ISBN: 1898594791
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Book Type: softback
 
Number of Pages: 346
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Book Dimensions: 246 x189mm
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Images: 26 black & white illustrations
 
About:
 
This, the first collection of essays by members of The de Vere Society has been updated for 2022 but its contents are largely identical to the original edition of 2004.
 
Edward de Vere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, a key figure of the English Renaissance who lived at the heart of Elizabethan court and cultural events, has a substantial claim to authorship of the works of ‘Shakespeare’.
 
Identifying him as the author results in greater understanding of the context, topical allusions and purpose behind the ‘Works’. The plays and poems reflect on the life history and psychology of our forebears, just as they themselves are illuminated by political history.

The story of Edward de Vere and his circle shows us the personal sacrifices and common efforts made so that a great language and literature might be created.
 
These essays, thirty-nine in all, cover such topics as:

An Introduction to the Oxfordian Case
Shakespeare’s Sources: the Libraries of Lord Burghley and Sir Thomas Smith
The Influence of Italian Art: Giulio Romano and Titian
Historical Truth and The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Places in Shakespeare: Belmont and Thereabouts
Dating the Plays: Hamlet
Measure for Measure and the French Connection
Freud and Oxford

‘I would commend this collection as full of enlightened and reasoned research in the quest to provide material for rational and honest debate. It is not enough to say, “We have the plays and poems, it does not matter who wrote them.” It matters to me and, I suspect, to a growing number of others.’ Sir Derek Jacobi.