Shakespeare-Oxford Society

Ramon Jiménez In his recent biography of William Shakespeare, the critic Jonathan Bate writes: “Gathering what we can from his plays and poems: that is how we will write a biography that is true to him’ (xix). This statement acknowledges a widely recognized truth—that a writer’s work reflects his milieu, his experiences, his thoughts, and [...]

Nina Green Scholars have never satisfactorily identified the mysterious individual known only as E.K. who collaborated with Spenser on The Shepheardes Calender of 1579 and was the author of a lost commentary on Spenser’s Dreames. The suggestion that E.K. was Edward Kirke (1553-1613), a Cambridge contemporary of Spenser’s, seems to go nowhere through lack of [...]

W. Ron Hess There has long been controversy about who wrote what during the Elizabethan era because there was an extraordinary proclivity among Elizabethan authors to write anonymously or under pseudonyms, to collaborate, and to borrow (or to quote without attribution, what today we would call “to plagiarize”). Therefore, it is not surprising that this [...]

by Sally Mosher Among close to three hundred pieces contained in the most famous keyboard manuscript of the English Renaissance, now known as The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, is William Byrd's “The Earl of Oxford March” (Fitzwilliam II 402). The Oxford March has become well known to present day early music enthusiasts, and apparently was well [...]

Frank Davis Few tracts from Shakespeare's time have generated more study, comment and controversy than Greenes Groats-worth of Witte, Bought with a Million of Repentance, Describing the follie of youth, the falshoode of makeshift flatterers, the miserie of the negligent, and mischiefes of deceiuing Courtezans. This curious but important work, posthumously published by Henry Chettle [...]

James Fitzgerald You can always get a little more literature if you are willing to go a little closer into what has been left unsaid as unspeakable, just as you can always get a little more melon by going a little closer to the rind. Robert Frost The Oxford Book of English Verse, as one [...]

Dr. Charles Berney The year 1593 saw the publication of the first work attributed to “William Shake-speare, ” the narrative poem Venus and Adonis. Subsequent years saw other publications with this attribution: another poem, a number of plays, a collection of sonnets, and finally, in 1623, a large volume entitled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, [...]

A journey through the history of the argument Mark Andre Alexander Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave, now, to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will [...]

Paul H. Altrocchi, M.D. I will find where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed within the center. Hamlet: Act II Scene 2 Oxfordian scholars should be commended for excellent research in the past twenty-five years—a very productive quarter century. Other Oxfordians have either been content to wait in the wings for the inevitable [...]

Eric Lewin Altschuler and William Jansen Some years ago, in an article in Notes & Queries, Philippa Sheppard noted strong similarities between the speech of Prince Edward in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3 (5.4. 44-49) and the famed “St. Crispin’s Day” speech in Henry V (4.3.29-39). Furthermore and interestingly, Sheppard points out that, in light [...]

Roger Stritmatter We believe that Shakespeare, whose investment in courtly diction was considerable, can be analyzed as a writer who felt, in the course of his production, the ways in which new modes of production and ownership (matched by new manners and style) were arising to endanger his stylistic property, a threatened alienation which he [...]

Michael Delahoyde To this well-painted piece is Lucrece come, To find a face where all distress is stell’d. Many she sees where cares have carvéd some, But none where all distress and dolour dwell’d Till she despairing Hecuba beheld . . . Lucrece (1441-45) Shakespeare’s two long narrative poems, despite their original popularity in the [...]

Robert Brazil This article appeared in a slightly different form in the 1999 issue of The Oxfordian Shakespeare’s play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, is filled with fascinating enigmas. Because Merry Wives was first printed in 1602, most standard commentators on Shakespeare consider it to be a mid-career play, written while the author was at [...]

Richard F. Whalen This article appeared in a slightly different form in the 2003 issue of The Oxfordian Awake! Awake! Ring the alarum-bell:––murder and treason! Banquo and Donalbain! Malcolm! Awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit, And look on death itself! Macduff: Macbeth: Act II Scene 1 A review of historical documents and topical [...]

by Ramon Jiménez This article appeared in a slightly different form in the 2004 issue of The Oxfordian The anonymous history play, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, printed in 1594, has occasionally been cited as a source for Shakespeare’s Richard III, printed in 1597, also anonymously. True Tragedy was not printed again until [...]