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Rating: 
Summary: The only hatchet is the one taken to the Oxfordian case
Review: Few things display the human proneness to madness quite like Oxfordianism. Peddled by otherwise intelligent people, it is more akin to a fervent religion than a rock-hard science: its firmest roots are distortion, mangled evidence, and a none-too-concealed jealousy directed at William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. Surely, they ask, Shakespeare's works are the products of a gleaming noblemen and world traveller and not some third-rate player from a country town? My answer, much like the one any logical person can glean from Professor Nelson's biography, is a resounding 'no.'
Nelson, unlike hagiographers Charlton Ogburn, B.M. Ward, Daniel Wright, and J. Thomas Looney, examines the life of Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford and the most popular 'alternative' candidate for Shakespeare's authorship) largely free of Shakespearean trappings. Since it is this man's life that Oxfordians find so closely "connected" to Shakespeare's works, a thorough examination thereof, rather than a blind canonization, is in order. The final results, as I shall demonstrate, reveal a misogynistic man of slight learning who was invariably consumed with moneymaking schemes, not imaginative writing and attentive reading. Like any good fairy-tale, Oxfordianism has conveinently buried the true details of the Earl's life and replaced them with outrageous fictions (including the popular claim that he was the son of Elizabeth I). Peter Moore (the reviewer whose review is posted beneath mine) lectures Nelson on taking things out of context; yet Oxfordians are the grand champions of out-of-contex musings, including their oh-so-clever clipping of George Puttenham's list of Elizabethan dramatists, which, while mentioning Oxford as "the best for comedy among us" goes on to mention an entirely separate author named Shakespeare, who Puttenham calls the best for both tragedy AND comedy.
Oxenforde (the name under which de Vere signed his letters) was, as one scholar has already said, "born great, had more greatness thrust upon him, and achieved obscurity." He was extremely wealthy, he was the son-in-law of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and he enjoyed a life of high privilege. Such characteristics are often utilized by Oxfordians to peg him as the man Shakespeare "should have been," never mind the vast evidence to the contrary. Throughout his 54 years, Oxford was perennialy unpopular--he quarreled with the polymath Sir Philip Sidney, abused Italian teenagers, and pestered both Burghley and Queen Elizabeth for an endless string of noble offices. Thus, it seems that he is not the glowing, admirable "genius" constructed via Oxfordian fantasy, nor is it likely that he is the incredibly empathetic mind behind Shakespeare's work (it is worth noting that no one crafted a believable heroine quite like the Bard--yet if one reads Oxford's own "Sitting Alone in My Thought In Melancholy Mood," he/she will find that the Earl's portrayal of women falls shorts of Shakespeare's). Likewise, his poetry is wildly uneven, often unreadable, and dum-dee-dum in an undeniably commonplace way.
It is true that virture does not need to coincide with genius--was Oxford actually a disgruntled Earl who vented his frustration with the world via Shakespeare's tragedies (namely, Hamlet)? Again, the answer is no. As Nelson shows, Oxford's life is not the mirror of Hamlet, as so many Oxfordians like to believe. He was on amicable terms with stepfather Charles Tyrrel (the Oxfordian model for murderous Claudius), was literally begged by Burghley to marry daughter Anne (Oxfordians like to think that the mild-mannered Burghley is the model for the conniving Polonius--yet remember that Polonius never invited Hamlet to wed Ophelia, rather he did quite the contrary), and so on. As David Kathman has said before, one can find Shakespearean parallels in the life of any Elizabethan man or woman, and Oxford's merit no special attention.
What I admire most about Nelson's comprehensive biography is his full and accurate transcriptions of Oxford's letters, none of which, it should be said, mention a literary life, a marked interest in the theater, or a pseudonym remarkably similar to the name of a middle-class London player. He never mentions an interest in learning or in further travels to Italy, a nation he said, in a letter dated 24 Sept 1575, that he would never care to see again, a far cry from Shakespeare's passionate love for that peninsula. Furthermore, Shakespeare often made glaring geographic errors when describing the continent, calling Bohemia a coastal nation and several landlocked Italian cities "seaports." A supposedly exuberant travller like Oxford could have no such mistakes.
Rather, Oxford's letters concentrate on things such as tin-mining: he was virtually consumed with this affair throughout the 1590s, the time period in which Shakespeare supposedly penned some of his greatest works. Oxford was always lobbying for some new promotion or financial gift--it seems that he was the actual "money grubber" that Oxfordians so often call William of Stratford-upon-Avon. Furthermore, Oxford's letters exhibit a deficient literary skill--he is a rather clumsy speller, he misquotes all legal Latin (even adding 'y' to the Latin alphabet), and he is swamped with a thick Eastern dialect (Shakespeare's work are written in crisp, London English with a hint of Yorkish). For a supposedly trained lawyer, he doesn't know how to spell either "suit" or "attorney" and rarely drops any phrase that could be called even remotely Shakespearean (the only one Oxfordians can find is the mundane "I am that I am," a rather popular passage available to anyone with a Bible.
The Earl's education--often cited by Oxfordians as being unparalleled and of remarkable quality--is sketchy. The only college he attended was Queen's College at Cambridge, at the tender age of 8, and he soon dropped out, having never attained a B.A. He later received degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, both of which were honorary and awarded to him as a member of Elizabeth's entourage, which frequented the nation's universities. His law education is similarly weak--a mere three years at Gray's Inn, no lawbook purchases, and no cases. Couple all this with William of Stratford's almost-certain attendance at the King's New School in Stratford (a rigorous, classically-oriented institution) and the supposed disparity between the two men's education is suddenly not so great. Anyway, genius cannot be simply learned--writers such as Ben Jonson and Miguel de Cervatnes never received college degrees, and yet their genius far supercedes that of most Harvard or Oxford graduates.
Oxfordians love to ridicule William Shakespeare of Stratford as an unlettered "grain merchant" incapable of writing immortal dramas, all ad hominem claims backed by absolutely no substance. This is unsurprising to anyone who has dedicated serious time to the authorship debate--Oxfordianism is, by definition, one of the world's most visible (and deconstructible) paper tigers, bullet-proof on the surface but all mush underneath. As Nelson's biography demonstrates, Oxford was not, is not, and never will be a Shakespearean polymath, he has no connection to the Bard's works, and he is not much more that an unremarkable nobleman. Oxfordians do not love Shakespeare--they love pipe-dream fantasies and elaborate vendettas directed at the canon's true author. Nothing proves that William Shakespeare DIDN'T write his own works, and as such I'm much inclined to agree with Nelson in discarding Oxford's rather weak candidacy on the primary basis of his life.
Rating: 
Summary: A CAMOUFLAGED HATCHET JOB
Review: I have for some years been interested in the nobility of 16th and 17th century England, and have read a number of pretty good biographies, so looked forward to MONSTROUS ADVERSARY with great anticipation. Unfortunately it was clear early on in the book that Nelson was anything but a disinterested biographer. The tone of the book breathes hostility toward its subject, and after having read it, as well as having looked over Nelson's web site, it's obvious why. This was not a biography per se, it was a polemic, in the guise of a biography, against the idea that de Vere was Shakespeare. Whether that idea is harebrained or not - and Nelson believes it is - is beside the point. Nelson misses no opportunity to defame de Vere, treating as valid every scrap of negative evidence, however dubious - for example, that given by his Catholic ex-friends after he had delivered them to the authorities. Nelson's interpretations are the mirror image of Ward, as he describes the earlier writer's 1928 biography; where he infers nothing but the best of his subject, Nelson infers nothing but the worst. I note that Nelson is not a historian, and quite frankly, it shows. That he relies on the likes of William F. Buckley - one of the lousiest writers of fiction I've come across - as an arbiter of de Vere's poetry implies that he must be pretty desperate to prove his case, whatever its merits. He dismisses Ward's book as "hagiography"; as I remember it, having read it years ago, it was pretty good. Nelson's, in any case, is a "hatchet job". As to matters of style, I can do no better than quote the end of the very first sentence of the Introduction, which made my heart sink from the get-go: "[de Vere's life] ... just overlapped the reign of Elizabeth I at both ends". Ugh. And Nelson is ... oh, yes, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Ye gods. Having paid good money for what I assumed was going to be a biography, I ended up with a screed that was obviously produced to demolish the de Vere = Shakespeare movement. If that's what Nelson wanted to write, potential readers should have been made aware of this. As it stands, this anything but impartial view of de Vere disqualifies MONSTROUS ADVERSARY as legitimate biography, for all its invaluable documentation.
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Summary: Demonography 101: Alan Nelson's "Monstrous Adversary"
Review: Professor Alan H. Nelson of Berkeley has produced Monstrous Adversary, The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool University Press, paperback, 527 pp., $32.00). Nelson's biography of Oxford offers a mass of new documentary information on his subject, with additional material available on his website: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/oxdocs.html. Prof. Nelson deserves thanks and praise for this research, as well as for his openness in sharing his archival discoveries. In six of his chapters (29, 45, 46, and 75-7) Nelson analyzes Oxford's poetry, literary patronage, and sponsorship of acting companies. The contents of these chapters should remind readers that Nelson hails from the English Department of one of America's leading universities. When analyzing metrical conventions, the niceties of dedications, or the history of theatrical troupes, he shows the sure touch of an expert in his field. I do not imply that readers must accede to Nelson's every judgment on these matters, though I find little to disagree with, but readers should recognize an obvious professional. Unfortunately, Nelson cannot do history. Monstrous Adversary is a documentary biography composed of extensive quotations from contemporary letters, memoranda, legal records, and such like, stitched together with Nelson's comments. Nelson asks in his "Introduction" that we let "the documentary evidence speak for itself" (p. 5). His request fails for two reasons. First, documentary evidence rarely makes sense without the appropriate context, which includes not only historical background information on the religious, legal, social, or cultural practices of a long ago era, but also personal information, such as establishing who struck the first blow in a fight, or whether a witness was truthful in other matters. As I will show, Nelson totally botches the context of event after event. Secondly, Nelson, who with some justice refers to Oxford's first biographer, B. M. Ward, as a hagiographer (250), pushes much further in the opposite direction, so much so that his study of Oxford may well be dubbed demonography. The seventeenth Earl of Oxford was anything but a model nobleman of his time. He threw away his family fortune, he failed to develop the career expected of an earl by shouldering his share of local and national responsibilities, and he fathered a child out of wedlock. Quite possibly he also drank too much as a young man. On the other hand, he excelled in his generosity, he earned praise for his writings, and he retained the favor of his famously headstrong and moralistic Queen. But these facts have long been known. What does Nelson add to them? Quite a lot of detail and color: Nelson's persistence and skill as a document sleuth flesh out both major and minor events of Oxford's story. Unfortunately, Nelson the analyst relates to Nelson the researcher as Hyde relates to Jekyll - moreover Nelson's obsessive denigration of Oxford carries him from error into fantasy. To read the rest of this review, go to: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/demngraf.htm.
Rating: 
Summary: An academic hatchet job
Review: This book provides copious new archival material discovered by the author in England and Italy regarding Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. However, the uses to which professor Nelson has applied his discoveries are mostly unscholarly. Every chapter in this new biography (the first by B.M. Ward was published in 1928) seems designed to undermine the reputation of Oxford, from his management of money and his friends to his poetry, his theatrical and literary patronage, even the grammar and spelling used in his private letters! A strange combination of excellent research and polemics.
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