Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog | The Shakespeare Authorship Question is Answered by the Author Himself in his Magnificent M
Not that many are likely to have noticed, I haven’t posted anything here since 2015. After a while, the website simply stopped working, and for years, I couldn’t access it at all. Then one day about a month ago, after updating my computer, it was back. To test if it really is working, I figured I’d go ahead and publish an unfinished piece from back then.
2015: For years, I’ve wanted to borrow David Kathman’s title for a brief exploration of the ambivalence that keeps me from endorsing the Oxfordian thesis, first proposed by J. T. Looney in Shakespeare Identified , that Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford wrote most of the works attributed to Shakespeare. I do believe that Looney was right. In the fifteen years since I first “saw the light” – or, more correctly, recognized the elusive shadow of the earl within Shakespeare, further research has only confirm
My belief is firm, but a thesis requires a different standard of evidence. Unlike many Oxfordians, I don’t believe they’ve proven their case, or that it can be proven with the evidence that we currently have. As I observed recently to Michael Dobson in comments on his FutureLearn Hamlet course, “Oxford’s known writing doesn’t match Shakespeare’s and there’s no direct evidence to support the Oxfordian theory.” The next day I offered a third and in my view, fatal judgment on the theory: “Biographical paral
Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog | The Shakespeare Authorship Question is Answered by the Author Himself in his Magnificent M