The folks who champion Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as the person who wrote the works generally attributed to Shakespeare find themselves in a bit of a difficult position once one of the Earl’s dreadful poems are produced. Let’s take the following, as an example:
Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart ?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint ?
Who filled your eyes with tears of bitter smart ?
Who gave thee grief and made thy joys to faint ?
Who first did paint with colours pale thy face ?
Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest ?
Above the rest in court who gave thee grace ?
Who made thee strive in honour to be best ?
In constant truth to bide so firm and sure,
To scorn the world regarding but thy friends ?
With patient mind each passion to endure,
In one desire to settle to the end ?
Love then thy choice wherein such choice thou bind,
As nought but death may ever change thy mind.
And now compare a similar poem written by Shakespeare:
Those lips that Love’s own hand did make
Breathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’
To me that languish’d for her sake;
But when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet:
‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,
That follow’d it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From heaven to hell is flown away;
‘I hate’ from hate away she threw,
And saved my life, saying ‘not you.’
Both are sonnets, both are addressed to woman, both are concerned with love. The first is leaden. Notice how each line is a statement unto itself, how dull the choice of words is, how lacking in music.
The second, on the other hand, while still considered to be perhaps the least of the sonnets, has ingenious line breaks and music and muscle. It also contain a sly reference, in the next-to-last line, to Shakespeare’s wife, Anne. (”Hate away”=Hathaway.) Now, apparently the so-called “Oxfordians” claim that the surviving poems of the Earl’s (and he signed them all) were the mere productions of youth and are ungainly for having been written by a tyro, and yet, even if that is true, I cannot personally imagine anybody progressing that far. I mean, how young would he have had to have been? Six? We are talking about improving by orders of magnitude, not by small degrees. We are talking about someone who would have to go from using the word “alas” in the first line of the first poem for no other reason than to add two syllables to someone capable of wrapping his first thought into three lines of a four-line stanza. The mind reels.
If you want to see the progress that a great poet makes between his juvenile work and his mature work, compare Shakespeare’s sonnet to his wife, above, with “When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought.” One is clearly inferior, but the seeds are there.
Show me. Don’t explain away or rationalize. Show me. Don’t make excuses or invent intricate theories. Show me. Show me. Show me.
As a comparative example, Len, look at the Brontes’ juvenilia. From their early works, one would be hard pressed to imagine that these girls would grow up to write two of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Nevertheless, careful studies of Bronte juvenilia — i.e. those that go beyond just saying, “Look how horrible these early works are” — reveal a stylistic maturation that can be traced back the sisters’ earliest writings. The Houghton Library at Harvard has an online collection of Bronte juvenilia, and J-STOR contains its share of scholarly studies of same.
There have been some good recent studies of the stylistic consanguinity of the juvenile voice of young Edward de Vere lyrics and mature Shakespeare works. Unfortunately, not all are available online at the moment. Here’s one good early one, though, from Google Books (Huzzah, Google! Three cheers for our future robotic overlords!)
http://tinyurl.com/5a5frz
Of course, it could reasonably be objected that juvenilia is still… well, juvenile. And thus you can’t hang much of a case on it. And Oxfordians generally don’t. But the important point is that more than just cursory glances at de Vere’s juvenile lyrics enhance rather than betray the case that he wrote some or all of the works published under the Shakespeare byline.
There are better veins to mine, though. We have de Vere letters from when he was age 13 to when he was just a few months’ away from death’s doorstep. Derek Jacobi recently recorded a gorgeous 2-CD set of readings from de Vere’s letters. Some truly amazing material. Even in de Vere’s most quotidian correspondence, there’s a soaring quality to the words at times that gives pause, at the very least.
Here’s a brief example from 1603. De Vere is writing to his brother-in-law Robert Cecil about the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth and how he knows death is fast approaching. (De Vere would die a year later.) As I’ve blogged about elsewhere, new scholarship points to this same time frame as the historical moment when The Tempest was written.
===BEGIN LETTER EXCERPT==========
I cannot but find a great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost — under whom both you and myself from our greenest years have been in a manner brought up. And although it hath pleased God, after an earthly kingdom, to take her up into a more permanent and heavenly state, wherein I do not doubt but she is crowned with glory… yet the long time which we spent in her service, we cannot look for so much left of our days as to bestow upon another…
In this common shipwreck, mine is above all the rest — who least regarded, though often comforted, of all her followers, she hath left to try my fortune among the alterations of time and chance: Either without sail, whereby to take advantage of any prosperous gale; or with[out] anchor to ride till the storm be overpast.
===END LETTER EXCERPT==========
This common shipwreck… prosperous gale… hmmm…
blog re Tempest
http://tinyurl.com/6et7ea
Comment by Mark — May 5, 2008 @ 9:03 am |
Mark–
Of course, writers develop over time and better find their voices and themes. However, although I am no expert on the juvenilia of the Brontes, I would guess that they started out closer to their mature works than “Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart?” comes to “shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” But let’s put that aside for the moment. Let’s look at when the Brontes were writing their juvenile crap. Anne was 11 when she started collaborating with Emily, who was 13. De Vere’s poem is addressed to a lady and seems to me to be written in a manner that does not display the mind of an 11 or 13 year old. This is obviously written by an adult just in its choice of subject matter and the way in which it approaches that subject. It’s not guileless or innocent. It’s just bad. Rotten. Lousy.
And I hate to tell you, but that letter you quote is no great shakes either. What is extraordinary about it? I’ve read more poetic bumper stickers. Now, I can imagine that Derek Jacoby could make it sound lovely. He could make refrigerator magnet poetry sound like it was written by Lord Byron. Which it wasn’t, just in case you were tempted to think so.
What I love is the idea that because he uses the word “shipwreck” that that’s supposed to mean that he wrote the Tempest. It is clear that the writing of the Tempest was influenced by a wreck that occurred in Bermuda in 1609, when de Vere was undeniably dead. Using your logic, I could argue that he wrote The Gale Storm Show. Which he didn’t.
This is Shakespeare on the Old Queen’s passing:
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured
And the sad augurs mock their own presage[.]
This is light years removed from “I cannot but find a great grief in myself to remember the mistress which we have lost,” which sounds like the beginning of a letter to the editor.
Show me a letter that de Vere wrote when he was 13 to shore up your juvenilia argument. If he’s talking about women in the manner of that first poem, I might consider it. (That is to say that he wrote that poem when he was extremely young.)
And by the way, if the reference in the sonnet to Anne Hathaway is true, then (since he is referring to her by her maiden name) we can say that Shakespeare was about 18 or so when he wrote it. that is the kind of juvelilia that turns into the later plays and poems.
Comment by Len — May 5, 2008 @ 9:50 am |
And, in terms of linguistics, I just did a search for the word “overpast” anywhere in the canon using the database at http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/. I tried “overpast.” Nothing. Then I tried “overpassed.” Zero. Then I tried “o’erpassed.” Zilch. Then I tried “o’erpast.” That got me two occurances from the same speech in Richard III, Act IV, Scene 4, in which it is used to denote the passage of time, not to signify an object passing overhead. It’s not a Shakespearean usage, and it is the Earl’s big attempt at being poetic in your example.
Comment by Len — May 5, 2008 @ 10:16 am |
Read the blog post referenced above, Len. The 1609 shipwreck is a red herring. The shipwreck imagery from The Tempest comes from a 1523 dialogue from Erasmus and a 1555 book from Richard Eden. Nothing 1609 about any of it.
You write:
“Show me a letter that de Vere wrote when he was 13 to shore up your juvenilia argument. If he’s talking about women in the manner of that first poem, I might consider it.”
Your ever-moving goalposts are fun to keep up with, I must say. We certainly have a letter by de Vere written in fluent French at the age of 13… but damn that teenager for not “writing about women in the manner of that first poem”!
Here’s a poem written in 1591 to Elizabeth Trentham, de Vere’s wife (or soon-to-be-wife, depending on the month)
Time made a stay when highest powers wrought
Regard of love where virtue had her grace,
Excellence rare of every beauty sought
Notes of the heart where honor had her place;
Tried by the touch of most approved truth,
A worthy saint to serve a heavenly queen,
More fair than she that was the fame of youth,
Except but one, the like was never seen.
We know it’s to Trentham because it’s a classic Elizabethan accrostic. (The first letters of each line spell out a common alternate spelling of her last name.) “No great shakes,” huh.
I love that “hate away” sonnet, by the way. That’s about as close as conventional scholarship can get to a direct reference to *something*… *anything*… from Shakspere’s life in the canon.
Meanwhile, to quote a book familiar to this scribbler…
De Vere became entangled in a love affair that led to an interfamilial war (Romeo & Juliet). While traveling in France, de Vere suffered the devilish whisperings of his own Iago, who ignited de Vere’s jealousy over his wife’s alleged infidelities. De Vere lived in Venice and went into debt borrowing from the local loan merchants (Merchant of Venice). De Vere’s first marriage produced three daughters who inherited their alienated father’s family seat while he was still alive (King Lear). He had a close but rocky relationship with Queen Elizabeth — whom he portrayed variously as the witty and charming Olivia (Twelfth Night), the powerful vixen Cleopatra, the cloying Venus and the compromised Cressida. De Vere’s father-in-law was the historical prototype for Polonius; de Vere’s brother-in-law was the original for Petruchio; de Vere’s sister the model for Petruchio’s Kate; his first wife for Ophelia, Desdemona, and Hero (among many others); de Vere’s second wife for Portia; his eldest daughter for Miranda; her husband for Miranda’s Ferdinand.
Perhaps the most autobiographical play in Shakespeare is Hamlet, with multifarious connections to de Vere’s life that are discussed in nearly every chapter of this book. For example, when de Vere was traveling through France at age 26, he encountered a Teutonic prince who paraded his troops before de Vere’s eyes. Soon thereafter, de Vere boarded a ship that was overtaken by pirates, and de Vere was stripped naked and left on the English shore. In Act 4 of Hamlet, in a sequence that is in no known source text for the play, Hamlet first witnesses the invading Prince Fortinbras’s troops and then boards a ship that is overtaken by pirates, in an ordeal that leaves a humiliated Hamlet stripped naked on the Danish shore.
“Shakespeare,” it turns out, was one of the most autobiographical authors who ever took pen to paper. To recognize this, one need only redefine “Shakespeare.”
Comment by Mark — May 5, 2008 @ 10:26 am |
So, let me get this straight. Edward de Vere wrote all these plays and poems as a kind of Dear Diary entry? You find these alleged connections because you look for nothing but. “Here’s the word ‘outside.’ De Vere went outside once. It must be him!”
What proof have you that Lord Burghley was “the prototype” for Polonius? (Polonius was an old windbag, a character who didn’t have to based on an individual.) Other than that somebody said so because it “supports” their argument? These other connections. Where’s the proof? Nowhere. It’s all just opinions presented as facts. None of it is provable and all of it is nonsense.
Autobiography by Shakespeare? Let’s start with his puns on his own name, Will, in three of the sonnets. That’s far more direct than “de Vere’s sister the model for Petruchio’s Kate; his first wife for Ophelia, Desdemona, and Hero (among many others); de Vere’s second wife for Portia; his eldest daughter for Miranda; her husband for Miranda’s Ferdinand.” How about As You Like It being set in the Forest of Arden? (Arden Forest is north of Stratford and shares a name with Shakespeare’s mother’s family.) How about the loads of Warwickshire dialect and spellings that indicate the writer having a Warwickshire accent? The great Earl would never have had the experience as “the whining schoolboy with his satchel.” The imprint of somebody from the Midlands is all over those works, as is the imprint of someone who lived a commoners life.
He talks in depth about acting in Hamlet and casts Hamlet as a director. He uses images of acting and players throughout. Try taking your blinders off just occasionally. Stop trying to prove your case for once and look at the canon more objectively. I’ve read that you can still sit in the field across Clopton Bridge from Stratford and read Venus and Adonis and see the flowers he mentions and the bumps and and hollows of the landscape. How is Miranda more de Vere’s daughter than one of Shakespeare’s?
The poem you present (for which no objective evidence exists to tie it to Oxford) is better than the other. It is not Shakespearean, though. Where’s the imagery? Where’s the blasting power of the language? No great shakes, my friend. Better, but essentially prose in poem form. The good Earl was 41 or thereabouts, and that’s the best he can do? The man who ate supper and so therefore must be the author of the plays because characters in them eat supper?
Comment by Len — May 5, 2008 @ 11:00 am |
Oh, yes, and as to my alleged moving of the goalposts, my point was that you assert that the Earl’s poem was juvenilia. I say it’s not juvenile, it’s just bad. I also say that if you can show me that it is a juvenile work, I will gladly reassess it. I’m not moving the goalposts. My goalposts are the same. Don’t just assert a lot of stuff. (And your list of so-called biographical references is just that: an assertion.) Show me.
What is it about that poem that leads you to think that it was written by a juvenile? How would you define the term “juvenile” since you are going to rely on that to explain how such a plainly rotten poem could be written by the premier poet in the English language? Over 40? Under 40? What age? Do you think it the work of a teenager? If so, about what age? what leads you think this, other than it stinks? the subject? The choice of words? The phrasing? What?
Remember my other post: The burden of proof is yours. You say it’s a juvenile work. Prove it.
Comment by Len — May 5, 2008 @ 11:17 am |
And further to Hamlet and the pirates. They do not, in fact, strip him naked and leave him the shores of Denmark. His letter to Horatio states that he was captured, treated well, and returned. There is no actual representation showing that his ship really was beset by pirates or that anything happened other than that he ducked out from the watchful eyes of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern and is on his way back to Elsinore.
As is so typical with the Oxfordian presentation of their case, facts are misstated so as to make some amazing coincidence that has to have only one explanation: Oxford did it!
Comment by Len — May 5, 2008 @ 11:49 am |
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