Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

The Oxford story in details the discussion can be found at blogging shakespeare:

William Ray 10 hours ago in reply to William Sutton:

Good questions. Oxford brought the Italian style to England, what is called ‘the English Renaissance’. There was no antecedent, so it was a catch-phrase for an outburst of innovation and talent.

Oxford’s secretaries were Mundy and Lyly, usually said to be “influences” on Shakespeare. It was the other way round. Mundy and Lyly “wrote” nothing after leaving his employ.

(please, click the names above for the wikilink which lays out their writing from 1584-1602).

But they were experienced stage managers and the plays are lively with action and entertaining exchanges, just on the unprecedented level of aristocratic manners, which the public had never seen before.

Oxford also sponsored a college of writers, the University Wits and others, which continued the ‘Renaissance’ in the next generation, those who lived to do so. Recall that Jonson’s praises for ‘Shakespeare’s’ contemporary playwrights specified “sporting Kid or Marlowe”, and Lily. These were of the 1580’s well before Shakspere even arrived in London. Broad hint there as to who ‘Shakespeare’ really was.

Shakespeare’s/Oxford’s popularity was based first on the near-lurid Venus and Adonis and the also youthfully appealing Lucrece, before Shakespeare as a label ever got associated with the plays.

Then presto a dozen anonymous plays were ‘Shakespeare’s’. It sounds like a set-up deal and was, via the Meres’ announcement, but in such a form as to hint to puzzle-readers Oxford and Shakespeare were one and the same playwright.

(You’ll notice by clicking the link on Meres that he was a minister. You’d think he might have some regard for truth and honesty. You’d also think from Billy Ray’s comment that Palladis Tamia was written to promote this puzzle. Judge for yourself).

It is incorrect to say the assumption of love between Elizabeth Trenton is based on a phrase in her will. He wrote her a quite famous acrostic poem that is clearly loving and admiring.

Can you cite where I can find it and that french letter too? Oo-er)!

The character of Portia the legally skilled (cross-dressed) (love trannies) lawyer in Merchant of Venice is also based on her highly respected attempts to apply equity law more broadly in English law, not automatically applying the precedents of common law that unfairly denied justice.

There were almost no other women lawyers in England. (or even any at all) True, she had money and that saved his creative career, so he could rewrite the 1570-80’s court plays and present them in public, and finish the tragedies.

His support for the Earl’s Colne school continued even when he was destitute, from tenant taxes owed to him from the estate.

About the missing will, it is indeed curious, but Camden suggested that the powers that were (Cecils) thought they could eliminate present events from future memory.

Oxford’s probably thousands of literary letters do not exist, (convenient that) only the mining and other unflattering begging letters, to go with the Howard defamations. They did not turn up missing somehow.

About his grave, Percival Golding said it was in Francis Vere’s family vault, although his wife’s will implies it was near their King’s Place estate. That is covered over now. Nobody knows. In the present defensive climate, I don’t expect an officially approved wire-camera to search the Vere vault at Westminster.

(Here’s a link to the Oxford page up to their extinction after the 20th Earl).

On “rival companies”, a big Alan Nelson bugaboo. (Why would he give plays to rival companies when he had two of his own?) The Shakespeare plays are listed as performed by Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Pembrokes, Derbys, and Sussex’s companies,

because one, Oxford’s Men and Oxford’s Boys disappeared by 1590, and two, Oxford was not concerned with the money to be gained, but with the plenary education and cultural understanding to be gained.

(And no one knew this better than Elizabeth, whatever revulsion her advisors felt. He had royal protection).

(For what it was worth, his reputation. His penury must have been shaming beyond belief. Just like Timon. Though why Shakspere couldn’t have thought of that I don’t know.)

He may have been the last stubborn feudalist, contemptuous of money and money-makers, to a fault.

(Even Prince Hal/King Henry didn’t fraternise with the hoi polloi too much or too long. Our Shakespere suffers with poor Francis as any Snug in learning lines. He gives his Athenian craftsmen literacy. He gives a dignity to all his characters that is filled by the actor playing that role. The words are the thing that spin the story in your heart and mind. Pray God you have some!

His characters are also true to their sources and therefore already part of discourse and unnecessary to have been created by a genius noble mind.

His imaginative use of verse further deepens the drama of the time. If played well. Badly, the scorn of the backstage. The same applies today and I don’t care if it’s Shakespeare or Jonson or Middleton or Marlowe that’s playing.

Lastly, Jonson’s 1641 discussion of praise for ‘Shakespeare’s’ not blotting (smudging) a line. Then he said he wished he had crossed out a thousand. The repetition of praises for high skill seemed sincere–a prodigal talent, spoken from the underlying knowledge of the actual author’s skills.

(ah yes Ben Jonson and his manservant follower of fashion in the Tribe of Ben. Ben was actually the SHakespeare superstar of the time. His first work in theatre anecdotally thanks to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men given a boost.

His patron who never had anything to do with Oxford/ShO-Xpeare. Where’s that connection in Oxfordian accounts?

His city comedies and scathing local characters were a massive hit in the late 1590’s. Ben doubled up with Inigo Jone’s in the early 1600’s especially after Liza died, and Oxford too. His roots were in Scotland, actually the borders which is a different kettle of fish.

The other side of the ambiguity was to humanize ‘him’ as lively almost wild in temperament and quite capable of error. This instead of the ‘Monster’ (colossus) portrayed in the First Folio. Neither description, 1623 or 1641, had anything to do with Shakspere. You can see what his script looks like.

I looked at a letter written in French by de Vere when he was fourteen. He not only didn’t make a single mistake in fine French, the calligraphy is perfect. I believe it was this seemingly effortless artistic talent as much as the dramatic talent that impressed Jonson.

The more you read the elegy, the more obvious it is as a mixed message. The numerological cues confirm this impression. Seventeen words in the title, seventeen lines before Jonson writes, now I will begin, seventeen authors listed in the elegy, Shakespeare repeated four (four=vier=Vere) times, the references to the 1580’s playwrights, internal Latin puns about the AUTHORity of genius being confirmed by punishment, allusions to Oxford’s praise of Spenser and Harvey’s praise of Oxford, the similarity of the elegy beginning to a tribute Jonson had written to Susan Vere Herbert. It hasn’t been fully analyzed from the right angle yet.

End of comments so far. I’m not doing this to piss on Oxfordian’s parades. It’s for my own sanity. Doubt Falstaff, doubt the world.

I think Shakspere would see these comments as fighting words! Especially if he was that boor as in Anon. (He slices Marlowe’s throat right? ROTFLMAO)! I still don’t see it working out as the world suddenly turning en masse towards Oxenforde. Or re-writing history, literature, biographies. Much likelier he did it the same as his contemporary poets and playwrights.

You can’t control a creative environment. You have to go with the flow. But you suggest a conspiracy so large too many would have known. That’s why the anagrams and ever veres are so irritating. Coz if it’s that simple how come the close readers of the time missed it. And all the evidence of marginalia shows us they were close readers. See the Meisei Univ folio for the proof.

Who was in on this conspiracy? Besides the fact it was known in print i.e. public knowledge Oxford wrote plays and poems and anyone who could read would know. The stigma comes from the public stage presentations. I ass-u-me. Hyphens intentional.

Sh the actor knew both crafts of writing and playing. Oxenforde could never have acted on the public stage. Never. Pun intended. Private stage and the Courtly absolutely. He was definitely not to be discounted.

I believe too he had an influence on early modern private theatre but not the public stage. Too many grubby hands a Shakspere wouldn’t have minded shaking, if a man’s spirit needed lifting.

Romanticising biography stops here. But it is true. Reading Shakespeare, even a simple soliloquy, lifts your spirits and engages your everything.

Your ShO-Xpeare is priviliged by birth. That leads to the snob assertion. Noblesse oblige and all that jazz. You might be common born or peasant raised, but your candidate ain’t. The link ain’t hard to make. Your guy was coddled and groomed and then FUBAR. Still a leading Earl, a nobody at Court since the Armada and his refusal of the traditionally family post at Harwich. You’ll have me believe he served with the Bonaventure the ship that wasn’t his. Maxed out on credit but could still sell the noble patronage down the river with plays meant for the stage. SO his bright idea was what exactly?

Here follow individual interpretations and a fragmented further argument commences where nobody agrees on the exact events, or insists they do have knowledge of the exact events.

When we know that all our evidence and its multiple and far reaching conclusions do accumulate to where you must accept the record as it stands. There is no need to doubt.

Just maybe like your guy wanted to be anonymous. So did ours. He had a good thing going and it kept him and his family well. Physician heal thyself!

Another thing I like about Sh, whoever he be, he hates sycophants and they are found on all levels of society, depending on their need. Yech! Imagining Shoxperd looking down his nose, no problem. Shakspere uses gently and rounds his argument and teases it out either in words and phrases or particular attention to the verse to heighten some dramatic moment from the underdog’s and the victor’s pov.

There’s a humanity, in his middle and lower class characters, howsoever dim they be. They are by no means the humpty dumpty cut outs other writers of the time were churning out. He makes fun of the development in verse, whilst being at the cutting edge of that verse writing. (at least in the top ten of his contemporaries).

Everyone knew who he was. If he wasn’t the writer and actor, then why did his contemporaries, some of whom had extremely vicious pens, not say anything? Or do they? And we’re not reading it right.

Your man, ShOXperd, Plagued by Troubles with all his houses, mostly of his own causing. I also don’t believe he’s either Elizabeth’s sister aunt mother, or builder of gilded monuments with her for Southampton’s rose. Quirky and kinky, but unprovable. And not evidence you would actually want to use. Really.

Willy Ray I hope you take this in the spirit of the argument. There is nothing personal in this except our differing views on something, I think we can safely say, we both love and are passionate about. I wish you as much enjoyment as I derive from Sh.

But your pov on the SHOXfordian (one who must not be named by the ESTABLISHMENT) holds together with bee spit and cobwebby strands that burst apart when touched with the truth you so hotly desire.

But then there’s the thing it’s meant to be that fragile. Not meal to moth’s wing wrote Matthew Arnold about Shakspere.

I have a confession. When i read your posts I like to use a very RP accent. It’s hilarious! Or rather binnen pret, as the Dutch say; inside fun, its translation. Since you’re from California I suspect your actual voice is rather different.

These then are some of the questions we like to ask. Our candidate passes the test on what you require of a poet playwright and provides a circular argument conclusively identifying him as the author and the actor.

On the other hand you make my candidate mentally, morally, and ethically deficient in the basics of human discourse. Then why did OXford choose him?

Alternatively you can imagine the actor, but not him being the playwright. Then it follows he must have been a pretty good actor because he was playing for the Queen too. 1594, him Kempe and Burbage, revels accounts.

All the stuff that Kathman and Reedy write about in HOW we know SH wrote Sh. Every person who believes SH wrote SH, or is doubting, should read this document first. If you’re already infected with Shoxfordianism, reading this should make your blood boil and seethe your brains!

(obviously working in the case of WIlliam J Ray’s responses to Tom Reedy, co-author. Shout out to the 44-calibre Shakespeare’s Humphrey)!