The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (SOF) is pleased to offer five reviews of Professor Alan H. Nelson’s book, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool University Press, 2003). Nelson’s book is the result of almost ten years of archival research and writing. Decidedly hostile to the subject of his biography, Nelson argues that de Vere could not have been Shakespeare because he allegedly was a scoundrel and a bad speller.
Following the links (in titles below) and summaries of the five reviews, we provide a link to independent scholar Nina Green’s valuable critique of Nelson’s biography on her “Oxford Authorship Site.”
Demonography 101: Alan Nelson’s Monstrous Adversary
Independent scholar Peter R. Moore, writing in the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter (Winter 2004), does for Nelson’s historical scholarship what K.C. Ligon (below) does for his use of linguistics: exposes his historical methodology as a form of postmodern hypocrisy. Moore documents repeated instances in which Nelson commits grotesque errors of factual omission, misrepresentation, and distortion. Moore does allow that “Nelson deserves thanks and praise for [his] research … [and] openness in sharing his archival discoveries,” and for his competent handling of some areas within his expertise as an English professor. “When analyzing metrical conventions, the niceties of dedications, or the history of theatrical troupes, [Nelson] shows the sure touch of an expert in his field. I do not imply that readers must accede to [his] every judgment on these matters … but readers should recognize an obvious professional.”
But, Moore states in this devastating and meticulously documented review, “Nelson cannot do history…. [He] asks … that we let ‘the documentary evidence speak for itself.’ His request fails for two reasons. First, [such] evidence rarely makes sense without the appropriate context … [and] Nelson totally botches the context of event after event. Secondly, Nelson, who with some justice refers to Oxford’s first biographer, Bernard M. Ward, as a hagiographer, pushes much further in the opposite direction, so much so that his study of Oxford may well be dubbed demonography…. Nelson the analyst relates to Nelson the researcher as Hyde relates to Jekyll — moreover, Nelson’s obsessive denigration of Oxford carries him from error into fantasy.”
Monstrous Animosity: How Nelson Distorts Both Oxford and Oxfordians
Professor Roger Stritmatter, Ph.D., writing in Shakespeare Matters (Fall 2003, p. 8), argues that Nelson’s jaundiced view of his subject requires him to suppress the actual purpose of his work (to attack the proposition that Oxford was “Shakespeare”). The book thus proceeds from a kind of false consciousness about its object of study. “In place of a judicious scholarly critique of the Oxfordian case, [the book] substitutes a sustained ad hominem attack on Oxford’s character which bends or breaks every canon of fairness which might impede its single-minded pursuit of ideological conformity to orthodox belief.”
Nelson’s Flawed Life of Oxford
Joseph Sobran, the nationally syndicated columnist and author of Alias Shakespeare (1997), reviews Nelson’s book in the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter (Autumn 2003). Sobran notes the irony that “Nelson refuses to admit that he is joining battle in the [Shakespeare authorship] debate. He refers to it in derisive quotation marks as the ‘authorship controversy,’ as if it weren’t really a controversy at all, even though he has been a vigorous participant in it for many years.”
Sobran observes: “Rarely has an author so nakedly loathed his subject. I have read more dispassionate biographies of Hitler and Stalin. [His] disapproval of Oxford recalls Tolstoy’s detestation of Shakespeare. Having relieved himself of the duty of facing evidence in favor of Oxford’s authorship, Nelson simply pretends it doesn’t exist.”
Nelson’s “clear purpose is to discredit Oxford in almost every respect.” His book “reads like a Puritan American parson’s biography of Falstaff.” Nelson “is always ready to believe Oxford’s most scurrilous foes. He takes the phrase ‘monstrous adversary’ from one of them, who in the same sentence says luridly that Oxford ‘would drink my blood.’ But [Nelson] largely omits the many contemporary tributes to Oxford’s genius …. In short, Nelson argues that Oxford was a scoundrel, ergo he couldn’t have been ‘Shakespeare.’ This non sequitur informs the whole book.” Even worse: “Since Nelson eagerly presents (and amplifies) every detail he can find that seems damaging to Oxford, it is suspicious that he suppresses so much that is favorable to him.”
Nelson’s Oxford Biography: One Man’s Interpretation
Independent scholar Richard Whalen, in Shakespeare Matters (Fall 2003, p. 1), argues that Nelson “misunderstands the typical personality of a great genius,” passing judgment on Oxford while failing to understand his real character as a literary genius and leading patron of Elizabethan letters.
Do Oxford’s Letters Spell Shakespeare?
Independent scholar, dialect coach, and historical linguist K.C. Ligon refutes Nelson’s arguments about spelling in Shakespeare Matters (Winter 2004, p. 1). Richard M. Waugaman, M.D., in the Summer 2019 issue (p. 12) of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter, notes that Nelson ridicules Oxford for spelling “halfpenny” 11 different ways in handwritten private letters (spelling even by highly educated people was notoriously variable in Elizabethan England), while failing to compare the same word in published plays by the author Shakespeare. Waugaman found eight occurrences in six plays — spelled eight different ways!
See also Ligon’s response (“Who’s an Amateur?”) to Nelson’s hypocritical attack on “amateur” Shakespearean scholars, in the Fall 2003 issue (p. 21) of Shakespeare Matters.
Nelson himself, an English professor, is not a trained or credentialed historian. As law professor Bryan H. Wildenthal (himself an amateur historian of Shakespeare) notes in Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts (2019) (p. 212 n. 498), the prolific author and independent Shakespeare scholar Charlton Ogburn Jr. discussed the famous 1613 Rutland impresa (supposedly crafted by Shakspere of Stratford) “far more accurately, sensibly, and illuminatingly than Nelson [did in an online article], and with far greater respect for the documentary evidence …. Yet Nelson [Monstrous Adversary, p. 5] … ‘dismiss[ed] from serious consideration’ Ogburn’s exhaustively researched and documented 1984 book ([revised in 1992,] misdated by Nelson to 1975), which largely focused on [Oxford]. Nelson did not otherwise [in Monstrous Adversary] discuss, mention, or make even a pretense of engaging Ogburn’s scholarly work, which he did not even cite in his bibliography.”
Wildenthal observes (p. 210 n. 491) that “[Nelson’s] approach is sadly typical of the longstanding response of orthodox scholars to the authorship issue in general. When they do not scornfully mock it, they disdainfully ignore it. That is not how responsible scholars in any field make progress in finding, studying, and understanding facts and phenomena.” As Wildenthal comments (p. 3 n. 4), Nelson’s biography is in some ways a “useful source, though deeply biased …. [It] displays tendentious hostility to its own subject and does not seriously address the Oxfordian [authorship] theory. Anderson (2005) is a far better biography. See also Nina Green’s documented biography (on her website) and Ward (1928).”
Factual Errors in Nelson’s Monstrous Adversary
Independent scholar Nina Green provides an extensive fact-check of Nelson’s book. The link above is to Green’s latest version of her critique (a work-in-progress). Check back at the “Documents” page of her website (scroll all the way to the end) for updates to this and other critiques. Green’s overall “Oxford Authorship Site” provides a wealth of valuable materials and documentation concerning the Oxfordian theory (including her own copiously documented biography-in-progress of Oxford), and the Shakespeare authorship question generally.
[published Sept. 21, 2004, updated 2021]
