The SOF is proud to publish a series of landmark studies of the early poetry of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604).
In June 2018 the SOF presented a major new study of twenty early poems by Oxford, showing they have hundreds of echoes in the canonical “Shakespeare” poems and plays. That website presentation was the first new study of Oxford’s known poetry anywhere in decades, and the first ever to document so comprehensively their compelling parallels to the works of Shakespeare. It remains useful as an online portal for those first exploring the rich and fascinating landscape of Oxford’s early poetry.
The 2018 website presentation has been expanded upon in Professor Roger Stritmatter’s study, Poems of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Volume I of that study, He That Takes the Pain to Pen the Book, was published in April 2019. That volume is being revised for republication. It and additional volumes are in preparation. The published study is part of Professor Stritmatter’s Brief Chronicles book series published by the SOF, and will provide new scholarly analysis and documentation building on the website presentation.
These studies of Oxford’s early known poetry dramatically strengthen the already powerful case that he was the true author of the works of “Shakespeare.”
John Thomas Looney, who first proposed the Oxfordian hypothesis in his 1920 book, relied on some early poems known or suspected to be Oxford’s, but Looney was unaware of several poems later credited to Oxford by an orthodox Stratfordian scholar, which contain additional Shakespearean echoes. This is yet another of many fascinating examples of Looney’s theory being confirmed and corroborated by later-discovered or later-analyzed evidence of which he himself was unaware.
These new studies demolish long-touted arguments by Stratfordian scholars that Oxford’s early poems are somehow inconsistent with his authorship of the works of Shakespeare, or represent a weak point of the Oxfordian case. On the contrary, they emerge as powerful evidence corroborating the Oxfordian hypothesis.
Oxford’s contemporaries publicly praised his skill as a playwright and poet, but no surviving play or play title was ever openly linked to his name, suggesting that most of his works (especially his mature masterpieces) were lost — or published anonymously or under another name.
The early Oxfordian poems reinforce and corroborate three other major categories of circumstantial and documentary evidence for Edward de Vere as the true Shakespeare:
- biographical parallels explored, for example, in Mark Anderson’s “Shakespeare” by Another Name, Charlton Ogburn Jr.’s landmark book, and Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s acclaimed documentary, Nothing Is Truer Than Truth (Eagan-Donovan has also discussed Oxford’s early poetry in 2017 and 2020 lectures);
- parallels to the Shakespeare canon in de Vere’s known private letters and correspondence, explored by several scholars, including William Plumer Fowler, Joseph Sobran, Gary Goldstein, and Bonner Miller Cutting; and
- parallels between markings in de Vere’s personal copy of the Geneva Bible and biblical references in the Shakespeare canon, explored by Professor Stritmatter.
Ramon Jiménez has summarized the powerful overall case for Oxford (see, e.g., these articles, with further links, published on the SOF website in 2011 and 2020). Professor Bryan H. Wildenthal has noted, among dozens of early (pre-1616) expressions of doubt about Shakespeare’s authorship, multiple indications linking the authorship to Oxford. Acclaimed author and scholar Alexander Waugh (chairman of the U.K.’s De Vere Society) explores much additional intriguing evidence, published during and after Shakespearean times, linking Oxford to Shakespeare.
Orthodox scholars who dismiss the Oxfordian theory cannot be taken seriously until they confront and debate this evidence in a meaningful and constructive way. So far, orthodox critics have mostly ignored the evidence, instead engaging in irrelevant and slanderous ad hominem attacks on the thousands of thoughtful skeptics who have questioned — over more than four centuries — the authorship of the works of “Shakespeare.”
As Katherine Chiljan wrote in her important 2011 book (p. 340): “If the true biography of one of the greatest minds of Western civilization does not matter, then whose does?” The evidence surveyed in all these studies goes far indeed to prove that the mind behind the works of “Shakespeare” was that of Edward de Vere.
[published June 22, 2018; updated 2021]
