Earl of Oxford. Bah! Humbug.

[johnny9fingers]

Slightly hung-over at breakfast this morning whereupon reading my newspaper I stumbled across this rather good review of James Shapiro's new book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare.

Given that the various Oxfordian theories are going to get a new airing with the development of Roland Emmerich's movie Anonymous, I can understand some folk needing to get their rebuttals in early.

Nothing pleases like 400 year old conspiracy theories. It shows just how these things carry through the ages: and whenever they are newly uncovered, they infect new generations. One might almost think that such schema had a life of their own, replicating the debate across the centuries. It's almost like politics.

Comments

tiresome Oxfordian conspiracies?

[(Anonymous)]

The ho-hum response to the possibility that Oxfordian (i.e., the contention that the Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere actually was the mind behind the Shakespeare pseudonym)ideas might find expression in the Emmerich movie Anonymous seems to me protesting too much by playing bored. What is wrong with an airing of the issue of who wrote these remarkable works? Whitman thought it had to have been one of the wolfish earls or some descendant knowledgeable about the time and monarchy. Episodically there has been inquiry, though from about World War II, authoritarian feelings of iconic patriotism, resulting in a clear doctrinal repression in this area of study, have been in the ascendancy academically. In other words, if you question the Shakespeare Stratford and its fable, you can kiss your career goodbye; you're unacceptable in the guild. If there were ever an insupportable conspiracy theory, it is that an uneducated and unlikely figure from the forest showed up in London with the most educated sophisticated prose and poetic style in Western Civilization. Period. While this would be astounding, it wouldn't be totally impossible. But there would be a documentable background: anecdotes, memories of townspeople, letters to and from other literary figures or producers of theater art, tributes to and from equals or mentors, contracts, manuscripts, you name it. Nothing. Shakspere couldn't write; that is evident from the one written document associated with his name. So that presents us with suspicion of a fraud. What was it and why? It has never been pursued and never allowed to be questioned. There is abounding evidence, mostly circumstantial, that Oxford and his followers perpetrated this ruse about Shakspere, so very close a name to the Shakespeare pseudonym, and yet more evidence that Oxford wrote the works. If Emmerich is capitalizing on this repressed story, let him. I note that highly regarded actors and actresses are supporting the advance of knowledge through portrayals of a history that is alternative to the Gloriana myth of virginity and Renaissance. Are they conspiracy nuts? I doubt it.

William Ray
wjray.net