely readable and thought-provoking. He sums up the best evidence as it stands. If the average reader ought to read only one book by an anti-Strat, this is the one.
Excerpt from paper by Dr. Alan Nelson.......2003-07-26
I quote his conclusions verbatim. Nelson's negation of the Oxford claim are AT LEAST as conclusive as Sobran's claims (moreso, in my opinion:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) If Oxford wrote any professional plays at all between 1580 and 1602, he would logically have written for his own company, and not for the rival Lord Chamberlain's men.
2) The late Shakespeare plays were performed by the King's men; but Oxford died in 1604, after the King's men had been in existence for little more than a year.
3) Oxford died several years before the registration at the Stationer's Office of King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and Pericles, before the publication of King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and Pericles, and almost certainly before the composition of The Tempest, which seems to recall events of 1610.
4) The Winter's Tale was first licenced for the stage by Sir George Buc, who did not become stage-licencer until 1610.
5) Oxford's letters betray a faulty command of legal Latin, and are characterized by eccentric orthography and distinct traces of an East Anglian dialect. Thus Oxford spelled likelihoods "leklywhoodes," with the e-for-a and wh-for-h East-Anglian substitution, and he invariably wrote"ofte" for ought - a speech habit mocked as rustic in the Cambridge play of Gammer Gurton's Needle. He wrote "impodent" or "impotent" for impudent, and is the only person in my experience who put an "l" in Wivenhoe, spelling it "Wiuenghole." Oxford's spelling of his own name reflects the three-syllable pronunciation: if Edward de Vere had been their author, Shakespeare's earls would have been not Oxfords but Oxenfords.
6) Oxford's known verse at its worst is pretentious doggerel. He is at his best when translating Italian poetry into English tetrameter.
7) Numerous minor points mesh perfectly with Shakespeare's life but not at all with Oxford's. I would argue, if I had time, that Robert Greene's "upstart crow" of 1592 has a 95 percent chance of referring to the historical William Shakespeare, that A Funeral Elegy of 1612 has a 50-50 chance of being Shakespeare's authentic late work, and that the Passionate Pilgrim fracas of 1612 refers with a 99-44/100 percent certainty to a living - and irate - author whose name was William Shakespeare.
[Nelson ends] on a note of irony: since evidence concerning the historical William Shakespeare is scanty, as they themselves proclaim, Oxfordians cannot prove the historical Shakespeare incapable of having written the plays and poems in the Shakespeare canon; contrariwise, literary historians are swimming in evidence that the 17th earl of Oxford was positively deficient in linguistic skill and high poetic talent.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
While someone else other than Shakespeare MAY have written Shakespeare's works, I prefer to use Occam's Razor here, cutting through the subterfuge and accept that Shakespeare STILL deserves credit of authorship until conclusively proven otherwise. Sobran fails to do so.
Customer Reviews:
Fun Fun Fun!.......2006-04-30
Read this book, and a couple more. The Truth Will Out, by Brenda James - who claims that Sir Henry Neville wrote the plays, and Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I by Paul Streitz.
Then ponder this. Elizabeth was highly sexed - had an extraordinary upbringing - for example her father publicly killed her mother - and lived in extraordinary times, when neither she nor her advisors wanted her to marry. It was in EVERYBODY's interest in England that she did not marry - which in those days would mean staying a virgin. The state at that time had extraordinary powers, and censorship was a basic part of the control of the state.
Did she have children? I think so. Three of her children were probably Oxford - born 1549?, Neville (Shakespeare) born 1563? and Southampton born 1573. All three had red or auburn hair as far as I know - curly too! Like Elizabeth and Henry VIII. All three children are strongly connected to Nevilles, and to Cecil - who controlled everything - Oxford married Cecil's daughter. All three were really well educated, and Oxford and Neville did the European tour. Neville spent four years on the continent with Sir Henry Saville, top Oxford Scholar, visiting all the places mentioned in the plays. Neville was really fat in middle age, like Henry VIII. His friends called him Falstaff. The first line of Ben Jonsons two page dedicatory poem to him in the first folio of Shakespeare's works that he put together in 1623 is "To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name" To Draw No Envy? No NV. Ne Ville - get it? Neville sometimes signed himself Ne Ville.
Early in 1601 Neville and Southampton were put in the Tower of London for the part they played in the Essex plot to depose Elizabeth. Four plotters were executed with Essex - but not Neville and Southampton, who had been sentenced to death. They stayed in the Tower until Elizabeth died two years later. Hamlet was written while they were in the Tower. There is a fantastic portrait of Southampton in the Tower with his cat - one of my all time favorites. You will find it on Google images.
Why did Elizabeth let them live? Because they were her children? Cecil 2 (son of Cecil 1) got the sentences changed to life imprisonment.
A note about the Cecils. If William Cecil found homes for Elizabeths children it is no surprise that she became her top man when she became queen - and stayed in that position until he died - or that his son took over his position, until she died. He was in charge of spying, and state security.
It is interesting to note that she made Cecil a Baron when his daughter married Oxford - her first son.
Look up the 46th Psalm in the King James Bible. The 46th word from the top is "Shake". The 46th word from the bottom is "Spear" That does not happen in the other 18 translations I searched on the internet.
Neville played an important part in the setting up of the Second London Virginia Company. That became America. Look it up - there were more than 600 subscribers - one of the first great "capitalist shareholder" ventures. Oliver Cromwell's uncle is two names down the list from Sir Henry Neville! He set up the first humanitarian business to bring clean water into London. Under James he tried, with his cousin Bacon, to get the finances of the King brought under the control of Parliament. They failed. Neville was one of the first "party" parliamentarians, and an MP all his life.
In short - Neville was not just the writer of the plays - but a key pivot in the last 1000 years of Anglo Saxon History - related to most of the Kings of the previous 500 years - directly related to a chap that was murdered by Macbeth - you can look it up on thepeerage.com - and partially responsible for the King James Bible, for the USA, for modern parliamentary democracy, and for modern shareholder capitalism.
It is what you might hope and expect from someone with the breadth of knowledge that the plays demonstrate. Will Shakespeare from Stratford did not even bother to make sure that his own daughter could read. But he played his part - or he would have lost everything, including his head, as a great number did in the 16th century.
With Cecil orchestrating everything, and considering the importance of the (national) secret, it is not surprising that very little evidence survives. We need to dig the bones up, and do the dna analysis! Everything I have written could be pure fantasy! There you are - ideas for a 1000 phd studies. Go go go.
This is a Question that Matters!.......2006-01-17
I keep hearing people drone on about how the authorship question doesn't matter....but it DOES matter. The fact that so many in academia defend the Stratford man's position as author shows what hypocrites they are. If it doesn't matter, then declare de Vere author and move on, eh?? Why can't they do it? Because they prefer propoganda.
This book reads like a detective novel! I went to it as a Stratfordian with a degree in English literature. I took every Shakespeare class I could in college. I came out the other end convinced that, regardless of who it might be, it ISN'T the Stratford man.
I keep buying copies of this for friends and family and am grateful for Amazon.com because it beats doing book searches the OLD way!!!
I gave up a long time ago expecting the mainstream to tell the truth about anything. This is just another instance of laziness in academia (like we needed one more). Colleges and Universities and badly educated high school English teachers will continue selling the Stratford man propoganda to students because it beats having to do any research or learn a new thing. In the meantime, people who want to know things have to find them out for themselves.
This book is an opportunity to open up your mind. Whether you agree or not with the conclusion, you will at least realize that it is a much more complex historical question than what any English teacher you ever had has led you to believe.
Not Scholarly? I Beg to Differ.......2005-01-23
It's funny that this book would be described as non-scholarly, when in fact the Foreward is written by one of the great living history scholars, David McCullough, who wrote the best sellers JOHN ADAMS, TRUMAN, and GREAT BRIDGE. And what is McCullough's verdict on this book?
"[T]his brilliant, powerful book is a major event for everyone who cares about Shakespeare. The scholarship is surpassing--brave, orginal, full of surprise--and in the hands of so gifted a writer it fairly lights of the sky."
That is a real scholar's judgment on the scholarship in this book. Enjoy. It is one of the best and addictive mysteries ever written.
Not Worth The Paper It's Printed On.......2004-08-26
This is not a 'scholarly work.' It is a considerable and exhaustive supply of sound and fury, all of it signifying nothing. If one simply takes time to closely examine the host of Elizabethan records and books concerning Shakespeare and Oxford, the merits of Ogburn's brazen conjectures plummet like a stone.
I will not delve too deeply into the debate here (for that, see instead my review of Alan Nelson's "Monstrous Adversary: the Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford"), but I will poke a few holes in Ogburn's research:
1. Contrary to Ogburn's claim that the name "Shake-speare" is unique in its hyphenation and thus must be a pseudonym, many English surnames--including such mundane ones as Campbell and Waldgrave--were often hyphenated.
2. George Puttenham did call Oxford "the best for comedy among us." He also listed several other obscure names under this same category, and only a few lines later, mentions an entirely separate author named Shakespeare as the best for both tragedy and comedy.
3. The Stratford Monument always depicted a writer and was never dedicated to a grain merchant. Poems as early as Leonard Digges' 1623 tribute to the Bard call him a poet and friend and reference "thy Straford moniment." The only source for Ogburn's erroneous claims about the Monument is William Dugdale's illustration of the bust, drawn in 1656, over 30 years after Digges' poem. Dugdale was even commended by others for depicting the monument of the great poet Shakespeare, and it is worth noting that many of the monuments he transcribed are done so inaccurately.
5. Augustine Phillips, in the spring of 1605, bequeathed a sum of gold to one "William Shakespeare," never mind that Oxford was a year dead by then and never knew Phillips, nor did the Earl know either Heminges or Condell, the two actors named in Shakespeare's will who later edited the First Folio.
6. When Ogburn mentioned the "Operation Clean Sweep" needed to conceal Oxford's authorship, I went into convulsive fits of laughter. Ogburn thinks that conspirators erected the Stratford Monument, published the First Folio, and even succeeded in destroying fictional letters related to Oxford's literary interests (thus leaving us only with a host of the Earl's letters, 1/4 of which are laborious discussion of the tin-mining industry). Furthermore, if any reader is familiar with Stephen May's "Renaissance Papers," they will know that the 'stigma of print' that was the alleged motivation behind Oxford's concealment is a fictional creation crafted by those who know little about Elizabethan politics and poetry.
7. Ogburn says that the death of Shakespeare in 1616 "went entirely unremarked." It was, save for a considerable number of poetic tributes (including one by William Basses that includes the line "William Shakespeare, he died in April 1616"), the erection of the Stratford Monument, and the rapid assembly and publication of the First Folio. Oxford's death, on the other hand, DID go entirely unremarked. No will, no eulogies, no monument, nothing.
8. Ogburn weaves many blatant myths, which incorporate strands such as William Cecil's nickname "Polus" (for which there is no evidence; Oxfordians obviously have not read much of Gabriel Harvey), and a "contemporary" account of Edmund Spenser's funeral that does not even exist.
9. Ogburn, an amateur historian, ridicules super-scholar E.K. Chambers for his interpretation of Chettle's "Kind-Harts Dreame," which is vigorously researched and involuntarily harmful to Oxford's candidacy.
10. Ogburn desperately tries to paint William of Stratford as a man of no learning, never mind his almost-certain attendance at the rigorous King's New School in Stratford. If one reads Alan Nelson's "Monstrous Adversary" biography, they will discover that Oxford--so frequently referenced by Ogburn as a man of tremendous learning--was never a dedicated student, and all of his degrees are honorary. His spelling habits and clumsy grammar reflect a wholesale lack of learning on the Earl's part.
In short, Ogburn's book is an arrogant, misinformed attempt to alter the authorship of Shakespeare. He offers not a shred of solid evidence, and often contrives things to better support his weak case. To turn one of his own arguments against him: Oxfordianism is like Creationism, built upon fantasy and absurdity; Stratfordianism is like Science, well-researched, flexible, and entirely believable.
Who done it? Oxford done it!.......2003-04-25
Long, well-written, scholarly, informative, but is it definitive? Nah. But it comes close. And it asks all the right questions, and answers a slew of 'em. Shine forth, thou star of poets.
Product Description
The question may be met with chagrin by traditionalists, but the identity of the Bard is not definitely decided. During the 20th century, Edward de Vere, the most flamboyant of the courtier poets, a man of the theater and literary patron, became the leading candidate for an alternative Shakespeare.
This text presents the controversial argument for de Vere's authorship of the plays and poems attributed to Shakespeare, offering the available historical evidence and moreover the literary evidence to be found within the works. Divided into sections on the comedies and romances, the histories and the tragedies and poems, this fresh study closely analyzes each of the 39 plays and the sonnets in light of the Oxfordian authorship theory. The vagaries surrounding Shakespeare, including the lack of information about him during his lifetime, especially relating to the "lost years" of 1585-1592, are also analyzed, to further the question of Shakespeare's true identity and the theory of de Vere as the real Bard.
Customer Reviews:
Who is Shakespeare?.......2006-09-20
I had the pleasure of meeting the author on September 18, 2006 at Davis Kidd in Memphis. Although I have not read the book yet, I know it will be intellectual treat.
I have been a Shakespeare lover for years but never really gave too much concern as to his true identity. Now that I have met the author and had a chance to hear what he thought of the whole matter, I will admit that it does deserve some looking into.
I know that there are people out there who could care less about Shakespeare's true identity (we have his work, isn't that enough?) Their point is valid but still the revealing of the Bard's true identity would give us more of an insight into the mind of a literary genius.
Fascinating and comprehensive.......2006-02-19
William Farina covers all of Shakespeare's generally acknowledged plays (except The Two Noble Kinsmen), as well as his two major narrative poems and the Sonnets, in this extensively researched, consistently illuminating book. He draws innumerable connections between Edward de Vere and the source materials of Shakespeare's works, and shows the clear parallels between de Vere's life and the lives of Shakespeare's most autobiographical protagonists.
Although I've read most of the principal Oxfordian works, I still found myself learning something new on almost every page. The author has synthesized a vast amount of material in a brisk, readable form. Discussion of each play is more or less self-contained, allowing one to read the book selectively.
Naturally, even Oxfordian readers will take issue with some of Farina's interpretations. I disagree with his analysis of the Sonnets, for instance. To me, a more compelling theory is the one put forward in Hank Whittemore's recently published book, The Monument (which also has implications for Venus and Adonis). But this is a quibble.
Overall, De Vere as Shakespeare is an excellent resource, recommended for anyone interested in the authorship question.
Average customer rating:
- Where it all began
- Amazing
- Introduces hypothesis that Earl of Oxford was Shakespeare.
|
"Shakespeare" Identified in Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and the Poems of Edward De Vere (2 vols)
J. Thomas Looney
Manufacturer: Associated Faculty Pr Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| Classics
| Contemporary
| General
| Historical
| Humor
| Letters & Correspondence
| Middle
| Old
| Poetry
| Renaissance
| Shakespeare
| Short Stories
General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Classics
| Comic
| Contemporary
| Literary
ASIN: 0804618771 |
Customer Reviews:
Where it all began.......2003-04-24
(And by the way, it's pronounced "Loney.") I can't add much to the other positive reviews of this ground-breaking book. Written well, convincing...long live the Earl of Oxford--"Though I once gone to all the world must die" indeed!!
Amazing.......1999-05-05
Book arrived in the late afternoon, I started reading and didn't get to bed till 10 AM the next morning. A stunning detective story.
Introduces hypothesis that Earl of Oxford was Shakespeare........1998-01-22
This book introduced the revolutionary idea that an aristocrat named Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550- 1604), wrote the works of Shakespeare under a psuedonym. Oxford is now considered the leading candidate for the authorship of the Shakespeare canon largely because of the influence this book has had over a 75 year period. It first addresses the documentary evidence "against" Will Shakspere from Stratford as the author, then presents the positive evidence on behalf of Oxford as author. The evidence for Oxford is detailed and circumstantial: literary and intellectual parallels in the works of Oxford and Shakespeare; parallels in the life of Oxford, his family and friends and the plots of the Shakespeare plays; topical references in the plays that pre-date the time during which Shakespeare allegedly wrote the works; professional, political and historical knowledge displayed in the plays for which the Stratford actor could not have had the training or access; and so on. Exhaustive research; excellent organization of materials; superbly written. A book that academics have not been able to refute since its publication in 1920.
Average customer rating:
|
A Hundredth Sundrie Flowers, from the Original Edition of 1573
George Gascoigne
Manufacturer: Associated Faculty Pr Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| Classics
| Contemporary
| General
| Historical
| Humor
| Letters & Correspondence
| Middle
| Old
| Poetry
| Renaissance
| Shakespeare
| Short Stories
General
| Poetry
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0804618801 |
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The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare
Players : The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare
Who Wrote Shakespeare?
The Monument: "Shake-Speares Sonnets" by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare
