Exploring the evidence that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Alexander Waugh Named Oxfordian of the Year

Alexander Waugh
Alexander Waugh

The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship has named the admired British author Alexander Waugh the 2015 Oxfordian of the Year. The award was presented today, on the final day of the SOF Annual Conference held this year in Ashland, Oregon.

In recent years, Waugh has garnered publicity for his articulate skepticism of the Stratfordian theory of authorship and his advocacy of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true creator of the works of “Shakespeare.” In 2013, he co-edited, with John Shahan, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial, in which he authored a chapter on Shakespeare’s knowledge of Italy. Among many other points, Waugh refuted Stratfordian critic John Doherty’s assertion that there had never been a St. Peter’s Church in Verona by citing Richard Paul Roe’s research showing that there were four churches of that name in Verona and identifying the only one of the four that Shakespeare could have had in mind when writing Romeo and Juliet. Waugh also spoke on Shakespeare and Italy at the 2013 Shakespearean Authorship Trust Conference.

In 2014, Waugh debated on behalf of the Oxfordian theory in the Fleet Street debate, Does the Authorship Question Matter? He also introduced a new theory about the phrase “Sweet Swan of Avon” in the First Folio. He demonstrated that “Avon” was the ancient name of Hampton Court, where Shakespeare’s plays were performed for Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. He has recently presented a “holistic” interpretation of the Stratford monument, in which he argues that the references to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil on the monument are allusions to three great English poets — Beaumont, Chaucer, and Spenser — all of whom were buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey. Waugh argues that the monument is telling us that “Shakespeare” (i.e., Oxford) is also buried there, which explains the meaning of a letter by Oxford’s cousin, Percival Golding, stating that Oxford was buried in Westminster Abbey.

In his 2014 Kindle ebook, Shakespeare in Court, Waugh exposed the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as a prime source of fraudulent misinformation about the life and times of the world’s greatest playwright. The book also hilariously satirized the Stratfordian theory in a mock courtroom cross-examination of “a typical orthodox Shakespeare pundit.” Waugh gave a presentation, “Vulgar Scandal Mentioned in Shakespeare’s Sonnets” (update: now available on the SOF YouTube channel) at the current Ashland conference, and he spoke on the authorship question, along with several other anti-Stratfordian scholars from Britain, at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute the day before the conference began.

Waugh, a distinguished music critic as well as a writer, is the author of several books including Classical Music: A New Way of Listening (1995), Opera: A New Way of Listening (1996), Time (1999), and God (2002). Waugh inherits a distinguished literary tradition blazed by his grandfather Evelyn Waugh and his father Auberon Waugh. Alexander’s Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family (first published in the U.K. in 2004) is a portrait of five generations of his male relations. It was made into a 90-minute BBC documentary film in 2005. A second biography, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War, the story of the Austrian family of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, appeared in 2008.

Waugh is also the general editor of the scholarly 42-volume Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh for Oxford University Press and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Leicester. (Update: Waugh is now chairman of the De Vere Society.)

A complete list of all Oxfordians of the Year is available here.

[posted Sept. 27, 2015, updated 2021]

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