Customer Reviews

Shakespeare By Another Name: A Biography Of Edward De Vere, Earl Of Oxford, The Man Who Was Shakespeare

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

In SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME, Mark Anderson relentlessly builds a case, using the Earl of Oxford's biography, that Edward de Vere wrote the Shakespearean plays, sonnets, and epic poems.

Anderson begins with the death of de Vere's father when Edward was only twelve. At this time de Vere became Lord Burghley's ward and went to live with him. There was no better place for a burgeoning author to grow up. De Vere had access to the greatest library in England and such tutors as the translator of Ovid's METAMORPHOSIS, generally considered one of the premier influences on Shakespeare's art. Eventually de Vere would marry Lord Burgley's daughter, Ann Cecil, who would become the model for Ophelia, Desdemona etc. Anderson argues that the marriage between de Vere and Ann Cecil was never consummated prior to his European tour. Ann got pregnant while he was away, and an Iago-like like servant, Rowland Yorke, made matters worse by poisoning de Vere's mind against his wife. Another convincing parallel was the Earl of Leicester's theft of de Vere inheritance, which became the plot for Hamlet.

Later on de Vere would have an affair with Ann Vavasour, a lady in waiting at Queen Elizabeth's court. She got pregnant, twice, and she would become the model for Juliet and Rosaline in ROMEO AND JULIET. You scoff? Vavasour and de Vere were sent (temporarily) to the Tower of London for their amorous shenanigans. Vavasour's uncle, Thomas Knyvet, then challenged de Vere to a duel, in which the Earl was wounded. Payback resulted and Knyvet and Oxford's men had further fracases resulting in the death of two servants.

I would suppose that the Stratford on Avon people could explain away the above pretty easily, but it was the little things that convinced me. One would be Shakespeare's reference to the Bohemian seacoast in THE WINTER'S TALE. Ben Jonson (perhaps jokingly) would later criticize Shakespeare's lack of geographical knowledge since there was no Bohemian coast. Jonson was wrong; De Vere visited the place on his Grand Tour. Another convincing tidbit was de Vere's familiarity with the names Rosenkrantz and Guldenstern. Peregrine Bertie, de Vere's son-in-law, met these two Danish diplomats while on a diplomatic mission for Queen Elizabeth. Then there's the pirate scene in HAMLET in which Hamlet was left naked on a beach. The same thing happened to de Vere while crossing the English Channel upon his return from Europe.

Anderson also writes extensively about two of de Vere's secretaries, Anthony Munday and John Lyly, both of whom eventually became established writers themselves. Why would a supposed wastrel like de Vere need literary secretaries? One of de Vere's secretaries also left what might eventually be the smoking gun in the Shakespeare controversy, an original play written by Edward de Vere. Abraham Fleming's archives eventually fell into the hands of an antiquarian named Francis Peck. Among them was an early draft of what sounds like TWELFTH NIGHT. Peck had plans to publish the play, but for some reason never got around to it. If Fleming's archive could be someday relocated, it could provide definite proof that de Vere was really Shakespeare.

There is also little doubt that Edward de Vere was a playwright. Many of the masques performed at court sound strikingly familiar: THE TROUBLESOME REIGN OF KING JOHN; THE TRUE CHRONICLE HISTORY OF KING LEIR; THE TRUE TRAGEDY OF RICHARD III; A HISTORY OF ERRORS; A MOOR'S MASQUE, to name only a few. Anderson argues that these were early drafts of the Shakespearean plays as was "Ur-Hamlet," thought to have been a Shakespearean source.

Then we have Susan de Vere (Cordelia in KING LEAR?), de Vere's youngest daughter. She married the Earl of Montgomery, who with the Earl of Pembroke, his brother, would publish THE FIRST FOLIO. Who else would have access to all the plays?

Anderson includes four Appendices. One examines de Vere's Geneva Bible and its underlinings for references and themes used in the plays. Another examines the 1604 controversy; de Vere died in 1604 and some scholars argue that THE TEMPEST and other plays include references to current events that happened later than 1604. Another appendix traces the provenance of a painting that was supposed to be of Shakespeare. Anderson maintains the man in the painting was really de Vere.

True or not, Mark Anderson's SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME is a fascinating, fascinating book.

I am detecting a disturbing early trend in reviews of this work: those who recommend the book speak in some detail about its contents; those who do not, well, I see no evidence that they have even read the book they claim to be reviewing. This is not a forum for airing out one's disagreements with the so called Oxfordians.

That said, I'll not waste time repeating what you can find in the other positive reviews. Anderson's writing is strong, current, his mind sharp. I count only one editorial error (p. 151), and only one tedious analogy, in the entire work. This alone should merit five stars. He has found order in vast amounts of disparate information, and his arguments in de Vere's favor will be hard to overcome, given extensive documentation in the notes (there are over 150 pages of them!) and the absolutely uncanny light cast by the biography on so many lines of the shakespeare corpus that have befuddled scholars for centuries. Some will say that such books as Anderson's won't change anybody's mind. Well, Anderson has changed mine.
He has not simply reinvigorated my interest in Shakespeare; he has, by impressing these plays with so much of de Vere's sorrows and anxieties, so much folly, helped me finally to see and love the humanity in them. For a powerful example of this, see the discussion of Macbeth on pp. 212-18. Highly recommended.

I must say that I am incredibly OFFENDED by one of the early Amazon customer reviews of the work: it never addresses the actual book or any of its points. The author of the review has (quite clearly) not read the work, rather he/she simply writes a diatribe against the idea of de Vere being the author of the work, with all the low-hanging fruit of the classic arguments.

I am saddened, too, that there are people out there who seem completely unwilling to explore a new work, with thoughtful ideas.

With that said, I was intrigued enough to buy the book, having never seriously considered the idea of "de Vere as Shake-speare" before. Anderson's scholarship cannot be easily denied. His work is very well written, highly detailed, and presents an argument that is thoughtful and believable. It can be tedious, at times, as the reader must hold a great deal of historical information and names together for long chunks, but the overall impact is quite real. It left this reader with questions that I couldn't answer with a "Shakespeare is the man from Stratford-upon-Avon."

I'd recommend it.

Almost exactly four centuries after the true Bard's death, there is finally a biography of Shakespeare that truly deserves to be so called. Though Anderson draws greatly upon the work of Looney, Turner-Clark, Ogburn, and other Oxfordian pioneers, he is the first to achieve a comprehensive and truly credible biographical portait. Wonderfully written, loaded with all the right information, it now deserves to the be starting place for all who mean to study Shakespeare. Farewell Mr. Shakspere!

I can understand posters who've never read this book calling it everything short of the Original Conspiracy Theory, but for those who have read it to call it "75% absurd supposition" and rubbish" leaves me (nearly) speechless.

As Anderson says, "Fortunately, serious academic debate is triumphing, while orthodoxy contines its retreat behind a facade of mind-numbing vilification." (Forward.)


The author admits that "there is no single 'smoking gun' document that leads one to inexorably to the conclusion that de Vere wrote [Shakes-peare]. Instead, one buids the case upon a series of facts and observations that, when put together like pieces of puzzle, produce and overall picture that becomes difficult to deny." (Page 381.)

There is no evidence "Shakspere" of Stratford ever went to school. Granted, he probably did, it would be hard to become an actor is one can't read the plays. But even the most ardent Staffordian has to wonder why the most popular playwright of his day failed to educate his daughters, (they, like his wife and parents, were illiterate.) And why did "Shakspere" not mention any literary works in his will?

There is not one scrap of credible evidence to support the deeply ingrained mis-belief that the man from Stratford wrote anything more than his signature. There is, however, overwhelming evidence that de Vere did.

That plays were PUBLISHED after de Vere's death in 1604, doesn't mean they were WRITTEN after 1604. Various incarnations of plays were around for years before publication. Anderson clears up this common misconception quite succinctly.

And to call the reasearch on this book "paper thin" is incredible! This is the most exhaustively researched book I've seen in years. 10 years worth! The end notes run over 100 pages!

Kudos to Mark Anderson. If you are at all interested in Shakes-peare, I highly recommend this volumn.

Mark Anderson's painstaking matching of de Vere's life with the content of "Shake-speare's" writings is necessary to reveal the bard's true identity. A dozen or more matches are interesting; but page after page after page of matches, for month after month, year after year, of de Vere's life, even in the circumstances of his daughter's life after his death when more plays were published, absolutely blows away any conception of the real bard being anyone other than Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.

There are just too many "coincidences" to dismiss. A lowly actor from Stratford may have access to a few of these coincidences, of maybe a handful or more that were public knowledge. But to have every detail fit perfectly for the case for de Vere as the bard, is more than coincidence. It is truth.

A reader cannot imagine, for example, how a lowly actor from Stratford, could possibly have the knowledge of books only found in private libraries at the time. When de Vere's extensive education by the very best minds in England, available only to the elite nobility, is detailed in this book, a reader cannot imagine a commoner having such a vast array of studies to draw on. Anderson lists the favorite and the many sources of the bard's references in his plays, as being the very sources that de Vere had access to.

De Vere's reputation as a prodigy by his contemporaries is clearly presented by Anderson. Anderson writes of one contemporary saying that de Vere inhaled learning as others breath the air (to paraphrase). De Vere's wit and passion are well-documented in the book.

Anderson also very clearly makes the case that there was always potential danger for anyone of the nobility of that age from the always changing political tides. Anderson also shows how the master manipulator and Elizabeth's arm of power, Cecil Burghley, who was also de Vere's father-in-law, spied on him through both de Vere's wife and his servants, throughout de Vere's life. De Vere as the author "Shakes-speare" knew from an early age what happened to those who got on the wrong side of Elizabeth and Burghley. The book is convincing in showing how de Vere's plays and sonnets spoke volumes about contemporaries and contempory events yet not directly illegally slandering them or causing a duel because he spoke through the acting or in sonnets. The book reveals how this was a very much used method of communicating opinions during de Vere's life by other authors as well.


I highly recommend this book as either an introduction to de Vere as the true Shakespeare or as an addition to other information on de Vere.

Well, I like this book. So I won't give you a lengthy diatribe against it, nor will I apply the much-overused and misguided argument that those who think Oxford wrote Shakespeare are just snobs - that it's all about who had the money and education and noble blood blah blah blah. Basically, in Shakespeare by Another Name the argument against the man from Stratford is relegated to the introduction, and it does not reek of snobbery at all. For those agnostic readers, I tell you, the truth is, there are (and always have been) really sketchy and scant connections between Will Shakespeare of Stratford and the Shakespeare canon. Mr. Anderson spells that out pretty convincingly in the intro. The rest of the book is all for the Earl of Oxford. All about his interesting, conflicted, creative, theatrical life - all about his life's connection after connection after connection to the canon of Shakespeare. And, yes, while Oxford's extensive education enters into it, it's those personal, emotional connections to the works that got me thinking. That's what works for me - Oxford's personal story. Granted, I am not (yet) totally convinced that Oxford was Shakespeare, but I found myself close to believing it. And the mystery of it all kept me very intrigued.

Those whose life and breath depends on the man from Stratford being Shakespeare may not be able to take this compelling case for Oxford. I guess all those connections might shake some foundations. But for the rest of the world, I recommend this book.

I read Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare about 6 years ago and the case about Shakespeare's identity seemed pretty settled. I started looking around for a bio on the Earl and couldn't find anything to my satisfication until now. Unlike Ogburn who spends a great of deal of energy proving that Shakspear couldn't be our beloved Shakespeare, Anderson merely tells the story. As he says there is no smoking gun but there is a gun and there is smoke. All the bios on Shakespeare read the same way. He surely did this, must have seen that, etc. They are more about the times he lived in than about himself. This book is an instant classic. There is alot that the author is clearly keeping to himself so as not to stray from the facts he can prove. He hints at an affair between the Earl and Queen Elizabeth that is reflected in one of his plays but Anderson does not develop this idea. Pity since it is a biography. The critical question for scholars of the future is why did the Earl receive a 1000 pound stipend for life? What was the relationship between the Queen and the Earl? Anderson left that mysteriously untouched. I look forward to his next book. The plays will never be the same again!

One need only read the posts to gauge the passions this issue raises. Whether or not the most caustic posters have read the book is questionable.

Anderson approaches the subject by thoroughtly researching and writing about Edward de Vere's life and letting the discernable facts of his life and background speak as they relate to the Shakespeare oeuvre. While there may be some speculation to his book, the facts and the background reveal much about court life under Queen Elizabeth and about de Vere and sixteenth century England. At the end of the book, Anderson reveals the facts and conjecture surrounding the Shakespeare portrait in the Folger Library in Washington which is truly revealing. I urge all to read this fascinating book.

Mark Anderson has produced a well-researched book that is rich in factual detail and fascinating in its quite plausible speculations. The hundreds of connections he establishes between the life of the 17th Earl of Oxford and incidents, characters, and often obscure passages in the Shakespeare canon provide an overwhelming case for Edward de Vere as the true author. Of equal interest is the manner in which these connections cast their light back into the soul of this often foolish, arrogant, troubled genius. Scholars, and many of the rest of us, have wondered how someone became the man capable of such penetrating vision into the human soul, such soaring language and wit, and such a span of vocabulary and imagery. Anderson introduces us, at last, to the man who actually was Shakespeare.