Introduction, Part 1: Oxford’s Poems and the Authorship Question
The SOF, on June 22, 2018, unveiled this major new presentation, the first in decades,1 of early known poems by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604), the Elizabethan nobleman thought by many to be the mind behind the mask of the greatest works of English literature, the plays and poems attributed to “William Shakespeare.”
As discussed in the accompanying news article — Poetic Justice for the True Shakespeare? — this website presentation is expanded upon in Professor Roger Stritmatter’s study, Poems of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, of which Volume I, He That Takes the Pain to Pen the Book, was first published in April 2019. A revised version of Volume I, and additional volumes, are in preparation. These volumes are part of Professor Stritmatter’s Brief Chronicles book series published by the SOF. For a paginated, citable, and printable PDF version of this website presentation, please click here.
These studies have revealed hundreds of parallels between de Vere’s poems and the works of Shakespeare. (Professor Stritmatter’s published study will expand upon these, exploring additional parallels and additional suspected early poems by de Vere.) This Introduction places these poems in context as the juvenilia of Shakespeare. The twenty poems included here, with annotations detailing the Shakespearean parallels, may be accessed at the links below. See also the Note on Sources, Titles, and Presentation of Parallels, Key to Abbreviations, and Bibliography of Works Cited.
- “The Labouring Man That Tills the Fertile Soil”
- “Even as the Wax Doth Melt”
- “Forsaken Man”
- “The Loss of My Good Name”
- “I Am Not as I Seem to Be”
- “If Care or Skill Could Conquer Vain Desire”
- “What Wonders Love Hath Wrought”
- “The Lively Lark Stretched Forth Her Wing”
- “The Trickling Tears That Fall Along My Cheeks”
- “Fain Would I Sing But Fury Makes Me Fret”
- “When Wert Thou Born, Desire?”
- “Winged With Desire”
- “Love Compared to a Tennis-Play”
- “These Beauties Make Me Die”
- “Who Taught Thee First to Sigh?”
- “Were I a King”
- “Sitting Alone Upon My Thought” (Echo Verses)
- “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”
- “If Women Could Be Fair and Yet Not Fond”
- “Cupid’s Bow”
One objection to the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship — often voiced by defenders of the orthodox view that the author was William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon (1564–1616) — has been that de Vere was allegedly a mediocre or even “bad” poet. It has been claimed that his few surviving early lyrics fail to show the promise, originality, sophistication, or literary polish of the mature works of Shakespeare. We test that theory against the poems themselves by exploring the frequency and detailed specificity of their echoes in the later Shakespearean works. The evidence supports two related conclusions:
(1) The argument that de Vere’s early poetry was “bad” stands in defiance of the views of his own contemporaries and can only reflect a lack of familiarity with his importance in the development of the early Elizabethan lyric voice.
(2) The argument that de Vere cannot have been Shakespeare because he was allegedly a bad poet is turned on its head by a careful study of the two bodies of work. The echoes explored here prove that Shakespeare habitually reverted to imagery, ideas, figurative language, and diction pioneered in de Vere’s early lyrics. Either Shakespeare was inordinately fond of and influenced by them, or the same man wrote both in two different phases of literary development.
We do not explore the complex and hotly disputed issues of computer-assisted “stylometrics” or forensic linguistics.2 Instead, more humbly, we merely collate the parallel phraseology, ideas, and figurative devices common to both Oxford’s early lyrics and the published Shakespearean works.
We suspect many readers will want to jump right into the poems themselves (see links above). Each poem is followed by an analysis of parallels between de Vere’s text, shown in bolded red, and passages in Shakespeare’s works. You may be stunned by the sheer weight of the evidence presented by all these echoes and parallels. They may be explored in any order and may perhaps only be fully appreciated as a whole. But just as one example, consider the remarkable thematic and verbal convergences leaping out from Poem No. 4. For a few more examples providing a preliminary taste, see No. 2 (lines 16-18), No. 9 (lines 34-36), and No. 17 (lines 1-4 & 9, and 7-10 & 15).
The remainder of this Introduction is divided into five additional sections (Parts 2 through 6). You may read the poems or any parts of the Introduction first, or go back and forth as your interests may lead you. As with the poems above, all parts of the Introduction are conveniently linked here as follows. Part 2 of the Introduction discusses Oxford’s Known Poetry as Juvenilia, followed by Part 3: Oxford’s Early Poetry in Elizabethan Literary History, Part 4: Selection of Poems, Part 5: Evaluating the Poetic Parallels, and Part 6: Overview. See also Note on Sources, Titles, and Presentation of Parallels, Key to Abbreviations, and Bibliography of Works Cited.
Continue to Part 2 of the Introduction or go directly to Poem No. 1.
1 Copyright © 2018, Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. All rights reserved. The images of the boar and motto are elements of an illustration copyright © 1975, Estate of Ruth Loyd Miller (all rights reserved, used by permission). Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this presentation (in whole or in part), for any nonprofit personal or educational purposes, but only if including at a minimum either this introductory website page (Part 1 of the Introduction) or the first two pages of the PDF version here.
When citing to the online study as a whole, please cite: Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Twenty Poems of Edward de Vere Echo in the Works of Shakespeare (2018 website presentation) (available at https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/poetic-justice). If citing to specific parts of the html website version, please cite, e.g., Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Twenty Poems of Edward de Vere Echo in the Works of Shakespeare (2018 website presentation), “Introduction, Part 1” (available at https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/twenty-poems-de-vere), or “Introduction, Part 2: Oxford’s Known Poetry as Juvenilia” (available at https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/twenty-poems-de-vere-2), or “De Vere Poem 1: The Labouring Man That Tills the Fertile Soil” (available at https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/de-vere-poem-1), etc.
If citing specifically to the pdf version of the 2018 website study, please cite: Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, Twenty Poems of Edward de Vere Echo in the Works of Shakespeare (2018 website presentation) (PDF available at https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/twenty-poems-de-vere).
The SOF welcomes constructive comments, questions, and corrections, which may be submitted by email. The SOF does not necessarily endorse any specific views expressed herein. Such views may reflect only those of the various individual scholars, past and present, whose work has informed this presentation. This website presentation was presented originally as an anonymous collective work. It is based upon work by many past and present members of the SOF, most notably Professor Roger Stritmatter (editor of the published study), with Professor Bryan H. Wildenthal (former SOF Trustee) providing editorial and research assistance.
2 Elliott & Valenza (e.g., 2004 and 2010) have argued that stylometric comparisons of the text of Oxford’s known poems with the text of the Shakespeare canon rule out Oxford as author of the latter. Such arguments have met with powerful rebuttals (e.g., by Shahan & Whalen), in part because the known Oxfordian text is merely a fraction of his juvenilia and is thus a totally inadequate comparison sample for stylometric purposes. But stylometric analysis is beyond the scope of this study. We do venture to suggest that the present study’s apparent conflict with such stylometric claims may confirm what should not really be surprising: that a computer is still not as good as a human being at reading poetry. For a more promising, linguistic-based approach to determining authorship, see, e.g., Chaski (2005) or Argamon et al. (2010).
[published June 22, 2018, updated 2021]
