Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
In 1857, Delia Bacon published The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded, introducing a group theory that attributed Shakespeare's works to a committee led by Francis Bacon. Edward de Vere appeared only once in this book, listed among high-born wits associated with Walter Raleigh. For decades, Bacon remained the preferred hidden author while Oxford stayed silent in the shadows. J. Thomas Looney changed everything when he released Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford in 1920. This single volume made Oxford the most popular anti-Stratfordian candidate and launched the modern movement. Before Looney, other aristocrats like Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby had been proposed as authors. Looney argued that known facts about Shakespeare did not fit the personality deduced from the plays. He pointed to Shakespeare's lack of formal education, limited worldly experience, and poor handwriting skills evident in his signatures. Looney claimed the playwright showed an acquisitive disposition while the plays featured free-spending heroes. He noted that middle and lower-class people were often portrayed negatively in the works, yet Shakespearian heroes were typically aristocratic. Scholars at the time found evidence suggesting the author was an expert in law, widely read in ancient Latin literature, and fluent in French and Italian. Looney believed even early works like Love's Labour's Lost implied a person of matured powers in their forties or fifties. He concluded that Oxford's personality matched the one he deduced from the plays. Characters such as Hamlet and Bertram in All's Well That Ends Well became detailed portraits of Oxford's family and personal contacts. Looney fitted events in the plays to episodes in Oxford's life, including travels to France and Italy. The death of Edward de Vere in 1604 was linked to a drop-off in the publication of Shakespeare plays. Looney declared that the late play The Tempest was not written by Oxford. He suggested others performed or published after Oxford's death were most probably left incomplete and finished by other writers. This explanation accounted for the apparent idiosyncrasies of style found in the late Shakespeare plays. Looney also introduced the argument that the reference to the ever-living poet in the 1609 dedication to Shakespeare's sonnets implied the author was dead at the time of publication. Sigmund Freud, novelist Marjorie Bowen, and several 20th-century celebrities found this thesis persuasive. Oxford soon overtook Bacon as the favored alternative candidate, though academic Shakespearians mostly ignored the subject.
Oxfordians construct their arguments by linking specific events in de Vere's life to incidents within Shakespeare's plays and poems. They find correspondences between incidents and circumstances in Oxford's biography and events in the plays, sonnets, and longer poems. The case relies on perceived parallels of language, idiom, and thought between Shakespeare's works and Oxford's own poetry and letters. Adherents claim marked passages in Oxford's Bible can be linked to Biblical allusions in Shakespeare's plays. Roger A. Stritmatter conducted a study of the marked passages found in Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible, which is now owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library. The Bible contains 1,028 instances of underlined words or passages and a few hand-written annotations. Stritmatter believes about a quarter of the marked passages appear in Shakespeare's works as either a theme, allusion, or quotation. He grouped the marked passages into eight themes and proceeded to link specific themes to passages in Shakespeare. Critics have doubted that any of the underlinings or annotations in the Bible can be reliably attributed to de Vere and not the book's other owners prior to its acquisition by the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1925. They challenge the looseness of Stritmatter's standards for a Biblical allusion in Shakespeare's works and argue there is no statistical significance to the overlap. Oxfordians also believe that Rev. Dr. John Ward's 1662 diary entry stating that Shakespeare wrote two plays a year and had an allowance so large that he spent at the rate of £1,000 a year is critical evidence. Queen Elizabeth I gave Oxford an annuity of exactly £1,000 beginning in 1586 that was continued until his death. Ogburn wrote that the annuity was granted under mysterious circumstances, and Anderson suggests it was granted because of Oxford's writing patriotic plays for government propaganda. However, documentary evidence indicates the allowance was meant to relieve Oxford's embarrassed financial situation caused by the ruination of his estate. Almost half of Shakespeare's plays are set in Italy, many containing details of Italian laws, customs, and culture which Oxfordians believe could only have been obtained by personal experiences in Italy. Historical documents confirm that Oxford lived in Venice and traveled for over a year through Italy. He disliked the country, writing in a letter to Lord Burghley dated the 24th of September 1575, I am glad I have seen it, and I care not ever to see it any more. Still, he remained in Italy for another six months, leaving Venice in March 1576. According to Anderson, Oxford definitely visited Venice, Padua, Milan, Genoa, Palermo, Florence, Siena and Naples, and probably passed through Messina, Mantua and Verona, all cities used as settings by Shakespeare. In testimony before the Venetian Inquisition, Edward de Vere was said to be fluent in Italian. Oxford was admitted to Gray's Inn, one of the Inns of Court which Justice Shallow reminisces about in Henry IV, Part 2. Sobran observes that the Sonnets abound not only in legal terms , more than 200 , but also in elaborate legal conceits. These terms include: allege, auditor, defects, exchequer, forfeit, heirs, impeach, lease, moiety, recompense, render, sureties, and usage. Shakespeare also uses the legal term quietus final settlement in Sonnet 134, the last Fair Youth sonnet. Regarding Oxford's knowledge of court life, which Oxfordians believe is reflected throughout the plays, mainstream scholars say that any special knowledge of the aristocracy appearing in the plays can be more easily explained by Shakespeare's lifetime of performances before nobility and royalty. Oxford's lyric poetry has survived, with Steven W. May attributing sixteen poems definitely and four possibly to Oxford. Webbe in 1586 and Puttenham in 1589 ranked him first among the courtier poets. C. S. Lewis wrote that de Vere's poetry shows a faint talent, but is for the most part undistinguished and verbose. J. Thomas Looney argued that as far as forms of versification are concerned De Vere presents just that rich variety which is so noticeable in Shakespeare. Louis P. Bénézet created the Bénézet test, a collage of lines from Shakespeare and lines he thought were representative of Oxford, challenging non-specialists to tell the difference between the two authors.
The most compelling evidence against the Oxfordian theory is Edward de Vere's death in 1604, since the generally accepted chronology of Shakespeare's plays places the composition of approximately twelve of the plays after that date. Critics often cite The Tempest and Macbeth, for example, as having been written after 1604. David Bevington says it is a virtually unanimous opinion among teachers and scholars of Shakespeare that the canon of late plays depicts an artistic journey that extends well beyond 1604. Evidence for this includes allusions to historical events and literary sources which postdate 1604, as well as Shakespeare's adaptation of his style to accommodate Jacobean literary tastes. Oxfordians say that the conventional composition dates for the plays were developed by mainstream scholars to fit within Shakespeare's lifetime and that no evidence exists that any plays were written after 1604. Anderson argues that all of the Jacobean plays were written before 1604, selectively citing non-Oxfordian scholars like Alfred Harbage, Karl Elze, and Andrew Cairncross to bolster his case. Anderson notes that from 1593 through 1603, the publication of new plays appeared at the rate of two per year. After the publication of the Q1 and Q2 Hamlet in 1603, no new plays were published until 1608. Anderson observes that after 1604, the newly correct[ing] and augment[ing] stops. Once again, the Shake-speare enterprise appears to have shut down. The play The Tempest has long been believed to have been inspired by the 1609 wreck at Bermuda of the flagship Sea Venture. The survivors spent nine months in Bermuda before most completed the journey to Jamestown on the 23rd of May 1610 aboard two new ships built from scratch. Two accounts were published: Sylvester Jordain's A Discovery of the Barmvdas in October 1610, and A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colonie in Virginia a month later. The True Reportory of the Wrack, and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates Knight, an account by William Strachey dated the 15th of July 1610, returned to England with Gates in the form of a letter which was circulated privately until its eventual publication in 1625. Shakespeare had multiple contacts to the circle of people amongst whom the letter circulated, including to Strachey. The Tempest shows clear evidence that he had read and relied on Jordain and especially Strachey. The play shares premise, basic plot, and many details of the Sea Venture's wrecking and the adventures of the survivors, as well as specific details and linguistics. A detailed comparative analysis shows the Declaration to have been the primary source from which the play was drawn. This firmly dates the writing of the play to the months between Gates' return to England and the 1st of November 1611 when the first recorded performance occurred. Looney expelled the play from the canon, arguing that its style and the dreary negativism it promoted were inconsistent with Shakespeare's essentially positivist soul. Later Oxfordians have generally abandoned this argument; this has made severing the connection of the play with the wreck of the Sea Venture a priority amongst Oxfordians. Scholars contend that the composition date of Macbeth is one of the most overwhelming pieces of evidence against the Oxfordian position. The vast majority of critics believe the play was written in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot brought to light on the 5th of November 1605, a year after Oxford died. In particular, scholars identify the porter's lines about equivocation and treason as an allusion to the trial of Henry Garnet in 1606. Shakespearian scholar David Haley asserts that if Edward de Vere had written Coriolanus, he must have foreseen the Midland Revolt grain riots of 1607 reported in Coriolanus. The conventional dating for Henry VIII is 1610, 13, though the majority of 18th and 19th century scholars placed the composition prior to 1604. Though it is described as a new play by two witnesses in 1613, Oxfordians argue that this refers to the fact it was new on stage, having its first production in that year.
Mainstream academics have often argued that the Oxford theory is based on snobbery: that anti-Stratfordians reject the idea that the son of a mere tradesman could write the plays and poems of Shakespeare. The Shakespeare Oxford Society has responded that this claim is a substitute for reasoned responses to Oxfordian evidence and logic and is merely an ad hominem attack. Mainstream critics further say that, if William Shakespeare were a fraud instead of the true author, the number of people involved in suppressing this information would have made it highly unlikely to succeed. Columbia University professor James S. Shapiro says any theory claiming that there must have been a conspiracy to suppress the truth of de Vere's authorship based on the idea that the very absence of surviving evidence proves the case is a logically fatal tautology. David Kathman writes that their methods are subjective and devoid of any evidential value, because they use a double standard. Their arguments are not taken seriously by Shakespeare scholars because they consistently distort and misrepresent the historical record, neglect to provide necessary context and are in some cases outright fabrications. H. N. Gibson concluded in The Shakespeare Claimants, a 1962 examination of the authorship question, that on analysis the Oxfordian case appears to me a very weak one. Specialists in Elizabethan literary history object to the methodology of Oxfordian arguments. In lieu of any evidence of the type commonly used for authorship attribution, Oxfordians discard the methods used by historians and employ other types of arguments to make their case. Harold Love writes that the very fact that their application has produced so many rival claimants demonstrates their unreliability. Jonathan Bate writes that the Oxfordian biographical method is in essence no different from the cryptogram, since Shakespeare's range of characters and plots, both familial and political, is so vast that it would be possible to find in the plays self-portraits of anybody one cares to think of. Critics point out that six of the nine poets listed had appeared in print under their own names long before 1589, including a number of Oxford's poems in printed miscellanies. The first poem published under Oxford's name was printed in 1572, 17 years before Puttenham's book was published. Several other contemporary authors name Oxford as a poet, and Puttenham himself quotes one of Oxford's verses elsewhere in the book, referring to him by name as the author. Alan Nelson, de Vere's documentary biographer, writes that contemporary observers such as Harvey, Webbe, Puttenham and Meres clearly exaggerated Oxford's talent in deference to his rank. Mainstream scholarship characterises the extravagant praise for de Vere's poetry more as a convention of flattery than honest appreciation of literary merit. A computerised textual comparison developed by the Claremont Shakespeare Clinic found the styles of Shakespeare and Oxford were light years apart. The odds of Oxford having written Shakespeare were reported as lower than the odds of getting hit by lightning. Furthermore, while the First Folio shows traces of a dialect identical to Shakespeare's, the Earl of Oxford, raised in Essex, spoke an East Anglian dialect.
After a period of decline beginning with World War II, Dorothy and Charlton Greenwood Ogburn published the 1,300-page This Star of England in 1952, which briefly revived Oxfordism. By 1968 the newsletter of The Shakespeare Oxford Society reported that the missionary or evangelical spirit of most of our members seems to be at a low ebb, dormant, or non-existent. In 1974, membership in the society stood at 80. In 1979, the publication of an analysis of the Ashbourne portrait dealt a further blow to the movement. The painting turned out to represent neither Shakespeare nor Oxford, but rather depicted Hugh Hamersley. Charlton Ogburn Jr., was elected president of The Shakespeare Oxford Society in 1976 and kick-started the modern revival of the Oxfordian movement by seeking publicity through moot court trials, media debates, television and later the Internet. He portrayed academic scholars as self-interested members of an entrenched authority that aimed to outlaw and silence dissent in a supposedly free society. In 1985 Ogburn published his 900-page The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality, with a Foreword by Pulitzer prize-winning historian David McCullough who wrote this brilliant, powerful book is a major event for everyone who cares about Shakespeare. By framing the issue as one of fairness in the atmosphere of conspiracy that permeated America after Watergate, he used the media to circumnavigate academia and appeal directly to the public. Ogburn's efforts secured Oxford the place as the most popular alternative candidate. One reviewer, Richmond Crinkley, the Folger Shakespeare Library's former director of educational programs, acknowledged the appeal of Ogburn's approach, writing that the doubts over Shakespeare, arising early and growing rapidly, have a simple, direct plausibility. Though Crinkley rejected Ogburn's thesis, calling it less satisfactory than the unsatisfactory orthodoxy it challenges, he believed that one merit of the book lay in how it forces orthodox scholars to reexamine their concept of Shakespeare as author. The Oxfordian theory returned to public attention in anticipation of the late October 2011 release of Roland Emmerich's drama film Anonymous. Its distributor, Sony Pictures, advertised that the film presents a compelling portrait of Edward de Vere as the true author of Shakespeare's plays. They commissioned high school and college-level lesson plans to promote the authorship question to history and literature teachers across the United States. According to Sony Pictures, the objective for our Anonymous program is to encourage critical thinking by challenging students to examine the theories about the authorship of Shakespeare's works and to formulate their own opinions.
Although most Oxfordians agree on the main arguments for Oxford, the theory has spawned schismatic variants that have not met with wide acceptance by all Oxfordians. In a letter written by Looney in 1933, he mentions that Allen and Ward were advancing certain views respecting Oxford and Queen Eliz. which appear to me extravagant & improbable, in no way strengthen Oxford's Shakespeare claims, and are likely to bring the whole cause into ridicule. Allen developed the theory in his 1934 book Anne Cecil, Elizabeth & Oxford. He argued that the child was given the name William Hughes, who became an actor under the stage-name William Shakespeare. He adopted the name because his father, Oxford, was already using it as a pen-name for his plays. Allen later changed his mind about Hughes and decided that the concealed child was the Earl of Southampton, the dedicatee of Shakespeare's narrative poems. This secret history, which has become known as the Prince Tudor theory, was covertly represented in Oxford's plays and poems and remained hidden until Allen and Ward's discoveries. Their son, Charlton Ogburn Jr., agreed with Looney that the theory was an impediment to the Oxfordian movement and omitted all discussion about it in his own Oxfordian works. However, the theory was revived and expanded by Elisabeth Sears in Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose in 2002, and Hank Whittemore in The Monument in 2005. Paul Streitz's Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I advances a variation on the theory: that Oxford himself was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth by her stepfather, Thomas Seymour. Oxford was thus the half-brother of his own son by the queen. Streitz also believes that the queen had children by the Earl of Leicester. These were Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Mary Sidney and Elizabeth Leighton. As with other candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's works, Oxford's advocates have attributed numerous non-Shakespearian works to him. Looney began the process in his 1921 edition of de Vere's poetry. He suggested that de Vere was also responsible for some of the literary works credited to Arthur Golding, Anthony Munday and John Lyly. Two professors of linguistics have claimed that de Vere wrote not only the works of Shakespeare, but most of what is memorable in English literature during his lifetime. Ramon Jiménez has credited Oxford with such plays as The True Tragedy of Richard III and Edmund Ironside. Group theories in which Oxford played the principal role as writer, but collaborated with others to create the Shakespeare canon, were adopted by a number of early Oxfordians. Looney himself was willing to concede that Oxford may have been assisted by his son-in-law William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who perhaps wrote The Tempest. B. M. Ward also suggested that Oxford and Derby worked together. In his later writings Percy Allen argued that Oxford led a group of writers, among whom was William Shakespeare.
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Common questions
Who is the main proponent of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship?
J. Thomas Looney changed everything when he released Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford in 1920. This single volume made Oxford the most popular anti-Stratfordian candidate and launched the modern movement.
When did Edward de Vere die according to the Oxfordian theory?
The death of Edward de Vere occurred in 1604. Critics often cite this date as compelling evidence against the theory since the generally accepted chronology places the composition of approximately twelve plays after that year.
What specific Bible evidence do Oxfordians use to support their claims about Edward de Vere?
Roger A. Stritmatter conducted a study of marked passages found in Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible which contains 1,028 instances of underlined words or passages. He believes about a quarter of these marked passages appear in Shakespeare's works as either a theme allusion or quotation.
How does the Oxfordian theory explain the writing of The Tempest after Edward de Vere died?
Looney declared that the late play The Tempest was not written by Oxford because its style and dreary negativism were inconsistent with his soul. Later Oxfordians have generally abandoned this argument and now prioritize severing the connection of the play with the wreck of the Sea Venture.
Why do mainstream scholars reject the Oxfordian theory regarding Edward de Vere?
Mainstream academics argue that the theory is based on snobbery and that anti-Stratfordians reject the idea that the son of a mere tradesman could write the plays. David Kathman writes that their methods are subjective and devoid of any evidential value because they consistently distort and misrepresent the historical record.