Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark how little the letters sound like anything in the works of Shakespeare. And, by-and-large, they are correct.
One of the commenters, J.M., declares himself a lapsed Oxfordian writes:
Just in case someone will reply with the proper answer to his point ̶ that the letters are, in every instance, business letters ̶ he follows up with:
There was no such thing as a separately stylized "business letter".
Unfortunately J.M. does not seem to have a link to a study of Vere's letters to offer in support of his first assertion. Still less fortunate, he is simply wrong about there being no such thing as a business letter-style separate from a literary letter.
First of all, there was no such thing as an English language literary letter until the 18th century. Almost no such thing in the romance languages. Having read many tens of thousands of historical letters in English, and thousands from a range of romance languages, by every segment of society from classical times to the present, I can confirm the literature on this point. Until then, letters were utilitarian. Should J.M. have a few examples perhaps he will cite them for us. As for the rest of the western vulgar languages, there were only a few such missives. Literary letters were written in Latin, if at all.
Secondly, Vere's poems and letters do share characteristics with the works of Shakespeare. See my Discovered: A New Shakespeare Sonnet (or three, actually) [link] for more detailed information on the matter.
That said, I stated in another part of the thread that both Vere and Shakespeare write of their lameness. This provoke a question from M.J.:
Mr. Purdy, is it your contention that Oxford had been rendered permanently lame?
And are Sonnets 37 and 89 where you find evidence that the poet was physically lame?
Of course, it did not matter whether I considered him “ permanently lame”. Whichever or both or neither, it had been asserted that there were no correspondences between Vere's letters and the works of Shakespeare.
I was, however, referring to the sonnets he cited.
Sonnet 37.
As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune’s dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth;
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis’d,
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give
That I in thy abundance am suffic’d,
And by a part of all thy glory live.
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee:
This wish I have; then ten times happy me!
and
Sonnet 89
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,
And I will comment upon that offence:
Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt,
Against thy reasons making no defence.
Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desired change,
As I’ll myself disgrace; knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance strangle, and look strange;
Be absent from thy walks; and in my tongue
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong,
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.
For thee, against my self I’ll vow debate,
For I must ne’er love him whom thou dost hate.
I would also add a line from King Lear that is so nearly identical to the third line of 39 that it could hardly be mere coincidence.
King Lear [IV.v.]
Glou. Now, good sir, what are you?
Edg. A most poor man, made lame by fortune’s blows,
Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
Am pregnant to good pity.
M.J. was, however, surely going to reply that the references to lameness were mere images and not actually lameness at all. I did not feel the need to be foil to the obvious 'Fraud-ulent reply. I am far too busy to put even a few seconds toward filling that role.
So then, I peeked in now and again to make sure that no one had gone ad hominem, etc., and to see when the inevitable excursus would come. For the record, the time it was posted was August 4 @precisely 9:30 AM [link].
Shakespeare, we were informed, did not actually mean lame-lame. It was some third thing. A poetic image for one thing or another it hardly matters what. Vere, we learn in another comment, was not lame in the modern sense of the word. He just had a pulled muscle or something. By his next letter it was gone.
Perhaps I will have to address M.J.'s pedestrian analysis of the above sonnets at some point. Just when the time will come available I do not know.
For the present, suffice it to say that one of the endless ridiculous inventions of the traditional Shakespeare fictional bio is that Shakespeare mentions gloves in his works identifying him as the son of a glover such as Sogliardo of Stratford's father was for a time. It cannot be denied that Shakespeare mentions gloves or that Sogliardo's father is on record as having been a glover.
As minuscule a data-point as it is, the daunting official biography of Sogliardo of Stratford, reconstructed by scholars of the highest expertise, is filled with such findings. Shakespeare was a country school-master, a lawyer's assistant, and held horses outside the theater, as established by nothing more than that he knew his grammar, quoted legal principles, could only have been Sogliardo. This because there is no record of him between his birth and marriage and none after that until his hustles begin to show up in various court and business records. Some 50 years after his death, aged persons who supposedly knew aged persons who supposedly knew him began the tradition of reeling off stories as long as the free ale would flow and those stories became gospel.
Edward de Vere mentions his lameness in a number of letters. Shakespeare mentions his lameness in a number of works. The correspondence is far more direct, far stronger than virtually all of the exciting correspondences that scholars have announced, over some 250 years, in the text of Shakespeare and life of Sogliardo that now composes the vast majority of the historical-fiction that passes for his biography and claim to have written the works.
Shakespeare mentions gloves in his works. Sogliardo's father was a glover. But looked at in each instance, there is surely an argument available that Shakespeare didn't mean glove-gloves. Therefore, Sogliardo could not have been Shakespeare because surely his father being a glover made glove-gloves.
Edward de Vere mentions his lameness in at least four of his personal letters. Shakespeare mentions his lameness in his works. It is one of a number of correspondences between the letters and the works. It's there in black and white as opposed to a mug of ale.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
Matthew Gasda on the Shakespeare Authorship Debate. May 15, 2023. 'Among his Compact Mag pieces is the March 24 article “The Right Wing Crusade Against Shakespeare”.'
Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
Edward de Vere in the Lives of his Daughters. February 27, 2023. "At least they take some comfort from their belief that De Vere had no demonstrable relationship with his daughter, the Countess of Montgomery, Susan de Vere."
- Shakespeare’s Character Names: Shylock, Ophelia, etc. July 13, 2021. “The name Ophelia was, by all indications, quite rare in the 16th century.”
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
1 comment:
Oxford is recorded as having imported the first examples of perfumed gloves into England. As much a point in his favor as having a glover for a father.
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