To continue with the bio of the Earl of Oxford: In 1586, after his return from Italy (where he allegedly obtained ideas for his "Italian" flavoured Shakespearean plays, such as "Romeo & Juliet," "Much Ado" etc.) he took part in the trial of Mary Queen of Scots. Then two years later, he paid for one of Queen Elizabeth I's ships that fought against the Spanish Armada and was honoured by the queen as a result.
In 1591 he married Elizabeth Trentham and became a patron of literature and the theatre. In 1603 he officiated at the coronation of King James I, a known lover of the theatre, and then one year later, our literary earl died of the plague in Hackney, east London where he was buried. Note: he died twelve years before Shakespeare did, and according to the experts, such great plays as "Macbeth," "King Lear", "The Tempest" and "Coriolanus" were still waiting to be written.
Now we take a fast-forward from 1604 to 1920. In this last-mentioned year, an English school teacher from Gateshead in NE England, called J. Thomas Looney (pronounced as he insisted, Loney for obvious reasons) wrote a 476-page book called"Shakespeare" Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford." In it, our author claims that WS's plays were written by the earl and backs up his theory by stating that the writer of these plays had to have had the following qualifications:
maturity
eccentric and mysterious
intense sensibility and unconventional
had pronounced and literary tastes
an enthusiast of world drama
a lyric poet with a classical education
had feudal connections and loved Italy
an upper aristocrat and lover of falconry
careless with money
doubtful and somewhat conflicting attitudes re. women
a probable and sceptical (?) Catholic
The person who fulfilled all of the above was none other than Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, according to J.T. Looney. And not only that, but one of this lit. crit's greatest fans was Sigmund Freud. He read Looney's book three years after he published it and became convinced that our northern English school teacher was right. Freud loved King Lear and noted that both the earl and Oxford both had three daughters.
My copy of Looney's book (1948 edition).
Looney also found support from other men-of-letters such as Prof. Abel Lefranc Canon Rendall, Percy Allen and Colonel B.R. Ward and his son. Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn wrote a very comprehensive 1297-page tome called This star of England supporting the Oxfordian theory in 1952 and in 1984, their son, Ogden Jnr published an even more comprehensive volume, The Mysterious William Shakespeare.
But so far, none of the above has answered one basic question: How could it be that the Earl of Oxford, a known writer and traveller had written WS when it is a proved fact that he died in 1604 and yet the Bard's new plays continued to appear until about 1613, nine years later?
I will try and answer this intriguing question next time in my last chapter on "Oxford is Shakespeare."
Read, enjoy and comment at dlwhy08@gmail.com
In 1591 he married Elizabeth Trentham and became a patron of literature and the theatre. In 1603 he officiated at the coronation of King James I, a known lover of the theatre, and then one year later, our literary earl died of the plague in Hackney, east London where he was buried. Note: he died twelve years before Shakespeare did, and according to the experts, such great plays as "Macbeth," "King Lear", "The Tempest" and "Coriolanus" were still waiting to be written.
Now we take a fast-forward from 1604 to 1920. In this last-mentioned year, an English school teacher from Gateshead in NE England, called J. Thomas Looney (pronounced as he insisted, Loney for obvious reasons) wrote a 476-page book called"Shakespeare" Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford." In it, our author claims that WS's plays were written by the earl and backs up his theory by stating that the writer of these plays had to have had the following qualifications:
maturity
eccentric and mysterious
intense sensibility and unconventional
had pronounced and literary tastes
an enthusiast of world drama
a lyric poet with a classical education
had feudal connections and loved Italy
an upper aristocrat and lover of falconry
careless with money
doubtful and somewhat conflicting attitudes re. women
a probable and sceptical (?) Catholic
The person who fulfilled all of the above was none other than Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, according to J.T. Looney. And not only that, but one of this lit. crit's greatest fans was Sigmund Freud. He read Looney's book three years after he published it and became convinced that our northern English school teacher was right. Freud loved King Lear and noted that both the earl and Oxford both had three daughters.
Looney also found support from other men-of-letters such as Prof. Abel Lefranc Canon Rendall, Percy Allen and Colonel B.R. Ward and his son. Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn wrote a very comprehensive 1297-page tome called This star of England supporting the Oxfordian theory in 1952 and in 1984, their son, Ogden Jnr published an even more comprehensive volume, The Mysterious William Shakespeare.
But so far, none of the above has answered one basic question: How could it be that the Earl of Oxford, a known writer and traveller had written WS when it is a proved fact that he died in 1604 and yet the Bard's new plays continued to appear until about 1613, nine years later?
I will try and answer this intriguing question next time in my last chapter on "Oxford is Shakespeare."
Read, enjoy and comment at dlwhy08@gmail.com
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