In part, this is because one of the more combative participants is deferring to a work of Steven May. If one reads it, he suggests, one will be unable to refute May's thesis.
"The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as Poet and Playwright", Tennessee Law Review (2004), Vol. 72: pp. 221–54.
I like the new tack. Especially as enough information is available that I will not have to add a visit to the library to my insane schedule.
The particular conversation that I presently address is on the topic of a purported lack of transitional works to show the young Oxford ever wrote more mature poems. His juvenilia understandably show no definitive link with the poems of Shakespeare. His later poetry is mostly a matter of careful research.
Mr. Malim, for his part, chooses to read from a different text from May. Nothing inappropriate about that.
The argument Malim offers, vis-a-vis May, was first presented in an unsigned 1990 article entitled “Does the early work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, reveal that he wrote songs as well as verses? “1 But Malim has since gone much further in his “The Mystery of Willy: Oxford, Spenser, and Theocritus’ Sixe Idillia”2. There he offers into evidence an anonymous 1588 publication of translations from the Greek poet Theocritus in which he detects the hand of Oxford.
While I am not yet convinced that Oxford wrote the Sixe Idillia neither am I convinced that he didn't. Malim's essay does make some interesting points and conjectures. The few errors do not seem to me to weaken his argument.3
As for May, I have never been particularly impressed with his work. His points seem to me to depend too much, as the rule, on his impressions as a credentialed scholar in the field and too little on precise rational analysis.
In the May quote from MJ I was struck by the line “To be an Oxfordian, you must believe that the Earl published or released for circulation under his name or initials his canonical verse”. (Imagine me not knowing the requirement!) Immediately I knew that the data set was strictly limited such that the conclusion was foregone. If a poem is not followed by the initials “E.O.” it cannot be considered toward detecting a transitional phase from Oxford to Shakespeare. Again, this guarantees that there can be no transition phase because there are only a very few scattered “E.O.”s to be found after some date in the 1570s. From then onward the rule is that Edward de Vere wrote no further poetry that we know of. Thus he could not have become Shakespeare.
I've actually spent a great deal of time and effort on the question of transition. My Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal4 addresses it in terms of poetry. My variorum edition of Edward de Vere's Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584)5 is the first book-length product of my analysis of the transition in plays.
As for the plays, I submit that the evidence of the transition from Edward de Vere to Shakespeare has always been substantial and compelling. In U&A, for just one instance, I quote the following, both of which are in line with the mainstream scholarship on Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida, the later expansion of the 1584 work.
Stokes, x.] It has often been remarked that passages and even scenes in Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," as printed in the Quarto and the Folio, seem to be boulders from an older drama embedded in the newer and more celebrated formation.6
Rolfe, 21, quoting Verplank] Another set of English commentators, from Steevens to Seymour, have satisfied themselves that Shakespeare's genius and taste had been expended in improving the work of an inferior author, whose poorer groundwork still appeared through his more precious decorations.7
Anyone who has studied the literature on the plays of Shakespeare knows that the same observation has been made again and again. In many, if not most, of the plays Shakespeare is understood to have begun with an older text and to have revised it to bring it up to his level. In almost every case it is said that the original has been lost together with the name of the author.
As often happens in the historical scholarly commentary — before there was a pressing claim for the authorship of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, that brought about another transition: from traditional Stratfordians to Authorship Strats — findings in this line simply stated Oxfordian positions well before Oxfordianism even existed.
A play now lost called "The Historie of Error" was "shown at Hampton Court on New Yere's daie at night 1576, 77, enacted by the children of Powles" (i.e. Pauls: see the Variorum of 1 821, vol. iii., p. 387); and from this piece, as Malone remarks, "it is extremely probable that he was furnished with the fable of the present Comedy," as well as the designation of "Surreptus" or "Sereptus " appended to the name of Ant. E. in the Folio, and which is more fully referred to later on. Later, in 1582, this play recurs as the History of Ferrar (sic), in the accounts of the Revels at Court, as a drama produced at Windsor; and it may well be conjectured that this "Historie of Error" was nothing but a free rendering of the Menaechmi of Plautus,8
But, now that the holy name is so constantly desecrated, such naiveté is a sign that the scholar needs retraining or to be cast out. The heresy so threatens the literary soul that the ends justify whatever means.
So then, Ulysses and Agamemnon cannot have been written by Shakespeare because the Stratford man was only 20 years old and would hardly have had time to become a figure at court much less a great playwright. "The Historie of Error" cannot have been written by Shakespeare for one reason, and one reason only: Because he would have to have written it when he was 12 years old. But, then, if Edward de Vere wrote the works of Shakespeare these and many other early texts adapted whole-cloth by Shakespeare are plentiful evidence of transition.
By-the-bye, where is the evidence of the transition in the Stratford man? Brothers, let us pray...
1Anonymous. “Does the early work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, reveal that he wrote songs as well as verses?” Edward De Vere Newsletter No. 18 (1990, possibly revised February 2001. ). http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Newsletters/Oxford_Poems_and_Songs-18.pdf
2Malim, Richard. “The Mystery of Willy: Oxford, Spenser, and Theocritus’ Sixe Idillia.” The Oxfordian, Volume 19, October 2017. 129-151.
3For one example, Mr. Malim cites as part of his evidence for Shakespeare's knowledge of Greek: “Greek names or words are used to name the characters: Laertes, Dromio (from Greek root for run), Desdemona (unlucky woman), and Ophelia (benefit).” The name Desdimona, however, he took from the source of Othello, Cinthio's Hecatommithi, III, 7., not from the Greek. The name Ophelia comes from Jacopo Sanazzaro's Arcadia. Again, not the Greek.
4Purdy, Gilbert Wesley. Shakespeare in 1573: Apprenticeship and Scandal (2021). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096GSQV14
5Vere, Edward. Ulysses and Agamemnon (1584) (Purdy, ed. 2018). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JD7KM1T
6 Stokes, H. P. M.A. Troilus and Cressida: the First Quarto, 1609. London: Griggs, 1886. x.
7 Troilus and Cressida (1898), Rolfe ed. 21.
8 Comedy of Errors (1907), Henry Cunningham, ed., xxiv.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
D⸻ R⸻ and the Player's Speech in Hamlet. July 9, 2023. 'Most of his confidence comes to him through Tonya Pollard's essay “What’s Hecuba to Shakespeare?”'
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!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
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.
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