Laugwitz Verlag of Hamburg, Germany, has published the collected work of the late Warren Hope in a 200-page volume titled Is That True? Shakespearean Explorations.
The book is available in paperback globally through Amazon.com for $12.00.
A lifelong adherent of the Oxfordian hypothesis, Hope (1944-2022) served as editor of the Shakespeare Oxford newsletter from 1981-83 and published his research in The Elizabethan Review, Brief Chronicles, and The Oxfordian over a 30 year period.
Is That True? Shakespearean Explorations includes three dozen research papers, essays and book reviews detailing the case for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as William Shakespeare.
Among his discoveries are the following: John Davies’ poem, Orchestra, was written for the same court entertainment at which Queen Elizabeth was in attendance and for which A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed – the festivities held at Greenwich in 1595 for the marriage of Elizabeth Vere and William Stanley, Earl of Derby. Moreover, he proposed that the identity of the anonymous “Singing Swallow,” referred to in stanza 131, is the 17th Earl of Oxford.
Susan Vere, the third, youngest and unmarried daughter of the Earl of Oxford, served as a model for Shakespeare’s Cordelia in King Lear. Hope notes a couplet written by John Davies for Lady Susan Vere and recorded in the Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple was used as part of a courtly entertainment before the Queen in the summer of 1602. He contrasts that with the exchange between Lear and Cordelia in the first act of King Lear.
The scholarship in Is That True? has earned the praise of English and History professors in the US. Michael Delahoyde, Professor of English at Washington State University: “In addition to “learned and valiant,” one character in Twelfth Night is said to be “In voices well divulged,” meaning praised by many. The same may be said of both Shakespeare and Warren Hope, but with the additional subtler meaning that these latter two express themselves in a number of diverse voices, coming from single consistent perspectives. We can find this in the collection of Warren Hope’s writings, published here and covering half a century of original research and scholarship: articles, reviews, and other writings.”
Don Ostrowski of Harvard University, a History Lecturer and Research Associate, notes that “Hope brilliantly lays out his literary evidence for concluding that the 17th Earl of Oxford (Edward de Vere) was the author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare. The articles in Part I of this collection demonstrate his reasons for arriving at that conclusion, while his reviews in Part II of books by those who support the conventional view and by those who support the Oxfordian view, as well as by those who try to circumvent the authorship question, are incisive.”
Laugwitz Verlag is a specialist publisher of the English Renaissance, bringing out the scholarly works of researchers, translators and essayists in German and English for the university market. It was established by Dr. Uwe Laugwitz of Germany in 1997. Its portfolio comprises a new German translation of 16 Shakespeare dramas by Frank Patrick Steckel (1943-2024), as well as research by Austrian, German, Italian and American scholars, from Walter Klier and Robert Detobel to A. Bronson Feldman, Peter R. Moore, Noemi Magri, Robin Fox and Gerold Wagner.
