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My recent Blogs about the authenticity of William Shakespeare’s works have brought a number of comments and questions.  The most prevalent of these questions asks that, if Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the real author of most of Shakespeare’s work, was Shakespeare a fraud?  Personally, I don’t think so.

The Shakespeare – Oxford Society, which is dedicated to researching and honoring the true Bard, points out that there is significant evidence of Oxford’s status as one of several anonymous and pseudonymous Court writers of the 1580’s.  This was quite a common practice at the time; and, if the Earl of Oxford wanted to have his plays performed in front of the general public – a rabble of often low-class, loud, and drunken audiences – he would have been happy to ask William Shakespeare, a commoner actor/producer, to take title to these works for public performance.

On this basis, one should not accuse William Shakespeare of being a fraud.  He was just entering into a business arrangement that was common at the time.  We can be certain that neither he nor the Earl of Oxford would ever imagine that these literary works would receive world-wide distribution that would last four hundred years and be considered the work of a genius.

There should be a large amount of contemporary documents about the life of William Shakespeare, who would become renowned as the world’s greatest writer.  There are none.  Manuscripts, letters sent to him or about him between others, or printed stories or pamphlets are non-existent.  There are thus, no documents to show that William Shakespeare had any connection with the plays or poems performed as his work. 

Over the past couple of hundred years, many people have tried to identify the true author.  Amongst the most common are Francis Bacon, Marlowe, Derby and Rutland.  All of this has stirred the controversy, which incidentally never surrounded other great literary figures, such as Milton, Chaucer, Swift, Pope, etc.

The search for the real author has become the greatest manhunt in literary history.  And for the past one-hundred-fifty years or so, there have been many doubters.  Amongst them are, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldow Emerson, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, and even Supreme Court Justices, John Paul Stevens, and Harry Blackmun – all of whom have joined the ranks of those who give credit to the Earl of Oxford.

Some will say that it doesn’t really matter who the author is – it’s the work that counts.  I would agree, but nevertheless it would be good to give credit where credit is due.  Hopefully, sometime in the not too distant future, evidence will appear that will prove once and for all that the genius credited to William Shakespeare, the simple uneducated common man from Stratford, was really the acclaimed contemporary poet and author, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

* Sources for the above from the Shakespeare – Oxford Society

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

My recent blog about the works of William Shakespeare and the long-running controversy over whether he was the true author of eighteen plays and hundreds of poems and sonnets appears to have stirred some interest.

I have received comments from those who support the theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of Shakespeare’s Works.

The Shakespeare – Oxford Society, which is dedicated to researching and honoring the true Bard, presents a compelling case for doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship. They point out that his character, background, education, family, friends, behavior towards his debtors and neighbors and his attitude to money and property is in direct conflict with the character of someone who became the world’s greatest author.

It is also pointed out that there has been controversy over true authorship – almost incessantly since the death of William Shakespeare, and it has been impossible to prove that Shakespeare wrote the plays, poems and sonnets.

The two main issues that have kept this issue simmering for centuries are that the mismatch between the man and the work and the absence of a proper documentary record, showing that the Stratford actor/merchant wrote these works.

On the other hand, the Earl of Oxford was one of the leading patrons of the Elizabethan Age, and during his lifetime, thirty three works were dedicated to him, being either original or translated works of world literature. He was also an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, poet, sportsman, and sponsor of at least two acting companies and a company of musicians.  He was well traveled and closely favored by Queen Elizabeth.

Reading the history of the Earl, his undoubted talents and royal connections, it seems perfectly plausible that he could be the true author of Shakespeare’s work.  Many members of the aristocracy of the time had reputations as poets, playwrights, and authors.  Hardly any of them published their creative work.  It would have been considered unacceptable for an aristocrat to be writing for the public theatre, which provides an explanation why Oxford might have used Shakespeare as his “front man” for his numerous creative works.

Oxford’s advanced education, knowledge of aristocratic life, the military and the law, background and knowledge of theatre lead to considerable praise for Oxford’s plays and poems. The uncanny similarities between Oxford’s life and many of the Shakespearean plays, gives additional weight to those supporters of the Oxford theory.

Amazingly, since the plays were written only 400 years ago, there is no record that can prove the authorship.  This from a country where there are numerous records going back to Roman times, where history and events were recorded meticulously and where scholarship was rewarded and manuscripts closely guarded.

I have come down on the side of those who support the Oxford theory.  I would be interested to receive your comments and thoughts on this issue.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

Over Labor Day weekend, I was in Wisconsin at the “American Players Theater,” where local actor, James DeVita, was performing a One-Man-Show – “Acting Shakespeare.”  This incredible and entertaining performance was broadly based on the Broadway format presented by the renowned English Shakespearean actor, Sir Ian McKellen in the late 1980’s. 

James DeVita’s entertaining performance described how he became a Shakespearean actor and the trials and tribulations that he suffered along the way.  But he also brought to the audience’s attention some history and facts about William Shakespeare.

We’re told that the Bard’s education didn’t go beyond a primitive grammar school.  Thus, he probably finished his formal education at age fourteen.  At age eighteen when he was working in his father’s leather business, he married Anne Hathaway eight years his senior, who was already pregnant with his child.  At age twenty-one, he decided to leave his wife, child, and father’s business and go to London to become an actor.  During the next eighteen years, Shakespeare “wrote” thirty-seven plays and hundreds of sonnets. 

I have read a number of books about Shakespeare over the years. Some biographies cover his life and describe the brilliance of the man, but other books have endeavored to prove that Shakespeare didn’t write anything and that the plays that we are so familiar with were written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. 

There are many mysteries surrounding the life of William Shakespeare.  Perhaps the most telling, which convinced me that this poorly educated man who had never left the shores of England could not have written all of those plays, is that when he died at the age of fifty-two back in Stratford-Upon-Avon, his Will made no mention of any of his plays, sonnets, or anything to do with his theatrical background, nor did he leave manuscripts, notes, or records relating to such a body of work, or mention any of his co-actors, producers and directors during his eighteen years in London. 

In addition, it is recognized his Will was poorly drawn, badly written and ungrammatical.  Could this really be William Shakespeare?  I decided there was a much better case to prove that De Vere was the true author of much of Shakespeare’s work; but, because of the fact that he was an aristocrat at the Court of Queen Elizabeth and a homosexual, he used Shakespeare as his “front man” at a time when anything to do with the theatre was considered low-class, rough, and tough. The theatre was banned from operating within the city limits, and no person of “class” would be seen at these entertainments.

So my conclusion is that William Shakespeare probably did not write these plays.  What do you think?

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com