Shakespeare by Another Name: The Life of Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare [Mass Market Paperback]

I downloaded a sample of this and was ready to click on 'buy this book' imminently, as I was looking forward to an entertaining and persuasive read.
The author begins or almost begins by stating that not a single manuscript from the man we know of as William Shakespeare of Stratford survives and that this fellow was probably illiterate. That may well be so. But he doesn't bother to address and dismiss the fact that a large scene contributed to a play called Sir Thomas More is almost certainly by the man who wrote the Shakespeare plays (whoever he was) and happens to be handwritten in a writing that matches Shakespeare's signatures and not De Vere's hand. Why do I contend that this scene is by Shakespeare? Because someone told me? No, I've casually read it and said, yeah, that's him. (The man who wrote the MOST OF the other plays). Note, I say 'casually' read. If you understand and know something well, a casual look is all that is required to identify it. You've seen that in films when people identify dead bodies of loved ones in mortuaries almost instantly. If you don't know what you're looking at, it's no good studying it at length and then saying 'it's not him'. If it's not Shakespeare, it's a damned good imitation. Who do we know of in Shakespeare's time or since who could imitate him? Nobody. You'll not easily convince me this is not by him. Of course, if it's true that not a single play by William Shakespeare survives in his own hand because De Vere wrote them it would follow that some of the plays survive in De Vere's hand. They do not. Perhaps there's a good cloak and dagger explanation for that. But it turns out that not many manuscripts of any playwright of that time survive. Which is another inconvenient truth.
It's a pity because I'm sure this book finds many interesting parallels between the plays and Oxford's life, parallels that shouldn't be brushed aside. Could it be that Shakespeare knew Oxford and borrowed details off his life? (Writers steal from other people's lives all the time). Or could it be that Shakespeare was Oxford? I would loved to have read the book to find out. But I wanted that small matter of the Thomas More scene dealt with. Dealt with in the sample, so I could tell whether the book was worth paying for. In stead I got was a some flannel about how lots of clever cloggs throughout history such as Malcom X and Mark Twain had expressed doubt about the authorship of a man they sort of might not actually have known much about and something to do with the real Shakespeare being illiterate. Something also about how he knew not a great deal about Italy bar a few facts that he might of have got by a, reading books b, speaking to people who had been to Italy (Oxford perhaps?), or c having actually been to Italy himself. We have some lost years in which he could very well have done that. I said not a great deal. That was not a typo. I watched the documentary Shakespeare in Italy and whilst they tried to make out Shakespeare knew so much about Italy I was rather struck by how all "I read a copy of the Lonely Planet' ish his info sounded.

This book is a singularly impressive work of scholarship, and a most important read! Sure to delight any lover of Shakespeare.

Mark Anderson spent over a decade researching and compiling the information for this book, and his writing is meticulous and abundantly documented (400 pages of text followed by 180 pages of endnotes).

I had already heard of and become convinced of the Oxfordian authorship four years ago, as it is not only logical but also virtually irrefutable. Written scholarship on the subject (which is now extensive) began in 1920, and notables such as Orson Welles agreed wholeheartedly: "I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away," said Welles.

Here's the rub, supremely obvious from Anderson's meticulous biography: De Vere's life agrees step by step, month by month, with the "Shake-speare" plays and sonnets. There are literally thousands of connections between de Vere's life and the Shakespeare plays.

Most of the plays began (and many still ended up) as risky anonymous commentaries on the politics and royal and personal entanglements of the time (many of them de Vere's own high-profile faux pas). When he went public with these scandalous masques and diversions, formerly only for the eyes of the very elite few within the court of Elizabeth, he could not use his own name.

De Vere was nobility: the Earl of Oxford, Lord High Chamberlain of England. The theater was a lowly and common profession, and Queen Elizabeth would certainly not let her Lord High Chamberlain publish scandalous and politically charged (even treasonous in their subtexts) entertainments for all to see. Since the actor Will Shaksper (whom contemporary pamphleteers referred to as an "upstart crow") had been boastfully taking credit for many anonymous plays in which he performed (it was common, as noted, to write anonymously, to avoid scandal and shame for the respectable writers), this ruse was perpetuated by de Vere (under the hyphenated -- and thus clearly pseudonymous under the conventions of the time -- name "Shake-speare") when he needed money and had to publish many of his own heretofore anonymous unpublished works.

Likewise, after de Vere's death, when King James was attempting to marry his son Charles to the Catholic Spanish princess, which would have plunged England back into Catholicism, all hints of opposition were being destroyed. De Vere's youngest daughter Susan realized that the only chance the rest of her father's masterpieces had to survive into posterity was to make a mass publication of them, and to still use the ghost-name so as to protect herself and the rest of the family from persecution. (De Vere's son Henry was already in the Tower of London facing possible execution.) Hence, the 1623 First Folio. (No manuscript exists of any "Shake-speare" work.) Additionally, publishing the pro-England, anti-Spain, anti-Papist Shake-speare plays pseudonymously was the Prostestant nobles' ammunition in the opposition to the royal Catholic Marriage.

De Vere, coincidentally, long before he used the pseudonym Shake-speare, had already for over a decade been toasted at court with the phrase "Your will shakes a spear!" (a reference to his family crest, which bore the image of a lion shaking a spear; and also an oblique reference to the goddess Athena) -- words from a 1578 encomium to him written by a fellow scholar and writer.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

De Vere was educated by the best scholars and the finest minds in England, and had a command of nearly every subject known to man at the time. He spoke and wrote at least 7 languages fluently. He travelled and lived widely in various European countries and all around England. He was a voracious reader and extremely widely read, including works that did not even exist in England, much less in the English language -- works which are known sources for the Shake-speare plays. He had a remarkably colorful and eventful life. He was intimately (literally) acquainted with Queen Elizabeth and her court and was privy to and part of all of the political intrigues and goings on of his time. He was a man of great jest and creativity, surrounding himself with both great minds and great jokers, and wrote poems and masques from an early age. He had a happy childhood and an unhappy childhood, a happy time at court and an unhappy time at court, happy love affairs and unhappy love affairs, one happy marriage and one unhappy marriage, a life of great renown and a life of near exile and obscurity. He was acknowledged to be the finest mind of his day. In short, he lived to the fullest expression and experience a human could have in that day.

Contrarily, Will Shaksper from Stratford-upon-Avon was never known to even attend grammar school (much less read or own a single book), or travel more than 100 miles from his home, or write more than two words ("By me," on his will).

It was widely known by the intelligentsia in de Vere's day that De Vere was "Shake-speare" -- as seen in the various pamphlets and publications that went as far as they could at discussing and revealing it without stating it outright. It was only after the passage of a century that de Vere's authorship became obscured and forgotten.

The above is only the merest thumbnail sketch of the voluminous information Anderson presents in this amazing book.

Anyway, don't take my word for it. Investigate for yourself. Believe me, as an English major and Shakespeare lover I understand the nostalgia involved in the resistance to thinking anyone but Will Shaksper wrote "Shake-speare." Mark Anderson says in his author's note in the afterword to the book: "Compiling the 85 years of the most relevant Oxfordian research for his book ... makes an overwhelming case that, I've long felt, needed only to be assembled into one popularly accessible package. I have found that the pieces of the puzzle fit together so fully and completely that I didn't need to divert the story to make arguments."

Here is the ending summation of a post on the blog of New York Times-bestselling author Michael Prescott:

"Brick by brick, over the course of 380 pages, not to mention 30 pages of appendices and 145 pages of endnotes, Anderson builds an overwhelming circumstantial case for the Oxfordian position. As he admits, there is no smoking gun, no single piece of evidence that provides absolute proof -- but the sum total of the evidence he submits ought to be dispositive to any open-minded reader.

"I don't expect the walls of academe to come tumbling down just because Mark Anderson has blown his trumpet. The Stratfordians, stubborn defenders of orthodoxy, will resist the inescapable conclusions prompted by this book, just as they have resisted, dismissed, and laughed off the arguments of Looney, Ogburn, and others. But I now think that theirs is a rearguard action and a losing cause. The case has been made, and eventually it will carry the day.

"Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. And sooner or later, everyone will know it."

~ Michael Prescott

I fully believe that 50 years from now it will be widely accepted and taught that Edward de Vere was the author of the Shake-speare canon. Might as well get on board now! Read this great book.

Bravo Mr. Anderson - this is the most comprehensive study on the Earl of Oxford I have yet read.

In particular, it addresses the question that seems to put off orthodox scholars the most - the "1604 question". Many believe that, since many Shakespearean plays were first performed publicly after 1604, Oxford, who died that year, could not have written them. Anderson clearly demonstrates that the sources for the plays date at a steady rate between the 1560s up until 1603...and then completely stop. Orthodox scholars will try in vein to persuade the public to believe "The Tempest" was influenced by a report of a shipwreck in the Bermudas in 1609; they will remain quiet that a similar account was published in London in 1601!

Read this book with an open mind, and you will be thrilled by its lucid account of De Vere's life. You will become enthralled in what is surely the greatest literary mystery of all time, and join the likes of Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Sir Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh in realising the greatest writer in history has been hidden from the world for 400 years - until now.

De Vere - da Bard.