This may explain the popularity of two of the eight highlighted portraits in the exhibition. Both the Grafton portrait and the Sanders portrait depict sensuous young men, neither of whom has any substantial claim to being Shakespeare. For the frontispiece of The Essential Shakespeare , J.
Dover Wilson chose the Grafton, confessing that he couldn't help but wish that "the unknown youth of the wonderful eyes and the oval Shelley-like face" was in fact the young poet. And literary critic Harold Bloom announced in Vanity Fair in that he preferred the "livelier" Sanders to traditional portraits.
But "Searching for Shakespeare" includes one portrait about which there is no doubt whatsoever: it is of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. That he appears a more dashing and self-assured figure than any of the Shakespeares on display is not, of course, why Oxfordians find him the more plausible candidate—though it probably doesn't hurt.
Fourteen years Shakespeare's senior, Oxford was an urbane, multilingual dandy, well educated, well traveled and well connected. At 12, when his father died, he was taken in by William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, who for more than 40 years was Queen Elizabeth's most trusted adviser.
At court, he won attention as a jousting champion, clotheshorse and ladies' man. Oxford's many enemies, however, described him variously as a whoring, hot-tempered bully, a dissolute spendthrift and a flatulent pederast. At 17, he used his sword to kill an under-cook in Burghley's household supposedly in self-defense.
And at 24, he abandoned his wife for the Continent for more than a year. As for his poetry, Oxford biographer Alan H. Nelson, emeritus professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley and a Stratfordian, ranks it "from absolutely dreadful to middling.
In his own time, at least, Oxford's poetry won praise. So did his skill as a playwright, though none of his dramas survive. Some modern-day advocates claim that it would have been unseemly for a high-ranking nobleman to write plays openly for the hugely popular, sometimes rowdy Elizabethan public theater. And, they say, playwrights who satirized the powerful too obviously could find themselves jailed or worse. Nonetheless, Whalen argues, one needn't posit the existence of a grand conspiracy that concealed Oxford's role.
The powers that be could pretend they didn't know a nobleman was stooping to farce and, worse, critiquing his peers. As for the general public, he says, "They weren't all that interested in who wrote the plays they went to.
Links between Oxford and Shakespeare are not hard to find. The oldest of Oxford's three daughters was once offered in marriage to the 3rd Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare dedicated his two long narrative poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece. Another daughter was married to one of the two earls to whom the First Folio was dedicated. Oxford supporters find other evidence in the plays themselves.
In Hamlet and King Lear , for example, they hear the voice of an aristocrat, not a commoner. Think of Tolstoy, who wrote about what he knew best: his family, Russia, war. I would argue the Earl of Oxford's life fits the profile of someone you would expect to have written the works of Shakespeare.
Oxfordian Mark Anderson finds other clues in Shakespeare's settings, plots and characters. As persuasive as their case may be, even the most ardent Oxfordians must admit there isn't a scrap of real evidence tying their man to Shakespeare's work.
Soule of the Age! ART covers it all. We get addicted to things in ways that each have pros and cons. In honor of its milestone anniversary, the Savannah, Georgia-based museum welcomes renowned international artists for a diverse program of exhibitions and events. Assyriologist and associate professor Martin Worthington, who worked on translations for the Marvel movie, created the first film entirely in Babylonian in In her solo exhibition, the artist creates an installation that is many things but unified is not one of them.
Allison C. Meier is a former staff writer for Hyperallergic. There has been some interesting and extensive debate in recent years about the extent to which Shakespeare revised his own plays. Some scholars contend that the widely differing versions of King Lear published in and especially show signs of careful revision.
Scribal copies tended to include fewer stage directions and to make the text more "literary" rather than to provide an acting version. They were also less accurate, since there is always the probability of errors in transcription passages misread, or omitted entirely as the scribe's eye picks up the same word later in the passage.
Print this page Cite this page. Related pages Renaissance publishing Shakespeare's manuscripts Making paper The printing press Printers and "pirated" plays "Ay, there's the point"?
Shakespeare's manuscripts With the possible exception of a few pages of Sir Thomas More, a play that Shakespeare may have helped write, no manuscripts of Shakespeare's survive. Richard D. Janet Crew, Thank you so much for clearing that question up, Janet. I can rest easy now. Feb 11, AM. Denise Currie. Zero had to be there for a reason so I went with that.
Nov 11, AM. Sep 18, AM. Lynn Ridenour, Actually we know quite a lot, he was the son of an eminent citizen of Stratford, and attended grammar school for 7 years. He married Anne Hathaway and had 3 children Hamlet died as a teenager.
He worked mainly in London, his wife stayed in Stratford. On his death he left his Daughter Sarah his London property and his wife his second best bed!! Go figure. Aug 10, AM.
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