Walt Whitman on Shakespeare aka 17th Earl of Oxford

[Azariaadele]

Whitman's lines are brilliant rhetoric, but that say much more about his own aims as a poet than they do about Shakespeare - as any Whitman critic will tell you. Whitman's interpretation of Shakespeare is not sustainable - unless you are Tillyard - and assume that Shakespeare exhibited no satire, wit, humor, about Elizabethan ideology (the "cast" system, the Great Chain of Being). Unfortunately, Whitman is also ungracious. He wants to eliminate a rival - by making him all that America rejects.

[amaxamon]

Let's not stop here, we also must "teach the controversy" about Intelligent Design, further investigate the Holocaust Hoax, get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination and uncover the truth behind the Roswell crash. Good work!

[edboswell]

@amaxamon You obviously know nothing on this fascinating subject, so why show your ignorance by popping off? If I asked you 100 questions about Elizabethan history or the 17th Earl of Oxford, I doubt that you'd be able to answer more than 10 questions correctly. Remember that we are a gullible species, and your snide remarks are reminders that people laughed at anyone crazy enough to thing the world was round, or that the earth orbited the sun.

[amaxamon]

@edboswell You're right. Your knowledge of Oxford and the Elizabethan Era suggests to me that you must possess a time machine: how else could you possibly know so much about that time? Surely not from books (a laughable idea!). In fact, if I can find enough parallels between your life and Oxford's, I must be led to believe that you not only own a time machine but that you *were* Oxford!! Thank you for enlightening me, m'lord.

[edboswell]

@amaxamon You're a contentious fool. This conversation is over.

[amaxamon]

@edboswell Yep...no response. PS: There never was a "conversation."

[edboswell]

@amaxamon You obviously know nothing on this fascinating subject, so why show your ignorance by popping off? If I asked you 100 questions about Elizabethan history or the 17th Earl of Oxford, I doubt that you'd be able to answer more than 10 questions correctly. Remember that we are a gullible species, and your snide remarks are reminders that people laughed at anyone crazy enough to thing the world was round, or that the earth orbited the sun.

[GreatOxford]

Must reading: Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare By Another Name" (2005). For a top editor at Oxford Press to say "Who cares?" reveals appalling insensitivity. Anderson shows countless instances of autobiographical references in the plays, including the heretofore inexplicable episodes in Hamlet: the pirates and the review of Danish troops. They both happened to Oxford. Othello's jealousy? Oxford had his Iago. The Italian plays? Oxford spent years in Italy in exactly the same city as an envoy.

[carefulcarpenter]

"Genius creates; others imitate"

~~cc

Bloodlines: DeVere, Hall, Sidney, Tudor, Wriothesley, Devereux, Herbert, Raleigh

[Jha49513]

It's almosst a religious tenet that the "flour salesman" was really Shakespeare, and there's huge economic vested interests that this falsehood goes on. I understand an English professor in CT is teaching a Shakespeare course from the perspective of DeVere as the real author. I also read on the Devere web site that DeVere's bible was annotated, and passages underlined that appeared in the plays. The evidence is ridiculously clear. Keep up the excellent work, Ed.

[edboswell]

Thanks. There is a university in England, BRUNEL, which has a master's program on the Authorship question. Yes, the marginalia and underlinings in de Vere's Geneva bible have a very high percentage of "hits", about 30%. This is about 8 to 10 times higher than random chance. Dr. Roger Stritmatter did his doctorate on the de Vere Geneva Bible. It's a smoking gun, for sure.

[Jha49513]

I've been following this authoring question for about 25 years now, ever since the TV show on it with Charles Ogburn. Ogburn was weeping about the injustice of it all, which led a friend of mine (who incidentally is a top editor at Oxford University Press) to mock the whole question. "Who cares?" he roundly proclaims. The work is the only thing that matters. But I disagree. The work can be appreciated so much more if it's completely understood in the context in which it was written.

[edboswell]

" Who cares?". What a great response to such an interesting subject! We know that WS was a mask. We know de Vere was removed from official records by his father and son in law, who were the "keepers of the records", and we know that the sonnets make total sense if written by de Vere, and ABSOLUTELY no sense if written by a rustic. It's so obvious, that's why Stratfordians do not deal with the facts, only in character assassination, calling Oxfordians "looneys" and "cultists".

[Jha49513]

Sounds familiar. I read Sobran's book and have Ogburn's "Mysterious WS." Didn't de Vere's wife come into a large sum of money after his death, presumably from her selling the sonnets? The "circumstantial" evidence points in only one direction. I'm just grateful that after 400 years, I'm able to see the truth. For those who are still clinging to their anti-elitist romantic image of miraculous conceptions from an illiterate, I hope soon an irrefutable piece of evidence comes to light.

[cwhanna]

@Jha49513 correct the E. Deveres bible has highlighted sections and notes in the marginalia that get quoted in the plays.

[YourRisingPhoenix]

what about francis bacon?

[edboswell]

Bacon was the 19th century "candidate", as he was a great writer, and an attorney.

He was related to De Vere, and most likely was involved in the First Folio project, as he had employed Ben Jonson. Both DV and Bacon had BOAR in family crest. De Vere was removed from most records by his in laws, Lord Burghley, and his son Robert, de Vere's Br-in-law. Bacon was too young, and incapable of comedy. there are still "baconians" around, mostly cryptography and code-breaking buffs.

[jjamesg]

Long live the Earl of Oxford!!! LoL, people are insane to think the 17th Earl of Oxford is NOT Shakespeare... All of Shakespeare's writing seems 1,000 times more interesting, a 1,000 times richer, when you put on the Earl of Oxford's lenses... Suddenly, it all makes sense.

[edboswell]

WALT WHITMAN QUOTE "Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism- personifying in unparalleled ways the medieval aristcracy, its towering spirit of ruthless and gigantic caste, with it own peculiar air and arrogance (no mere imitation) only one of THE WOLFISH EARLS so plentious in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower might seem to be the true author of those amazing works."

[edboswell]

WHITMAN: "Did you ever notice- how much the law is involved in the plays?" "I go with you fellows when you say NO to Shaksper: that's about as far as I have got. As to Bacon, well, we'll see, we'll see." TOO BAD OXFORD HAD BEEN OBSCURED BY HIS IN-LAWS< the keepers of the records!!

[edboswell]

WALT WHITMAN: "The Shakespeare plays are essentially the plays of an aristocracy: they are in fact not as nearly in touch with the spirit of our modern democracy as the plays of the Greeks." "everything is done in the Shakespeare plays to make the common people seem common-very Common indeed."

[edboswell]

"I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford ws the author of the works that have been ascribed to him" SIGMUND FREUD "Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man was in wide contrast" RALPH WALDO EMERSON