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Edited by Roger Stritmatter and Mark K. Anderson
Oxenford Press is dedicated to the printing and distribution of books, pamphlets, video tapes and periodicals that will introduce you, the reader, to the 400 year old controversy surrounding the true identity of William Shakespeare.
In 1920, J. Thomas Looney, an English schoolmaster, first presented Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford in his book, "Shakespeare" Identified, as the man behind the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." For 75 years, a growing body of substantive Oxfordian research and commentary continues to reveal new dimensions to Shakespeare's poetry and plays as historical and personal chronicles of the Elizabethan Court, the waning feudal aristocracy and the new politics of the late 16th and early 17th Century. Moreover, the man behind the name, Edward de Vere, condemned to obscurity until now, becomes in himself a story of mythic proportion.
Oxenford Press takes its name in homage to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford from a variant spelling typical of the time (when the printed word, still subservient to oral tradition, was more fluid in pronunciation, spelling and meaning and less codified in form.) As a convenient way for you to begin your investigation of the Authorship controversy we offer you the Oxenford Reader, which will be updated, revised and enlarged as more material is located and acquired. We hope that your intellect and imagination will be excited, challenged and provoked by this "seditious" reading.
As you learn more, you will help, in your own unique way, to release the plays and poems from the academic fog within which they have been held ideological captive for 400 years and share in the distinctly human pleasure of participating in the rediscovery of an earlier era that has profoundly shaped our own.
Please consider us your resource for Oxfordian scholarship and related commentary. If we do not have what you are looking for, we will make every effort to locate it for you.
Timothy Holcomb
January 1995
Since our first printing in 1993, the Shakespeare authorship controversy made headlines around the world, provoked passionate discussion at Internet forums and University colloquia, and attracted thousands to speaking engagements at venues like Boston's Faneuil Hall and the Smithsonian Institute.
From Germany's paper of record to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case for Edward de Vere's authorship has continued to gain ground. Compelled by Oxfordian testimony, retired Justice Harry A. Blackmun reversed his 1987 moot court ruling supporting the Shakespeare orthodoxy. "If I had to rule on the evidence presented," reflected Blackmun, "it would be in favor of the Oxfordians." Justice John Paul Stevens, in his 1992 University of Pennsylvania Law Review opinion, seconded his colleague's endorsement of the heresy. Stevens finds the existence of an "imaginitive conspiracy" to conceal de Vere's authorship entirely plausible. Indeed, as the Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung concluded in August 1994, "the burden of proof has shifted."
Yale literary critic Harold Bloom, on the other hand, has rushed to the defense of the orthodoxy. In his Western Canon (1994), Bloom shrugs off a tradition of dissent including canonical figures such as Twain, Emerson, Whitman, Joyce, and Henry James. But it is Freud's Oxfordian conviction that sends Bloom over the edge. "Nothing," he declares, "could be loonier."
The contempt of professional critics like Bloom has not prevented the recent publication of at least two major Oxfordian books. Walter Klier's Das Shakespeare Komplott (1993) has sparked enormous German interest in de Vere. In the United States, Richard Whalen's Shakespeare: Who Was He? (1994) sets new standards for introductory Oxfordian surveys. Although Looney, Ogburn, and Hope and Holston remain vital for advanced studies, Whalen, we hope, represents the first of a new wave of authors reaching an ever-wider popular audience with Hamlet's charge to "report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied."
In Germany, at least, ad hominems are no longer an acceptable substitute for critical inquiry: "English literary studies", writes Frankfurter Allgemine Zeitung, "can no longer sustain the fiction that the Oxfordians are starry-eyed looney birds."
Shakespeare: WHO WAS HE? The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon by Richard F. Whalen (Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT. 1994)
This new offering by Shakespeare Oxford Society President Richard Whalen at last provides a short, readable, informative introduction to the case for Oxford's authorship aimed at the general reader. Whalen's treatment distills many of the most cogent arguments for and against Oxford's authorship into less than 200 pages. Considering the complexity involved in responsibly representing both sides, the book's brevity is an accomplishment in itself. Unlike other recent accounts (for example, Irvin Matus' Shakespeare IN FACT), Whalen's historically-informed perspective credits the institutional interests brought into play by the controversy. To wit:
Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, establishment scholars, found mainly in the newly formed English departments at universities, continued to teach the firmly entrenched belief that the man from Stratford was the author Shakespeare. Faced with some sixty candidates for authorship, the professors and lecturers in the universities and the publishers prudently stayed with the man from Stratford. In dismissing the other candidates, they also dismissed the possibility that Will Shakspere might not have been the poet/dramatist. To accept that possibility would have meant scrapping nearly a century of scholarship. (p. 67)
In a marketplace hostile towards unorthodox viewpoints, Whalen's even-handed treatment of orthodoxy will appeal to a broad readership curious for a first exposure to the controversy. His moderate approach blazes a trail for future Oxfordian publications that will have the luxury of presuming a more informed readership. We nominate Shakespeare: WHO WAS HE? for immediate paperback publication.
$19.95 plus P&H. Available from: The Blue Boar Shop
The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality by Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (EPM Publications, 2nd Edition, 1992)
More than any other event, the publication of this 1984 book by Charlton Ogburn Jr. catapulted the Oxfordian case before an international audience. In addition to presenting the historical case for de Vere's authorship, Ogburn includes a critical analysis of the methods used by Shakespeare orthodoxy to misinform the public about the merits of the Oxfordian thesis. Past Folger Shakespeare Library Program Director Richmond Crinkley, in the prestigious Shakespeare Quarterly (1985), reviewed Ogburn's book with the favorable observation that Ogburn had permanently altered the terms of the authorship controversy:
The best scholars live in a world of growth, discovery and change... The popular acceptance of Ogburn's work creates a force with which orthodoxy will have to contend. Ogburn has skillfully directed so much attention to the shabby behavion of his opponents that his argument for Oxford looks all the better because of who is against it.
Ogburn attains a level of psychological insight into the author of the plays "so that biography, history and literature become mutually-interpreting aspects of a single, comprehensibly human phenomenon" which would turn orthodox scholars green with envy if they knew what they were missing:
De Vere initially, I believe, sought to play a direct role as a shaper of history, but, like Hamlet, he found that his temperament was against it, as well as his sovereign. Thus he undertook to do what Hamlet did when he set about to trap the conscience of the King and make the drama an instrument of practical effect. In a playwright's motley he would cleanse the foul body of the world. But here again "thank heaven" his temperament was to carry the day and his art to transcend any harness. (p. 462)
Perhaps more than any other recent book, Ogburn shows why the authorship controversy does matter. As Crinkley concludes, "If the intellectual standards of Shakespeare scholarship quoted in such embarrassing abundance by Ogburn are representative, then it is not just authorship about which we have to be worried."
$37.50, plus P&H. Available from: The Blue Boar Shop
"Shakespeare" Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford by J. Thomas Looney. Edited by Ruth Loyd Miller (Minos Publishing Co., 2 vols., 1975)
A British secondary-school teacher, John Thomas Looney became the first modern scholar to formally propose that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford authored the works conventionally attributed to Shakespeare. His classic 1920 study remains the outstanding introduction to the life of de Vere. Shakespearean actor Leslie Howard admired it enough to offer a copy to his SS bête noire in the classic Oxfordian film Pimpernel Smith (1939).
Howard was not alone in his admiration for the book. In a letter to the author, Sigmund Freud subscribed himself as a "follower" of Looney's thesis. John Galsworthy praised Shakespeare Identified as "the greatest detective story I have ever read." Columbia Professor Fredrick Tabor Cooper reviewed the first edition as "one of the most ingenious pieces of minute, circumstantial evidence extant in literary criticism...every right minded scholar who seriously cares about the welfare of letters in the bigger sense should face the problem that this book represents and argue it to a finish."
The reception of Looney's work by orthodox scholars, who still seem to believe they can dismiss his arguments by laughing at his name "without even reading the book" remains an intellectual scandal in the 1990s. Despite the funny name, Hope and Holstein describe Looney as "a remarkable specimen of a once-rare and now all-but-extinct species: a teacher who refused to outrage his own conscience by telling lies to children."
The third 1975 edition in two volumes from Minos Publishing Co. includes ample supplemental material from the burgeoning research files of Oxfordian pioneer scholar Ruth Loyd Miller.
$60 for two volumes including The Poems of Edward de Vere. Minos Publishing Co. P.O. Box 1309 Jennings, Louisiana 70546 Tel: (318) 824-4564
A facsimile edition of the original 1920 publication is available from: The Blue Boar Shop ($20.00 plus P&H)
Minos Publishing Co. also keeps in print Eva Turner Clarke's Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare's Plays, B.M. Ward's edition of A Hundredth Sundry Flowers, the 1573 poetry "anthology" from de Vere's pen, and myriad other early Oxfordian works.
Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters by William Plumer Fowler (Peter E. Randall: Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 1986)
Lawyer-poet William Plumer Fowler exhaustively analyzes the language and imagery of thirty-six extant letters (1562-1604) of Edward de Vere now preserved at Hatfield House to demonstrate that the letter writer also wrote the poems and plays of "Shakespeare":
What is most impressive about these letters of Oxford's is the great number and consistency of occurrence of their correspondences to Shakespeare, together with their great variety. Above all else, the letters supply the missing documentary evidence that advances Oxford's authorship of Shakespeare from theory to reality and delivers a coup de grace to the long established Stratfordian theory. (p. xv)
By any standard, Fowler's book demonstrates that Edward de Vere wrote the most "Shakespearean" letters of any correspondent from the Elizabethan era. This demonstration assumes its proper historical significance only in light of the epistolary blank slate of the Stratfordian narrative tradition. Where are "Shakespeare's" letters? They are in this book; read them and weep.
...But the world is so cunning, as of a shadow they can make a substance, and of a likelihood a truth. And these fellows, if they be those I suppose, I do not doubt but so to decipher them to the world, as easily your Lordship may look into their lewdness and unfaithfulness...
The above letter was written to Lord Burghley in July, 1581, by the Earl of Oxford about a month after his release from the Tower...Of particular interest is Oxford's antithetical reference in his second paragraph to "a shadow" and "a substance" ...This "shadow-substance" antithesis harks back to Plato's Socratic dialogue in the 7th book of The Republic, about the shadows cast by a candle in a cave, and is a favorite of Shakespeare's, unfolded again and again, in the repeated portrayal of what Dr. Herbert R. Coursen, Jr., terms "Shakespeare's great theme, the discrepancy between appearance and reality. (p.285)
$35 postpaid. Richard Fowler, Box 101, Bean Brook Farm, Piermont, NH 03779
The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy: An Analysis of the Claimants to Authorship, and Their Champions and Detractors by Warren Hope and Kim Holston (McFarland & Co., 1992)
This extraordinary little book "polemical, witty and substantive all at once " surveys Oxfordian prehistory in chapters reviewing the work of Delia Bacon; The "Mississippi" skeptics Whitman, O'Conner and Twain; Ignatius Donelley; George Greenwood and others. Looney's work is perceptively analyzed as a reconfiguration of the historical discoveries of 19th century Shakespeare orthodoxy, fused with the skepticism and insight of anti-Stratfordians. The authors are anything but apologetic towards the Stratfordian establishment:
Histories of this subject are marked by a dreary sameness. They are all written from the same point of view: there is no Shakespeare authorship question, really, only a gabble of cranks who think there is. It is as if dwellers on the flat earth decided to write up the evolution of the notion that the world is round.
This history of the subject is very different. It is written from the point of view that there is an authorship question, that it is important, and that the correct answer to it has already been found and broadcast among us. More of us would be aware of these truths if a gabble of cranks did not vociferously deny them...What we track in this book are the efforts of a number of people which culminated in that recognition of Shakespeare's identity [as Oxford] and the consequences, thus far, of that recognition.
The result is a kind of inversion of the history of the subject as it has been written to date. People who have been denounced as lunatics are seen as truth-seekers. Great writers who have been said to have spoken ironically on this subject are taken at their word. Cranks become respected authorities and respected authorities become mere cranks. A whole host of people who have been torn from their contexts and misrepresented are put back where they belong and permitted to show at least a glimpse of their true colors. (p. xii)
$25.00 plus P&H. Available from: The Blue Boar Shop
Shakespeare, IN FACT by Irvin Leigh Matus (Continuum: New York, 1994).
Irvin Matus, an independent researcher, is fast emerging as Shakespearean orthodoxy's answer to the populist groundswell of curiosity about the Oxford theory. Reviewing this book for the Universal Press Syndicate, Joseph Sobran praised Matus as a "brilliant defense attorny for a client [Oxford] who is, when all is said and done, guilty as sin. He finds every chink in the Oxfordian arguments, but he doesn't confront the evidence whole. He is a defender of the establishment rather than a dispassionate enquirer. For those with deep pockets and an urge to collect historical curios or a need to keep pace with the latest fashions in orthodox rhetoric, the book can be recommended without reserve. Readers interested in an authentically Shakespearean experience will wish to search elsewhere:
The Greeks looked upon drama as an art, just as we do, and rewarded their great playwrights, as we do. Certainly it is reasonable to suppose that Elizabethan England, which nurtured what is perhaps the greatest dramatic outpouring of all, must also have recognized drama as an art, and Shakespeare as its supreme artist. Reasonable. But wrong. (p. 128)
The great and powerful Oz has spoken.
$29.50 plus postage & handling. The Continuum Publishing Group, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6503 Tel: (212)953-5858 Fax: (212)953-5944
The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford 1550-1604: From Contemporary Documents by B.M. Ward (John Murray: London, 1929)
In this standard biographical account of Edward de Vere's life, Ward subordinates Oxfordian conclusions but supplies a documentary narrative for use in eventually establishing de Vere's authorship of the Shakespeare canon:
The anti-climax presented by the last years of Lord Oxford's life is inevitable. It is almost impossible to penetrate the obscurity surrounding his life at Hackney. There can be little doubt that literature, his main interest in life, occupied the greater part of his time. It is probable that he and his son-in-law Lord Derby amused themselves by writing comedies which were performed by their actors. Music too must have played an important part in the years of retirement. But his secret has been well kept. Indeed, so completely have the last fifteen years of his life been obscured, that one is tempted to wonder whether this is due to chance, or whether it may not have been deliberately designed. (p. 348)
$32.50 postpaid. Out-of-print, available in spiral-bound photocopy. Minos Publishing Co. P.O. Box 1309 Jennings, Louisiana 70546 Tel: (318) 824-4564
Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England. by Anabel Patterson (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984)
We include Professor Patterson's book in this synoptic bibliography because we believe that the Shakespeare controversy belongs in many ways to the study of the history of censorship; perhaps more than any other contemporary historical dispute it raises questions about the boundaries we draw between censorship directly imposed by the state, and that which is merely an aspect of the prevailing zeitgeist of an identifiable sociocultural system. Patterson's book belongs to a new wave of contemporary, interdisciplinary scholarship which considers the historical dynamics of censorship and its influence in creating what is called "literature." Although the operant premises of this book are implicitly Stratfordian, Patterson's theoretical approach to what she calls the "hermeneutics of censorship" leads in an inevitably post-Stratfordian direction:
...there is evidence, if we look carefully, of a highly sophisticated system of oblique communication, of unwritten rules whereby writers could communicate with readers or audiences (among whom were the very same authorities who were responsible for state censorship) without producing direct confrontation. (p. 53)
Examined through the illuminating theoretical spectacles of the "hermeneutics of censorship," the Shakespeare canon becomes a complex literary negotiation of the conditions of anonymity imposed by the Tudor state on its most brilliant and controversial author, Edward de Vere. Highly recommended for all post-Stratfordian readers.
Paper, $14.95. University of Wisconsin Press, 114 North Murray Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53715.
Freeing Shakespeare's Voice: An Actor's Guide to Talking the Text by Kristin Linklater (Theater Communications Group: New York, 1993)
World famous Shakespeare voice coach Kristin Linklater is sending small shockwaves through the theater establishment by her declared conviction in the historical truth of the Oxfordian position. But the book is much more than a brilliant actor's effort to redeem de Vere's "wounded name" from the unjust calumnies of orthodox history. Linklater is quite justly regarded as a leading authority on both practical and theoretical dimensions of bringing the Shakespeare text alive in the voice and body of the actor: her theory is both practical and informed by a sophisticated sense of the broad changes in historical consciousness symbolized by our collective modern failure (thusfar) to grasp the historical significance of de Vere's text. Paper, $12.95
The Shakespeare Mystery (PBS Frontline Documentary Video, 1989)
Produced in conjunction with York Television in 1989, with the American version narrated by Al Austin and Judy Woodruff, this 60 minute video is a stellar introduction to the authorship controversy in general and to de Vere in particular. We are aware of several instance where the video was enthusiastically received but, due to institutional pressures, was never screened. That in itself testifies to The Shakespeare Mystery's effectiveness. Highly recommended for use in the classroom or on closed-circuit television in conjunction with local events or discussions. A wonderful Oxfordian educational tool which deserves to be used creatively. We can't wait for the sequel.
$59.95 (plus $8.50 postage & handling). PBS Video 1320 Bradock Place Alexandria, Virginia 22314 Tel: (800)344-3337
Between The Lines by Richard Kennedy (Oxenford Press, 1993)
In 1993, this little pamphlet by Oxfordian researcher and novelist Richard Kennedy of Newport, Oregon, won first prize in Oxenford's "brevity is the soul of wit" contest. It's still a winner. Roll over, William Cecil. You said that white-space would never speak, but Kennedy proves you wrong. This fable-in-verse with actual reproductions of Elizabethan title pages, including Shake-Speare's Sonnets, comes with a money-back guarantee from Oxenford. Pass it around at your dinner party, and if it doesn't raise the eyebrows on skeptics, amaze the ears of the free, and ignite one of the most stellar party conversations you've ever had "we'll return your money." $3 postpaid
To Catch the Conscience of the King: Leslie Howard and the 17th Earl of Oxford by Charles Boyle (Oxenford Press, 1993)
Oxfordian actor Leslie Howard, shot down by German fighter bombers over the Bay of Biscay in 1942, lived a double life as an incognito Oxfordian who came out of the closet in his 1939 British propaganda film, Pimpernel Smith. This small book tells Howard's intriguing story as perhaps the most devoted and certainly the most skilled promoter of the Oxfordian theory. An international spine-tingler from Oxenford. $5 postpaid
Shakespeare's Self-Portrait: A Summary by Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (Oxenford Press, 1993)
This fifteen page synopsis of Mr. Ogburn's 1984 book is a perfect introduction to the Oxfordian thesis. Hand one to your "skeptical" friends, co-workers or associates and listen as the bells of recognition start to chime in atrophied braincells. $3 postpaid
Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose by Elisabeth Sears (Consolidated Press, 1991)
The case for Edward de Vere's paternity of Henry Wriothesley, dedicatee of Venus and Adonis and (so runs the common bruit) the "fair youth" of the Sonnets. A torrid internal controversy within the Oxfordian paradigm, with some Oxfordians favoring the view, often shared by Stratfordians, alleging a homosexual affair between the author and the "fair youth". Sears' argument, as well as being more in accordance with the general tenor and symbolism of the Sonnets, goes far to deepen a reader's understanding of the enigmatic prefatory materials to Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece. Though not a subject which deserves to become a litmus test of Oxfordian "loyalty", ascertaining the correct historical relationship between the author and the "fair youth" cannot be without intrinsic interest to serious readers of the Sonnets. $12.50 postpaid
"Elizabethan Mystery Man" Charles Wisner Barrell Saturday Review of Literature, May 1, 1937.
The article which first introduced de Vere to the American Literary public, by that tireless and brilliant Oxfordian scholar, Charles Wisner Barrell.
"Who Wrote Shakespeare?" James Lardner The New Yorker, April 11, 1988.
Excellent historical survey of the authorship controversy, with Dickensian character sketches of contemporary Oxfordians at the 1987 Washington D.C. Moot Court, in which Supreme Court Justices Brennan, Blackmun and Stevens heard arguments on the authorship controversy.
"The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction" U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens University of Pennsylvania Law Review (140:1372-1386), 1992.
Stevens' landmark opinion sets forth five principles of historical interpretation which are bound to impact the still unfolding history of the controversy. [Stratfordians argue that] nothing short of a Royal command could have induced the author to remain anonymous. The Oxfordians respond... that the possibility of a Royal command may not be so absurd after all, because Queen Elizabeth made an extraordinary grant to de Vere... The Queen, it appears, may have been a member of the imaginative conspiracy, and for reasons of her own may have decided to patronize a gifted dramatist, who agreed to remain anonymous, while he loyally rewrote much of the early history of Great Britain. (1383-84)
"Looking For Shakespeare" Tom Bethell & Irvin Matus Atlantic Monthly, May 1991.
Irvin Matus and Tom Bethell square off over the authorship controversy. We take exception to some of Matus' outrageous statements, for example, that de Vere was not a man of the theater.
The Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter.
Quarterly newsletter of the Shakespeare Oxford Society. Beginning with the Winter 1996 issue, It continues the Shakespeare Oxford Society newsletter, published for many years by Morse Johnson out of Cincinnati. Free with annual membership of $35 ($15 for students). A must for serious students of the authorship controversy, it keeps abreast of latebreaking news in the wide world of Oxfordian scholarship and discovery, as well as providing a much-needed link for neophytes to the intriguing past history of the authorship controversy. Shakespeare Oxford Society. PO Box 263, Somerville MA 02143
The Elizabethan Review.
Aimed at the academic audience, The Elizabethan Review prints serious articles pertaining to the culture and history of the Elizabethan period in general as well as to the authorship controversy. Easily the most sophisticated and quality intellectual journal with a commitment to creating a forum for discussion of the authorship controversy. The contents are abstracted by the World Shakespeare Bibliography. Essential for the local or academic library to keep abreast of cutting-edge scholarship. $35 yr./$45 institutional. Elizabethan Review, c/o Gary B. Goldstein, 84-35 62nd Drive, Suite T41, Middle Village NY 11379. (718)458-5675
Books | Video | New From Oxenford | Recommended Reading | Periodicals
Price List and Order Information
Oxenford Reader (Editors Roger Stritmatter and Mark Anderson)
$3.00
Shakespeare's Self-Portrait by Charlton Ogburn
$3.00
Between the Lines by Richard Kennedy
$3.00
To Catch the Conscience of the King; Leslie Howard and the 17th Earl of Oxford by Charles Boyle
$5.00
Complete set of all four pamphlets
$10.00
Shakespeare and the Tudor Rose by Elisabeth Sears
$12.50
For volume orders of 10 or more:
$3.00 pamplets reduced to $2.00
$5.00 pamplets reduced to $3.00
Larger discounts available for bulk orders.
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