Shakespeare was a fake (...and I can prove it) | Brunel University London

[@cowboycave5071]

I'm just a dude who plays video games and works at a mall... this was the most insanely interesting thing I've learned all year. This tops National Treasure!

[@onefeather2]

Agree ☺️

[@Valkonnen]

Those video games will make you very limited. You'll understand when you're older and it hurts to move. All of those years of your young life that you wasted on these useless fantasies will be a regret, but it will be far too late. You NEVER get that time back.

[@claudius2049]

@@Valkonnen Could you elaborate why it's wrong playing video games in your free time?

[@Valkonnen]

@@claudius2049 What could be wrong with literally wasting the time that you have while you are young, playing games? If you cannot think of anything better to do, to occupy your life or it's so idle that all you can do is play these useless games, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm older than you are, so that allows me to make real-life comparisons that you cannot. The average 20 year old in 1967 would be pretty well rounded as far as education, and if you were to speak with them you could hold an adult conversation. The average 20 something and even 30 something today, first of all, all look the same. T-shirt, cap, and shorts. They ALL dress like little kids and see absolutely nothing wrong with that. A person with no real passion, who hasn't done the work to learn about things in a real way (Not Google) is very limited in what they know and how they behave. I can see it, but you can't. Just the fact that you are probably a guy over 20 years old who would even ask a question like that, shows it to be true.

[@eugenemartone7023]

@@Valkonnen Don’t think you can blame video games for all that. I do agree however that it’s a waste of time, but people were wasting time in 1967 too, nothing wrong with having some fun. The trick is moderation. I think internet knowlege is far worse when it comes to “limited” knowlege today, for several reasons. Just see how Google will provide easy and extraordinary shallow answers to almost any question. It hardly requires any thinking. I could find what date Napoleon died, without knowing a single thing about him, not even how to spell his name correctly. It’s a trade-off however, because the younger you are, the more well adapted to the multiple input stream of modern society you will be, and specialized knowlege should (in theory) be easier to attain. Look at how well versed young people are in the art of digital communication. Not a good trade perhaps, but older people created this world. Look at KZbin, it’s algorithms push videos of a certain length etc. for marketing reasons (based on marketing principles that were around in 1967). As a result you’d likely find several biographies of Napoleon that are under 20 min, which will do little more than career highlights that most won’t remember anyway (and probably some that claim he had ties to ancient aliens or illuminati or something). It’s not all bad though, but I recognize the general “lack” of well rounded knowlege you’re talking about. Thing is, people that grew up before internet and videogames were the ones to click celebrity news, and clickbait-y headlines. The ones to watch short cat videos and infomercial like documentaries. Later generations will take it their own ways, hopefully in a better direction. Like this guy here, he haf a great experience watching a 1,5h video of some old geezer talking, instead of entertaining himself with gaming, why criticize him for it? Young people aren’t stupid, they just grew/grow up in a different world, and while I think we should all point out when we think something important is being lost, it’s far too easy to blame it on young people “wasting their lives”.

[@edwardclarke3885]

People wonder why it took 7 years after Shakespeare died before the Folio was published. I have the answer. It took Ben three days to write his poem, but six years to work out the cryptograms.

[@amaxamon]

LoL!

[@ExxylcrothEagle]

well, Bacon was still alive, so... y'know Shakespeare was just an imaginary character who needed a death.

[@Nullifidian]

@@ExxylcrothEagle Are you kidding? Shakespeare's existence is testified to in the Stratford parish register. Richard Quiney wrote a letter to him. He purchased New Place and the Blackfriars Gatehouse. He's recorded as receiving four yards of scarlet cloth along with the rest of his company so that he could wear the livery of King James in a procession, as a member of the King's Men. He's recorded in the cast lists of _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ in Ben Jonson's _Workes_ . John Webster mentions Shakespeare, along with several other contemporaneous playwrights, in his letter to the reader that prefaced _The White Devil_ . You think all of this is "imaginary"?

[@ExxylcrothEagle]

@@Nullifidian you do realize how easy it would be to cook those books? the Stratford parish register??? hahahahah I'm saying that Bacon was the son of Elizabeth!!! That he had a lot of access to a lot of stuff. Honestly, the things you list are completely silly when seen from a different perspective. And I'm not saying that Bacon and De Vere didn't collaborate. It really likely is a collaboration....but I don't believe that deVere was the THRUST of this. He didn't have that big of a chip on his shoulder in 1590...but Bacon definitely did.... NO, All of this is not imaginary. It is just not difficult to write these things in a ledger etc when one has the proper security clearance. And we haven't even begun to discuss 'motive'. Hamlet makes much more sense when you read it or watch it with it in mind that Bacon is the son of Elizabeth and Dudley. Dudley was only recently deceased when the first hints of Hamlet arise..... allegedly..... What role if any did the Queen have in the death of Robert Dudley? The existential despair of this character, this child, this Bacon.... HAM-let...what was it like to realize that you are the son of the Queen and at what age did that happen? Would some scrub from Stratford really be poking fun at Lord Burghley William Cecil in the character of Polonius??? I'm just getting started but I have a lot of stuff to do today...

[@Nullifidian]

@@ExxylcrothEagle Yes, I do realize how easy: not easy at all. In fact, it would be virtually impossible, because the Stratford parish register existed to document all the baptisms, marriages, and burials for Holy Trinity Church in Stratford. Therefore, it was _constantly_ being added to, and going back decades after the putative birth of the playwright the conspirators would have found the page already filled up with entries and no place to make a new one, because nobody in 1564 knew that they were going to have to leave a blank space to forward a conspiracy that would happen decades in the future. And I don't care what brand of lunacy you're peddling, whether it be the Prince Tudor speculation or any other kind of speculation. Speculation doesn't overturn the known documentary record. Official, personal, and literary records all show that Shakespeare existed. If you want to see it for yourself, you can visit the site Shakespeare Documented run by the Folger Library. "Honestly, the things you list are completely silly when seen from a different perspective." And what you've listed is completely silly when seen from the fact that there's not an iota of evidentiary support for it. " Dudley was only recently deceased when the first hints of Hamlet arise....." Quite. He died in 1588 and the Q1 of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ was published in 1603. A mere fifteen years. Hardly any time at all. The earliest documented reference to _Hamlet_ is the Stationer's Register entry dated 26 July 1602 saying "James Robertes Entred for his Copie vnder the handes of mr Pasfeild and mr waterson warden A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lo: Chamberleyne his servantes". "The existential despair of this character, this child, this Bacon.... HAM-let..." Yes, and clearly the conspiracy reached back to the 12th century and changed the name of the figure mentioned in Saxo Grammaticus' _Gesta Danorum_ to Amleth so that it could be Anglicized as Hamlet and used to make a porcine pun on Bacon's surname four centuries later. After all, we know how easy it is to cook those books... when you have a TARDIS. "Would some scrub from Stratford really be poking fun at Lord Burghley William Cecil in the character of Polonius???" This is immaterial because Polonius isn't a representation of Lord Burghley.

[@mokamo23]

Waugh takes over-analysis to a whole new level.

[@YourGreatPotential]

Even if there were nothing to the claim of hermeticsm, the analysis would still be brilliant. You got to give him that. But what are the odds?

[@Nullifidian]

@@YourGreatPotential The odds are 100% You can derive anything you like if you're prepared to make up the context by which you 'decode' your message, which is what Waugh does.

[@mithras666]

oh come on, open your mind a little. ​@@Nullifidian

[@Nullifidian]

​@@mithras666 Open my mind to what? "Open my mind", in this context, seems to mean "ignore the invalid means by which Waugh achieves his results". But why should I "open my mind" to an invalid method? It's not going to improve its accuracy or trustworthiness. All I could possibly gain from this is self-delusion, and I can't see any reason why I should want to be delusional.

[@garrymcdougall9481]

Yes, not everyone has his genius.

[@rainblaze.]

why would anyone go to such extremes of complication,and subterfuge to hide something they wanted ultimately to be found?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Because they were poets and they just HAD to speak, but the Star Chamber would have persecuted them for doing do openly. I'm not being sarcastic here. That's actually what Alexander Waugh claims.

[@rainblaze.]

Caius Martius Coriolanus Yeah...i guess you just simply gotta love Alexander Waugh lol. But i think i would take him more seriously if he wasn't such a narcissist. And fitting the "evidence" to fit HIS hypnosis, instread of the other way around, and it wasn"t so self serving and convoluted, would have helped. But i guess you just gotta take what you get

[@the17thearlofoxford38]

It WAS found ultimately. The hiders would probably have been shocked that it took so long. They probably would have been shocked that anyone took the Stratford thing as seriously as they do.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@the17thearlofoxford38 Oxfordians should be rightly proud. They managed to find something that was never lost or hidden to begin with.

[@the17thearlofoxford38]

From hence your memory death cannot take, Although in me each part will be forgotten. Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:

[@jdonalds1]

Delightful! But if you keep changing the rules that govern the logic of relation, choosing one here and another there, where convenient, the whole ends up looking like hyperoxygenated numerology.... it is the mastery of the magician that gives a shiver up the spine.

[@Ty91681]

Amen!

[@colinallan1962]

Sometimes it is a sentence beginning after a section of 17 lines- ie. line 18. Sometimes it is the 17th line. Once you have decided it is 17 you can find ways to make it fit. I have already pointed out that Oxford signed himself Edward OXENFORD. The signature being entirely his choice!

[@fractal_mind562]

My mind had an orgasm reading this !

[@13strange67]

What ? !

[@MichaelMarko]

But mastery of what? Symbols?

[@sns8420]

Edward (6 letters) De (2 letters) Vere (4 letters)

[@Torvig]

I found that compelling as well. The 6-2-4 is the name itself, as well as the date of death (June 24)--and more, it seems. Well observed.

[@MrMartibobs]

@@Torvig Ooooh yes 6 2 4 I believe it's the wheel configuration of the first steam engine to run through Lower Missenden. And the sleepers were laid 16 inches apart, and 16 is the number you get when you add up the numeric values of 'Oxford' and then subtract the waist size of Oxford's Gaskins. How can these fools fail to see the significance of all this? Well spotted. Remember the song by Chicago? 25 or 6-2-4! They knew!

[@Torvig]

@@MrMartibobs It's clear as day!

[@michael-h8y8t]

It's called a coincidence you frickin' pseud.

[@mpgallogly]

Edward de Vere was tutored by Dr. John Dee in the esoteric arts: numerology, mathematics, cryptography, astrology, etc. Dr. John Dee started MI5 and signed his documents as 007. You really can't make this shit up lol!

[@professorsogol5824]

Bailey's Theorem? There is such a theorem but it has nothing to do with triangles and circles. Thee is a theorem that states any triangle inscribed in a circle with the diameter as its hypotenuse will be a right triangle. However, the closed curved line passing through the six points identified as corners of four triangles appears to be an eclipse, not a circle. (measured on my computer screen, if the minor axis of this elipse is 1 then the major axis is about 1.3.) That suggests that at least one of the triangles is not a right triangle.

[@olafshomkirtimukh9935]

Though not a mathematician myself (but a Shakespeare-lover), I had the same thought: it was manifestly an ellipse, not a circle!

[@andyhiggs6932]

@@olafshomkirtimukh9935 Find a reliable source image of the Sonnets and place a perfect circle over the points. It works perfectly and is not an elipse. In this youtube video the image is compressed. I would not trust any test without doing it for oneself using an original edition of the Sonnets.

[@douglashoover6473]

The theorem about a triangle inscribed in a circle, with a diameter as its hypotenuse, is called Thales theorem. Anyway, several of the marked "right angles" were visibly not white 90 degrees - maybe none of them were exactly 90 degrees.

[@ashcross]

Waugh was a pseud of the first order!

[@professorsogol5824]

@@ashcross I was suddenly reminded of this passage from James Joyce's Ulysses: "It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.” (Telemachus episode)

[@edwarddunmore5583]

The real Shakespeare was the friends we made along the way❤

[@lairdhaynes1986]

I concur.

[@Hardrockkenny]

That's a great way to look at it.

[@qual10]

Sounds gay to me

[@mikereeks805]

What a total waste of time. Brunel has lowered its reputation as a serious university. Why does anyone give this Buffon Waugh any time. Misguided pseudo intellectual

[@jonmelon9792]

Vulgar eye, vulgar tongue.

[@dopplerdog6817]

The works of Shakespeare weren't written by Shakespeare but by someone else called Shakespeare

[@jimihendrix3143]

Yes, but he was just a front man for someone else called Shakespeare.

[@benjaminbrewer2569]

@@jimihendrix3143or was it his son also known as Shakespeare

[@we4r119]

A fascinating lecture on code breaking. I’m not that bright, so credit to the speaker for making it so easy for someone like me to be able to follow. Intriguing and fascinating.

[@timothyharris4708]

Well, I could say that I expect, if you are not so bright, that you would find this talk 'intriguing and fascinating'. But that would not be fair to you at all. I don't believe that you are anything like 'not so bright' as you claim, but there is such a thing as common sense and a feeling for reality that is part of intelligence (which is not the abstract sort of thing that an IQ test suggests), and in all honesty, I think a bit of common sense, a feeling for what is real and what is not, is quite sufficient to see that the little web of deception that Mr Waugh weaves is full of holes.

[@we4r119]

@@timothyharris4708 - I did say I find it fascinating and intriguing, I didn’t say I believed every word of it. ☺️ He did explain it clearly enough for me to follow where he was going, but I confess, I didn’t understand the 4 'Ts' theory, since some of the text he referred to has more than 4 'Ts' and I am too lazy to bother counting all of the characters. However, I am aware that there was a tremendous amount of sophisticated encryption used in those times. I’m not sure that I buy into the conflation of Greek mythology and Latin text, but as I say, I'm not that bright/intelligent and it isn’t anything that I have looked into. Perhaps you are correct and it is a common sense reaction.

[@we4r119]

@@timothyharris4708 - I also found the documentary film, Cracking the Shakespeare code fascinating too! 😉. I am particularly amazed that many academics cannot seem to accept that a grammar school educated person could be capable of penning his own works.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@we4r119 Dear We, thank you for your response. I suppose that the reason I find these ideas about 'encryption' and 'codes' so utterly dubious, is that I find it incredible a) that someone writing for the popular stage would want to add to the difficulty of writing (very good) plays the difficulty of adding in encrypted information in odd places which certainly would not be understood by the audience, were not deciphered at the time and if noticed and deciphered at all would be by those who were already in the know, and would only be discovered 400 years later by such as Alexander Waugh. And b) plays were not much regarded as 'literature', which is why many plays of the era were lost - Ben Jonson was the first playwright to publish a 'first folio' of some of his plays in 1616, Shakespeare''s First Folio was published in 1623, long after his death. It is not so much academics who are unable to accept that an Elizabethan grammar-schoolboy could have written the works, as people who understand little of the history of the time, or who (rather like those who find codes in the Bible or who avidly follow the latest QAnon conspiracy-mongering) like to pretend that they have found all sorts of coded references in the plays and elsewhere (something that is easier to do if you are sufficiently gullible than is generally supposed), or are incorrigible snobs.

[@JCO2002]

You're bright enough to know how to use proper punctuation and capitalization, which puts you ahead of about 75% of commenters. Don't sell yourself short.

[@willrich3908]

And the entire royal court, the queen and her consorts, everyone in Stratford, the whole Globe theatre, everyone in London, they was all in on it, and never said a word.

[@nomdeplume2213]

Yea thats how a dictatorship works. What the king/queen says is what goes

[@horaceosirian8993]

Worked for Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Moses, Noah, Jacob, David, Solomon, Judas and all the rest, not to mention Yahweh, Allah, and Buddha.

[@garrymcdougall9481]

never said a word???? What is 1000 pound a year, in perpetuity?

[@darrenhoward6261]

The works are immensely more important then authorship. Shakespeare's children dyed completely illiterate. The author of such incredible works of the English language and his children were unable to read and write? That speaks volumes.

[@Nullifidian]

Yes, it says you've bought into bullshit. There is no evidence at all that William Shakespeare's children were illiterate, and there is as much evidence as anyone could reasonably ask for that Susanna Hall, Shakespeare's eldest daughter, was profoundly literate: there are two extant signatures from her, there is an account of her correctly describing a book belonging to her husband as a "book of physic" even though it was in Latin, she likely wrote her mother's epitaph, and her own epitaph calls her "witty [i.e., learned] above her sex". However, even if his children were both provably illiterate, all it would mean was that Shakespeare was a man of his time and didn't rate female education that highly. John Milton trained his daughters to read to him in various languages, including Latin, Greek, and English, but he never taught them how to understand what they were reading. Does his neglect of his daughters' literacy mean that he couldn't have written _Paradise Lost_ ? Not that it's apparent what Shakespeare could have done all the way from London to help his daughters' literacy. Was he supposed to tutor them via Skype?

[@irishelk3]

And also, apart from the director of the Anonymous and his questioning of Shakespeare, i would also say, most writers, especially back the then, were middle or upper class, they could read and write, and I’m rooting for the working class here, but why would a working class man give a damn about the royal family and all that la di da carry on?. Why would a working class man want to immortalise those people?, and not write about his own life?, and then he only left behind like what?, six very badly signed signatures?. Come on.

[@Nullifidian]

Shakespeare _was_ middle class. He was the son of a man who ran a successful business, had one of the largest houses in Stratford-upon-Avon, and had various important civic duties including bailiff, chief magistrate, alderman, and mayor. John Shakespeare may have suffered financial reverses later in William's life, but in William's earliest years he was quite a substantial man of business, property, and civic importance in the town. Shakespeare certainly wasn't the son of Robin the dung-gatherer. As for why he wrote about royalty, it's because he was a playwright in the early modern era. John Webster was the son of a coach-maker and his plays were about the nobility (e.g., my favorite non-Shakespearean play of the era, _The Duchess of Malfi_ ), Christopher Marlowe was a cobbler's son and wrote _Edward II_ , Robert Greene was a saddler's son who likely wrote _Edmund Ironside_ and certainly wrote _The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ , where Henry III and Prince Edward are both characters (and Edward is the center of a major plotline), George Chapman was a yeoman's son who wrote frequently of the French court, and Thomas Middleton was a bricklayer's son who wrote extensively about the nobility in his tragedies (e.g. his most famous play, _The Revenger's Tragedy_ is set in the Italian court and features a lecherous Duke whose actions motivate the tragedy). He wouldn't have written about his own life because he was a playwright first and foremost and nobody would have wanted to see a play based on his life, and he lived _long_ before there was any significant tradition of autobiographical writing in English literature, an innovation that would only start with the Romantics (e.g. William Wordsworth's _The Prelude_ ). Shakespeare no more had to be a nobleman to write about the nobility than Philippa Gregory has to be the secret identity of the Duchess of Kent. And he left behind six perfectly adequately signed signatures. They only look strange to us moderns because they're in secretary hand (which was based on black letter script and was already dying out in Shakespeare's day), and not in Italic hand, which became the basis for modern cursive. I find Sütterlin mystifying to read, but it doesn't mean that the German-speaking children who learned to write that way couldn't write. Obviously, it means just the opposite. Nor do we have just six signatures because we also have three manuscript pages of _Sir Thomas More_ identified as "Hand D", which are a paleographic match to the six extant signatures you're so down on (and the less standard the signature, the greater the potential for identification since the signature has multiple unique characteristics-the "Hand D" script shows multiple characteristics that link it to Shakespeare's acknowledged signatures and no disqualifying differences), a stylometric match to the rest of the Shakespearean canon, and contain unique words (like the verbing of "shark") and a self-plagiarized line that occurs elsewhere in the canon ( _Coriolanus_ , specifically). Moreover, the manuscript is reworked with running emendations that _must_ be authorial because a scribe wouldn't have copied the crossed-out portions and then struck them out himself. We really couldn't have better evidence of Shakespeare as a writer if we had video of him pacing his London lodgings and saying, "'Now is the autumn of our mild annoyance'-no, it needs to be stronger-'Now is the winter of our discontent'-Will, you brilliant, brilliant man!"

[@charlottekey8856]

To get on their good side? His family was relatively high-toned and educated for his time and place.

[@Epicurwat]

He had no choice, banks wouldn't lend to the common man, he wasn't rich so patronage was the only way to get his plays made.

[@MaxMilanoPix]

The crown paid for plays, hence Shakespeare always gave the Tudors good press. Henry the 8th play doesn't mention the horrible bits.

[@Epicurwat]

@@MaxMilanoPix Shakespeare always gave the Tudors good press, hence he didn't get stabbed through an eye in a coffee shop in Deptford.

[@X-boomer]

I dare say with this type of “analysis” you could “prove” absolutely anything you want.

[@bakters]

" *you could “prove” absolutely anything* " Exactly. He dares people to figure out what are the odds of such a complicated message appearing *here* by chance, and that is rightfully unlikely. But it's the wrong question to ask. The correct question is to ask "what are the odds of finding an equally complicated message *somewhere* ? " It's not the only place he ever looked at, is it? Say, I wanted to prove that Santa Claus was Shakespeare. Could I find enough "evidence" for it if I dug deep enough? If that was my passion, and I was bright enough, I'm liking my odds. I mean, seriously. I looked at the first line of my post and I counted 15 words (on my screen). That's two references to Jesus already! XV, Christ/Cross and Veritas/Vicit What are the words following a period, for example? He, But, The, It's, Say. Could, If. What do we get, let me think... If He Could Say It's The But! I got it! It's the butt, It's all ASS! ;-) I'll repost it in a separate thread.

[@vikidprinciples]

🤣

[@bakters]

@@vikidprinciples With that said, they practically convinced me by now (two days later)... Not by this esoteric geometry, but by matching the plays to the real events. Hamlet seems the most convincing. Even if Shakspare of Stratfort wrote Hamlet, it's unlikely he didn't base it on the story of De Vere. Then he retired to Stratford, where he occupied himself with money-lending and suing people for petty debts, and finally scratched his "mark" on his last will, then died... I mean, those oxfordian guys have better arguments. This talk's potential impact is awfully overstated, right at the beginning.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@bakters Why is it 'unlikely' that the playwright who wrote Hamlet 'didn't base it on the story of de Vere'? Are you just pulling this out of your hat, or have any serious evidence to provide? The former, undoubtedly. And why do 'those oxfordian guys have better arguments'? On what grounds do you say this?

[@bakters]

@@timothyharris4708 Read what I wrote again. I said that even if the guy who could barely scratch his name actually wrote Hamlet, then it's unlikely he did not base it on De Vere's life. Re: better arguments' (sic!) I meant they have better arguments than "esoteric geometry". Now I'm more or less convinced that De Vere was Shakespeare and I still doubt this thing. While this talker here was sure he'll convince everybody who'd listen to him... Well, he failed at that. Somebody else had to step in.

[@johnsmith-eh3yc]

We love Waugh really hope he gets better, that is most important. Also with his ever increasing -such and such knew' he will eventually be able to show that nothing but nothing was published in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries except for the specific reason of showing devere was Shakespeare.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

He'll have his work cut out for him in catching up to Robert Pretcher, who claims that just about everything PUBLISHED within spitting distance of 1604 was actually written by De Vere.

[@bjsmith5444]

Someone has too much time on his hands. Like a Covid test you're going to find what you're looking for if you look hard enough. De Vere either wanted posterity to know he was Shakespeare or he didn't. If he did, it would have been a lot simpler. He would have left some writing that said "I wrote Shakespeare's plays."

[@2degucitas]

Covid tests are more reliable

[@timothyharris4708]

@Jessica Murray Yes, 400 years after his death, he has been raised from his crypt by charlatans like Waugh to announce that he really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Would that he had remained encrypted. Then we wouldn't have to put up with dishonesties and special pleading that appears in this video.

[@Nullifidian]

@Jessica Murray No, he didn't. Other people have claimed to find "encrypted messages" in the works they want to attribute to de Vere, and they judge the success of their "decryption" by how much it tells them what they want to see. This is a recipe for self-delusion. Before the Oxfordians, the Baconians were mad for encryption and many of them still are. Others have thrown their hats into the encryption ring in support of other candidates. Any methodology that can yield so many mutually contradictory answers cannot possibly be valid.

[@AntonDee]

but why not have some fun?

[@timothyharris4708]

@@AntonDee What kind of fun? Do you find Waugh's charlatanism 'fun'? You do realise, don't you, that because of cynical, money-grubbing, conspiracy-mongers like Waugh, a great many, mostly rather ignorant people now believe that there is a serious case against Shakespeare's authorship when there is none? I suppose you believe that denying that the Holocaust took place, or denying climate-warming, or denying that Biden won the last election is just 'fun'. I am not, by the way, pretending that the denial of Shakespeare's authorship is in any moral way comparable to those examples, but the manner in which, via, in particular, the internet, people are led to believe in conspiracy theories is common to all these examples. Surely one can have 'fun' without supporting charlatans and misleading people?

[@neilroy7085]

Tedious and unnecessary introduction finally ends at 4:30.

[@TopShockers]

270 thank-yous'

[@Nullifidian]

Alternatively, "Tedious and unnecessary lunacy commences at 4:30".

[@timmiltz2916]

I'm afraid if were aired as an episode of Blue's Clues- the producers would opt not to air it.

[@newlifenowife3522]

if aired,,,it s too late to opt not to !!!

[@JasonTrussell-g5d]

That was absolutely Brilliant, Alexander Waugh who we all sadly lost this year was a fountain of knowledge and such a Great presenter. I have got to learn so much over the years but this is confirmation that EDV was re-buried in St Peters Church / Westminster Abbey. Thank you for this great video and recommend everyone to watch it.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

You do realize he was just making it all up, don't you?

[@JasonTrussell-g5d]

Why do you say that? I know EDV is Shakespeare both from my family Genealogy and Secret Society......it was a Great bit of research by Alexander Waugh.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@JasonTrussell-g5d I know because none of his goofy “decryptions” work without his added context, which he makes up. Have you ever bothered to fact check anything he claims? No, you haven’t. “The fourth cross is known as the cross of St. Peter.” No, it’s not. “All of these people referred to De Vere as ‘Apollo’.” Only one of them did. “This bent T is a Tau, for Taurus, the Ox.” No, it’s not. If you had asked him to cite any of the things he claimed, he would have blocked you like he did me. And what you learned in your “secret society” is of no interest to me. I deal in facts and evidence. None of it supports De Vere as anything but a wastrel, a pedophile, a murderer, and a coward.

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

First argument: there are a lot of graves that don't have anything buried in them, especially from times of disease outbreak when bodies were generally cremated so they couldn't spread the disease. That said, the fact there's a hollow _at all_ says someone or something was buried there, and a disarticulated human skeleton would fit into that space. Second argument: it wasn't bad syntax in the seventeenth century when English spelling hadn't been standardized. Written language changes slower than speech, but it does change. Third argument: a headstone that reads "in this grave" doesn't mean inside the stone, it means under the ground next to it. I've already refuted the premise this entire argument is based on.

[@JCO2002]

I'd like to watch all of this, but at 18 minutes in, it's starting to feel like I'm reading a QAnon forum where everything is a deep, complex conspiracy.

[@timothyharris4708]

You are absolutely right.

[@9kat53]

I still keep thinking about the Northumberland Manuscript. Have never been able to buy the theory that it is just scribbling by some scribe. Also, when you said in the video that Bacon took over after Edward de Vere died, what did you mean, what did Bacon take over - sorry, did not understand that part. What about a joint Edward de Vere/Bacon partnership for Shakespeare, is this a possibility (and is this what you meant), don't the dates work better? Very interesting presentation! But, please, what is your opinion of the Northumberland Manuscript - it has always seemed to me that even if it was a scribe scribbling, the scribe had to put Bacon and Shakespeare's names together for a reason.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

The "Northumberland Manuscript" ended up as the temporary book binding, which tells me that it was originally in someone's book bindery. The script used was in a very practiced hand. Where does a bookbinder who needs to write pretty practice? On the sort of scrap paper that tends to end up as an ad hoc paper binding, of course.

[@nativevirginian8344]

Henry Neville’s name was also on the NM.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@nativevirginian8344 So what?

[@barryseaton3121]

An absolute delight to listen to such a learned diatribe against what I have always hated, secrets.

[@thoutube9522]

What secret is that? Kid from Stratford turned out to be a good writer? Why are you surprised by this?

[@cathsrq]

CIVILIZATION IS BUILT ON SECRETS

[@veronica_._._._]

@@thoutube9522 Bunch of chinless toffs and their aspiring grooms of the stool.

[@Nullifidian]

@Attila the Pun The evidence has been so well-hidden that it's even been kept out of this video.

[@sharonjackson5196]

The letter tau "T" does not come from a picture of an ox. The ox ideogram, rather, evolved into our letter "A".

[@brandonprescott5525]

In support of your comment aleph means ox in Hebrew which has similar cognates in terms of their alphabets (alpha-beta-gamma, aleph-bet-gimmel)

[@khsuki1]

Correct and if he lied about that, no need to go any further.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

You're the smart one. I've been following Waugh around for years, pointing out when he just makes stuff up to suit his purpose, which is frequently. I could have learned to play the piano in all the time I've spent on this foolishness.

[@gilgamars]

@@Jeffhowardmeade i suppose petter Amundsen is making it up too?! How many more times do you need to be shown? If the first letter of all the plays spelled out “Edward de vere wrote this” you’d still argue

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@gilgamars Petter Amundsen is making it up worse than most. His bonkers decryption methods are so absurd that I doubt any sane mind could have concocted them. And since the only way anything in Shakespeare would say Edward De Vere wrote this would be to twist it like a contortionist, yes, I would argue that you were adding your own context to bend random data to your predetermined end.

[@patkenlaws]

Evelyn Waugh could not written Evelyn Waugh because he was middle class. The true author must be an aristocrat. I say this because I'm a snob.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Would that Evelyn Waugh hadn't written Evelyn Waugh. I don't think I could survive reading Brideshead Revisited again.

[@patkenlaws]

@@Jeffhowardmeade I agree about Brideshead but Scoop, A Handful of Dust and others are good

[@erpthompsonqueen9130]

What?

[@kieranjames4696]

I don't know who really wrote Shakespeare but it seems to me that the anti-Stratfordians can't settle on a single candidate. There are impassioned arguments for the Earl Of Oxford, Francis Bacon and Henry Nevill (and probably other candidates I'm not aware of). It's the literary equivalent of 'who really was Jack The Ripper'. I don't think we'll ever know for sure...

[@jimnaz5267]

I dont know either, but there is a trend in thinking it was all of the above mentioned. You will noitice that VVilliam spells his name in several ways, and signed his name in more and different spellings, hmmmmmmm.

[@Sphere723]

The main problem is all the direct evidence of who is credited with writing the plays points to the man from Stratford. If you find that evidence uncompelling and start looking for an alternate candidate you're necessarily dealing with indirect evidence. Coincidences and innuendos. And such lines of evidence leave little to differentiate between candidates. Some parts of the plays will match Bacons life, others will match Oxfords life etc. One secret code will say "DeVere" the other "Marlowe". Really, you can make at least some case for any noble of the time.

[@Mooseman327]

Well, we do one thing...it wasn't the illiterate from Stratford.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@Mooseman327 He wasn't illiterate. Why do you say so?

[@nativevirginian8344]

Finally, someone else who has heard of Neville. Can’t his name be decoded from the dedication too?

[@thecentralscrutinizerr]

Has anybody asked the question of why the author of Shakespeare's works wanted to hide his/her identity? Is something else encrypted into the works of Shakespeare that would bring harm to the author of the works should it be decrypted? If you wrote an epic literary work today, would you want your identity to be unknown?

[@siberiangirl1941]

The Shakespearian works had many authors working together to form a comprehensive new language..There were over 2000 “new” words that would have been completely unknown to the audience of the day. Every country of influence from the 15th century to the present has been subjected to a constant change of their native language to destroy our true history. Not unlike the Christian bible.

[@MichaelMarko]

That’s what I wonder. What’s the point? Ok maybe a writing project like many in the past. Many topical works have been attributed to some figure of renown associated with a school or movement. But why all the coding and mystery? What’s the point? Is it to promote Christian mysticism? I suppose people like these games and that’s enough to motivate clever elite people to do such things.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@siberiangirl1941 Well, you're good at writing total rubbish. What is 'our true history'?

[@timothyharris4708]

@@MichaelMarko The point is to excite people such as many, if not most, of the stupid and ignorant commenters here.

[@siberiangirl1941]

@@timothyharris4708 where would you like me to begin?

[@impostersyndrome3898]

There's less stretching in a Mr. Fantasic lecture.

[@johnsmith-eh3yc]

'Lies here devere' God I hope Waugh was laughing as he prepared that slide

[@frogmorely]

I can understand the elevation of autistic parlour games into an hour of distraction aided by our obliging furlough of incredulity, but what exercises my unease is the suspicion that it is all motivated by classist snobbery. Evelyn Waugh and the Earl of Oxford feature like a usurping comedy junta.

[@supercriceto]

I have a radical theory: just read the plays as plays. There is a distinct mind and soul at work and it does not have a university education. What it does have is years of practical work in the theatre. The writer was clearly a theatre animal, not a lord, not a soldier, not a lawyer but a theatre-infused chameleon capable of portraying them all

[@jonathangems]

When I read the plays they seem written by several different people - one of them a woman.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@jonathangems So which play was, or plays were, written by a woman. Come on, enlighten us.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@jonathangems Some of them were written by several different people because collaboration and writing additions to existing plays were standard practice in Shakespeare's day. However, one of those people was always Shakespeare, even if he only had minimal involvement (e.g., just writing three manuscript pages of Hand D of _Sir Thomas More_ as a reviser or only writing the Act II rose-picking scene and the Act IV Talbot scenes of _Henry VI, Part One_ ), and the others can be identified by the basis of stylistic and documentary evidence. None of Shakespeare's co-authors were women because all of his co-authors were active in writing for the public theatres and women weren't allowed to act in this era. Thus they never achieved the firsthand acquaintance with stagecraft that writing plays for the public theatres required. Women did write plays in this era, but they were closet-dramas like Elizabeth Cary's _The Tragedy of Mariam_ . You should read Cary's play and then read _any_ play by any author writing for the public theatres, not necessarily just Shakespeare (though he was the best), and the difference will look like night and day. Closet-dramas were stodgy affairs where there was no stage action and where the characters spoke in lengthy monologues at each other. There is no comparison to the public theatre plays that were packed with incident and interest, and where back-and-forth dialogue punctuated by _occasional_ monologues made the language much more dynamic.

[@supercriceto]

Great post. Only just seen it. Better late than never. Btw, I once saw a production of Sir Thomas More, without knowing about Shakespeare's involvement. It was so so, then suddenly blazed into life. I later learned that those exciting sections were widely considered to be Shakespeare's contribution.

[@fangbeer]

It was easy to decode. I already knew what I wanted the code to say.... Red flag.

[@T0varisch]

Thanks as ever. I hadn't seen this one. You've answered Glenn's "I am that I am" unique quote, and gone further to help me imagine your thought process. From what you say it was spotting the D in the chapel that was the "let's procreate" moment. I scanned the comments. Guys, mainly, if you have a modest IQ of say 120+ and are incapable of looking at this without prejudice, certainly if you have any experience of statistical mechanics, please get yourself retested. This isn't a matter for debate. You can argue about whether it's still a lie, but what has been done is utterly incontrovertible. Alexander should be getting a wee bit more respect than cheap abuse, but he went to university in my home town, I think he can handle it. This is one of the most elaborate creations of its kind in existence. If you have anything to match it we'd all be delighted to look at it. The creator, believed to be Dee, deserves homage from anyone who has ever tackled a cryptic crossword puzzle.

[@synisterfish]

... What are you talking about, chief...?

[@T0varisch]

@@synisterfish kzbin.info/www/bejne/jXPCgnmpp66UhNU isd where were up to a week ago. Things have moved on since then.

[@yinyangyin]

heh heh english monarchies are a "most elaborate creation" 🏴‍☠️

[@timothyharris4708]

Yes, Waugh certainly procreates, as he makes nothing out of nothing.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@T0varisch Having watched a bit of your first video, which is so amateurish and, forgive me, unutterably stupid (not to mention the appalling sound and your inability to speak coherently or clearly), I am not surprised to lear that you admire that charlatan, Alexander Waugh. You speak of a 'modest IQ' of 120. Could I ask what your IQ is? And perhaps you could explain what Waugh's going to a university in your home town has to do with anything?

[@swaters5127]

Can someone explain WHY? What was the point of hiding his identity behind a pseudonym only to have all these clues later? Motivations?

[@justinspicyrhino3075]

If you were part of the peerage and decided to publish some plays, it would be scandalous!

[@Nullifidian]

@@justinspicyrhino3075 Do you have any evidence of a "scandal" attending the publication of the first quarto of _Gorboduc_ , co-written by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (later created 1st Earl of Dorset by King James), and Sir Thomas Norton? Or the publication of _Anthonie_ , Mary Herbert, the Countess of Pembroke's translation of Robert Garnier's French-language play? Or is it that this idea that it was "scandalous" for members of the peerage to publish plays is just like Lisa Simpson's rock that keeps tigers away? There weren't tigers in Springfield anyway, and the members of the peerage were largely not the class that wrote plays. Moreover, even if this were true, it wouldn't explain why the first two published works with Shakespeare's name on them were _Venus and Adonis_ and _The Rape of Lucrece_ . Poetry was explicitly encouraged as part of the toolkit of the complete courtier in Baldessare Castiglione's _The Book of the Courtier_ , the 1564 English translation of which set the fashion at Elizabeth's court. Elizabeth herself wrote poetry, as did her father, Henry VIII. It also doesn't explain _anything_ about the publication of Shakespeare's plays. First off, the plays were printed anonymously from 1594 through 1597, even though we're meant to believe that the so-called "pseudonym" was already in circulation with the aforementioned two narrative poems. Most early modern plays were printed anonymously. Then, suddenly, in 1598, the author apparently wanted credit but also *DIDN'T* want credit because he caused _Love's Labour's Lost_ , _Richard III_ , and _Richard II_ to be published with the Shakespeare name on them. _Richard III_ and _Richard II_ had already been printed anonymously in quarto, but other anonymous quarto publications wouldn't be credited to Shakespeare until after his death: _Titus Andronicus_ ; _Henry VI, Part 2_ ; Henry VI, Part 3_ ; and even _Romeo and Juliet_ , Moreover, despite the fact that coming up with a pseudonym is tantamount to a declaration of intent to publish, the author didn't see all of his plays through in authoritative quarto publications, but instead waited for half of his oeuvre to be printed for the first time in the First Folio in 1623, while the quarto editions varied wildly in quality and authoritativeness. The scenario that you get when trying to force-fit the secret author hypothesis to the facts is one that wouldn't convince even a small child of - to put it politely - indifferent intelligence.

[@JS-ln4ns]

@@justinspicyrhino3075but publishing the sonnets would not have been scandalous. There is zero reason for this Earl of Oxford to resist being credited as the author of those works.

[@garrymcdougall9481]

see other Oxfordian facts and argument, and your quesions will be answered.

[@GeoffSalt1]

Fascinating! Some more ideas: The triple V in the dedication (6 2 4 lines) also indicates the actual name Edward de Vere (6 2 4 letters). There's also the change from Hamlet 2 to folio version of 'envious sprigge' to 'envious sliver' in Gertrude's speech about Ophelia. 'Nil vero verius' almost!

[@colinthomson5358]

What does changing "sprigge" to "sliver" mean? And "Nil Vero Verius" I'm not sure I get it.

[@newlifenowife3522]

@@colinthomson5358 ..it s a code , man, , you have to crack it !!

[@SiriusDraconis]

De Vere and Francis Bacon were both the secret sons of the queen. They and the Rosicrucian order are responsible for the Shakespearian works.

[@mikegarant5068]

The 3 triangles! That's it!

[@gilgamars]

I was gonna mention 6,2,4 as Edward de Vere.. 😎

[@keepitsimple4629]

My question is: why was Shakespeare put forth as the author, instead of the real author? What was the purpose in that?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Oh, don't go there. You won't believe the can of peyote-laced worms you will open.

[@keepitsimple4629]

@@Jeffhowardmeade If you 'don't go there', you'll never learn squat. You're giving bad advice.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@keepitsimple4629 You'll never learn squat anyway. You'll just get a bunch of increasingly bizarre speculations. As the number of people who identified Shakespeare as the author of his works becomes more apparent, the size of the conspiracy which must have existed to suppress the "truth" grows. Eventually you have a bastard son of a "virgin" queen knocking up his own mother and an immortal being founding the Freemasons, the Rosecrucians, or both, and either or both of them taking time out to write plays. And then hiding the evidence in codes or on Oak Island. A faerie splashing love juice into the wrong eyes seems almost sane by comparison.

[@steffijmusic]

Because women were not allowed to write or be affiliated with the stage. William Shakespeare was a useful idiot and a male.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@keepitsimple4629 How much squat have you ever learned?

[@si29uk]

Given that Edward de Vere died before a number of the plays were written (which we know because they reference events that happened after his demise) and we know where de Vere is buried (Hackney),all of this is utter nonsense.

[@ericloscheider7433]

Oh. Thank god you cleared all of that up

[@Nullifidian]

​@@coolnamebro So you're saying that they baptized and buried a figment of the imagination and then erected a monument to that figment that praised him as a poet by likening him to Virgil, saying that "all that he hath writ | Leaves but living art page to serve his wit", and depicted him holding a pen and with a sheet of paper in the regulation subfusc of a scholar? That a figment of the imagination trod the boards as an actor as testified by multiple early modern sources, including two cast lists in the 1616 folio publication of Ben Jonson's _Works_ ? That this figment was praised for his writing by multiple contemporaries, including some who knew him personally or at least knew detailed information about him?

[@garrymcdougall9481]

We know ?????? No we don't.

[@johnrichardson6296]

A fascinating, brilliant and compelling talk (as always) by Alexander Waugh. One question I have never seen posed or answered, however, is the following: we now know that the Shakespeare grave in the Stratford church is empty (that has been technologically and logistically proven). So: where is old Will Shakspere of Stratford (the putative author of the Shakespeare canon) buried, then? And why does no one ever ask this rather obvious question?! If the alleged 'Shakespeare' (Will Shakspere) is NOT buried in that 'Shakespeare grave' in Stratford, then where IS he buried? (Alexander Waugh makes a persuasive case for Edward de Vere's being buried in Westminster Abbey - but what about that old businessman and theatre owner, William Shakspere?).

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

We don't know that Shakespeare's grave is empty. We know that his gravestone has been cut down from its original size and shored up. Groud-Penetrating Radar is not able to differentiate between a 400 year-old skeleton and the soil it's buried in.

[@mondomacabromajor5731]

In 2016 Ground Penetrating Radar scans were performed, and showed that there is definitely something like a body in the grave - but it has been disturbed in the past and may be missing a head. Folklore has long claimed that in 1794, a doctor robbed Shakespeare’s grave and made off with his head! Shakespeare’s skull had been rumoured to rest in a crypt in a nearby village called Beoley. But when researchers examined that skull they found it belonged to an unknown old woman! Where exactly Shakespeare’s skull might be remains a mystery - if it is Shakespeare's skull and body at all, as it is unknown who wrote his epitaph in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon, which claims the grave has a curse upon it. The epitaph reads, “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebeare/ To digg the dust enclosed heare/ Bleste be the man that spares thes stones, / And curst be he that moves my bones.” Sounds more like a silly Pirates curse than quality 'Shakespeare' !! Two more curious facts have bothered researches for hundreds of years: 1/ No name: Of the family members buried side by side, the supposed William Shakespeare’s ledger stone is the only one that never carried a name. 2/ Short grave: The stone itself is too short for a grave. At less than a meter in length, Shakespeare's ledger stone is shorter than the others, including that of his wife, Anne Hathaway. Was he buried standing up? Shakespeare’s mysteriously short ledger stone also corresponds to a repair that has been made underneath the stone floor to support it. Experts suggest that this is due to disturbance at the head end of the grave which has caused significantly more subsidence than elsewhere. Maybe those who cut the ledger stone down from its original size and shored up the form, also wrote the inscription in an attempt to 'suggest' the Stratford man was the London Playwright ... in the same way someone refashioned the Shakespeare monument from holding a sack of grain to writing on parchment, at some point in the past - maybe at the same time... We can see that modern Stratford-upon-Avon has been very commercially successful with the Shakespeare link - as loose as it is!!

[@tracesprite6078]

No one tries to prove that Lord Byron was a fake because he was an aristocrat, but when a man from a small town proves to be a genius, people react against the idea.

[@johnwatts8346]

im skeptical / not entirely convinced thats the reasoning. byron lived 200yrs later and theres just vastly more that we know about him, there just isnt all that much truly known about shakespeare. i have no idea if he was a fake or not,

[@SklLLLY]

I’ve never understood the “elitist” argument… like anyone nowadays would possibly care about the author’s social status

[@tracesprite6078]

@@johnwatts8346 "THE DIARY OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, GENTLEMAN by Jackie French is part comedy, part love story, the threads of Shakespeare's life drawn from his plays. Could the world's greatest writer truly put down his pen forever to become a gentleman? He was a boy who escaped small town life to be the most acclaimed playwright of the land. A lover whose sonnets still sing 400 years later; a glover's apprentice who became a gentleman. But was he happy with his new riches? Who was the woman he truly loved? The world knows the name of William Shakespeare. This book reveals the man - lover, son and poet. Based on new documentary evidence, as well as textual examination of his plays, this fascinating book gives a tantalising glimpse at what might have been: the other hands that helped craft those plays, the secrets that must ever be hidden but - just possibly - may now be told." This is a book for teenagers but I'm looking forward to reading it even though I'm much older than that. www.goodreads.com/book/show/28933760-the-diary-of-william-shakespeare-gentleman

[@tracesprite6078]

@@SklLLLY It's the elitist argument that is used to suggest that a man who wasn't an aristocrat and was from a small town couldn't possibly write such sophisticated poetry and plays.

[@SklLLLY]

@@tracesprite6078 right..

[@30piecesofsilver64]

"poor fellow, for he is mad; quite mad." and, as an interesting little project, please tell me who authored the lines quoted and provide the evidence for your assumption.

[@martas9283]

genius and madness are the best of bedfellows..

[@gayealtier6201]

Since I started studying literature years ago, The "Shakespeare" always sounded and hinted a " shake-s- peare" to me . There are many reliable resources to this subj. Also this is one of the best digging research .

[@SiriusDraconis]

Thats because it is. For Gods Will I Am the goddess Pallas Athena the spear shaker. or Or By the will of (God (i am) ) Shakespear (Ophiuchus) the Center of it all.

[@ishmaelforester9825]

Shakespeare is an old English Midlands name. He came out of such a family. There is no ridiculous cryptogram or puzzle in his name. The Shakespeare's were a lineage in and around Stratford-upon-Avon. William obviously the most successful and famous.

[@nippernappertton]

the name of the stratford man appears as Shakspere, so there you have it

[@Bigwave2003]

"Churchill" always sounded and hinted a "Church-on-a-hill" to me.

[@thoutube9522]

You are very good at talking nonsense. There must be a PhD in this for you.

[@dogvom]

I'm surprised you didn't mention that there are 6 letters in Edward, 2 letters in De, and 4 letters in Vere. I also included an Oxford comma in the above sentence. In the end, it really doesn't matter who wrote the plays and poems. What matters is that they were written, and that we have them.

[@robertn800]

No 🚫 History & Truth demand that Genius is recognized by knowing who wrote Shakespeare -not a straw man or a ghost 👻

[@timothyharris4708]

@@robertn800 History & Truth say that a man named William Shakespeare wrote them. If you have evidence to the contrary, provide it.

[@menschkeit1]

this would be true with a lesser author but unfortunately in this case, if you get Shakespeare wrong you get the plays wrong

[@kookysis2741]

@@timothyharris4708 History has been whitewashed. Mr "shakespeare" said ALL the world is a stage and all men and women are merely players. His plays have been written by a black woman named Emilia Bassano. Imagine 24 years from now Michael Jackson's music was stolen by some man who dresses "like" michael and stole all his credit. Would you say that doesn't matter or does the TRUTH that it was stolen and not original matter?

[@timothyharris4708]

@@kookysis2741 I suggest, Sis, that you indulge in your Kookery in private.

[@IR240474]

Cracking the Shakespeare code. A 3 part video. A must view, remarkable.

[@TreasureByMeasure]

So right! How could anyone deny the evidence. It's RIGHT THERE!

[@frankjohansen9364]

Yes,the three parts documentary about the research of the norwegian organist Petter Amundsen,that is a must see for all that have a suspiction that Shakespeare did not write the works that has his name on.He most likely was illiterate,he did not travel a lot, and there is much wisdom and knowledge in them ,so it is must unlikely that he could have written the works with his name on.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@TreasureByMeasure When you're the one providing the decrypt key, you can rearrange any text to say whatever you like. In the case of a guy whose name contains the same letters found in popular poetic words like "every", "ever", "never", "venerate", "revere", etc, it's kind of hard NOT to find his name "hidden"...er...everywhere.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@frankjohansen9364 There's no evidence that he was illiterate, and much that he was not, there is no knowledge in the works which could not be found in popular books of the day, and wisdom is not the purview of the rich. Nearly every great writer in every age comes from the same class that created Shakespeare. The Middle Class.

[@brooke1496]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Hey Coriolanus, the commenters here are talking about Sir Francis Bacon, watch the documentary they refer to before you debunk them with mere bogus dribbles about silly Devere.

[@we4r119]

Is there any similarity between the handwriting attributed to Shakespeare and De Vere?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

None whatsoever. The dialect was also different. De Vere's letters and his poetry make it clear that he spoke in an East Anglian dialect which was common for aristocrats. Oxford rhymes “was” with “case” and “face” with “glass”. Shakespeare rhymed 'face' with 'place'. Oxford rhymes “shows” with “lose”. Shakespeare rhymes it with 'rose'. Oxford rhymes “grief” with “strife”. Shakespeare rhymes 'grief' with 'chief and 'strife' with 'wife'. Unless he had dual personalities, De Vere did not write the works of Shakespeare.

[@garrymcdougall9481]

No. Shakespeare could barely write his name.

[@jimmygills]

“We’ll probably get over 1000 views online…” 134,000+ July 2022

[@bokhans]

I guess his estimate of 1000 viewers on internet was a bit pessimistic, it’s more than 27000 now. Internet is fantastic.

[@timothyharris4708]

It isn't when you see most of the comments.

[@rodjones117]

"If we assume that he [Shakespeare] didn't, who did?" First, if you want to be taken even vaguely seriously, you have to explain why you would assume such a thing. What is your evidence?

[@rodjones117]

@@ThomasRonnberg All the world's a stage, actually, but how is that relevant here?

[@rodjones117]

@@ThomasRonnberg "why should Shakespeare be the original writer?" It is actually for you to prove why he was not the author. It is not good enough - not by a long chalk - to say as the man in the video does "if we assume he was not the writer". This video is just Dan Brown stuff to be honest.

[@rodjones117]

@@mithras666 It's all Da Vinci Code stuff.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@mithras666 Cracking the Shakespeare Code starts off with a fundamental error about typography, and goes downhill from there.

[@johnneville403]

@@ThomasRonnberg Because lots of people referered to him while he was alive as a very successful playwright?

[@hieropontus]

6 2 4 are also the number of letters in the Earl of Oxford's name. Edward = 6 de = 2 Vere = 4

[@dormansroland8580]

Indeed. Furthermore : Earl of Oxford (4, 2 and 6 letters) !

[@colinallan1962]

He signed himself Edward Oxenford. If you are going to say the word Oxford is important that applies to the 16th 17th 18th. It's a family name.

[@nell6913]

How is it that the date 1609 is on the sonnets, but gives a map of where to find de Vere in Westminster if he wasn't moved there until 1619? It would seem if the map theory is correct, then he was moved there before 1609.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

And yet his second wife, Elizabeth Trentham, died in 1612 and asked to be buried next to him in the Hackney churchyard.

[@abcde_fz]

I'm retracting this comment. (But I leave it posted to leave the thread intact). After having researched more of the subject I have to admit I was wrong. The weight of evidence of Early Modern encryption as a widespread and continuing practice cannot be denied. My written conclusion was quite simply incorrect. 15:35 "Not the case! It's nothing to do with what I believe this [sic], this is what the people who made this code believe." SOLID confirmation bias!!! YOU are telling US what THEY believed, without providing much confirmation from EXTERNAL sources. YOU are finding what YOU think THEY believed in YOUR interpretation. CIRCULAR LOGIC DOESN'T FLY.

[@Nullifidian]

It's heartening to read the comments from people like you who see through this drivel. You've put your finger on the nub of the problem. Waugh doesn't demonstrate that his 'codes' actually existed in the imagination of any early modern person. He supplies all the context for his 'decryption' himself and he gets the result that it's Edward de Vere not because it's apparent in the documents, but because that's the conclusion he started with. Nor does he tackle the technical problem that these elaborate 'codes' couldn't have survived for 30 seconds in the early modern print shop where the compositors decided on the spelling of words and set the layout themselves. It's just apophenia from beginning to end.

[@abcde_fz]

@@Nullifidian I wish I could figure out why I was YELLING so much... 🙂

[@MrAbzu]

The great Waugh. How did he miss a gigantic roadblock in 1611, Queen Anne's World of Words. Several hundred words which are in the First Folio did not enter the English lexicon until the publication of this book. While there were many versions of the plays, none were well enough written to make it into the First Folio without revising and editing to make them more readable as a book. Remember, "Shakespeare" was a linguist, the editor and revisor was also a linguist, John Florio, who gave us the voice of "Shakespeare". No doubt a hundred people had a hand in multiple revisions including Oxford, Bacon, Sidney and North before the final revisions. So no, there was no single genius author but there was a single genius editor. A work of this magnitude could only have been a collaborative effort with a genius touch at the end to provide a unifying voice.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

World of Words is a translation dictionary. Only an idiot would take a word nobody understands and translate it to a word he just made up.

[@joecurran2811]

​@Jeffhowardmeade Everytime you comment you boost the algorithm.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@joecurran2811 Good! More idiots for me to heckle!

[@joecurran2811]

​@@JeffhowardmeadeGood for you to admit to everyone you are a troll

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@joecurran2811 And so what? I’m still a troll with logic and evidence on his side, where you’re still a moron no matter what you will admit to.

[@dakrontu]

I find it hard to believe that a group of scholars of Shakespeare's time could have succeeded in concocting such an elaborate encoding of information. It would be extremely difficult to find a suitable sequence of words that, grouped in rows of 19 letters, do what is required. And assuming they did so, they would be committing the information to obscurity, with little hope of anyone ever figuring it out. After all, it has taken 4 centuries so far.

[@anesu846]

The bible was way more impressive than this and written many years before these codes

[@dakrontu]

@@anesu846 The bible is more impressive in what way?

[@anesu846]

@@dakrontu in terms of codes

[@dakrontu]

@@anesu846 Codes in the bible? Like what? (Bear in mind that the KJV bible is not in the same language used by the original authors.)

[@anesu846]

@@dakrontu yeah ofcourse. The original Greek text. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head but look it up. It's insane

[@jimihendrix3143]

If I ever have the time and inclination, I'd like to put together a similar theory proving that Bob Dylan was Shakespeare.

[@jimihendrix3143]

Now I come to think of it, he mentions Shakespeare in "Desolation Row". Just a coincidence? We all know what "desolation" means. Barreness, emptiness, something with no value or content. Is he saying that Shakspurr's claim to the "rows", or lines of text is a barren and empty one? Something to think about.

[@thomas-lo8pl]

You'd also have a chance at proving The Bard was Bob.

[@sislertx]

Shouldnt be hard to do using his method

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

Ironic, as "Bob Dylan" was not Bob Dylan. But while It's easy to prove that Bob Dylan was really Robert Zimmerman but it is still impossible to prove that William Shake-speare of London was Will Shasper of Stratford.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 Balls.

[@Meine.Postma]

I happen to think there were multiple authors, so Edward De Vere is one of them. The order of the Rosicrucians, a proto-free mason movement in the time of Bacon probably published the first complete works of Shakespeare. That book also contains lots of encryptions. See also Cracking the Shakespeare code: kzbin.info/www/bejne/haGpiXdmbMSBj8k

[@AAMARTCLUB]

Devere’s poetry seems way beneath the quality of Shakespearean sonnets.

[@timothyharris4708]

Well, come on, tell us who these multiple authors were. I wonder if you have bothered to read Shakespeare's complete works, or any of them at all. Perhaps you could provide a list of those you have read. And could you provide evidence for your assertion that the order of Rosicrucians (probably) published the first complete works of Shakespeare, and explain why they would want to do so?

[@Meine.Postma]

@@timothyharris4708 Ha ha, I guess you've not read the complete works

[@timothyharris4708]

@@Meine.Postma Yes, I have. I have taught Shakespeare at university, and I have directed, and I have acted in many Shakespeare plays. I notice that you cravenly refrain from answering the questions I posed to you, preferring an easy and foolish quip.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@AAMARTCLUB It is.

[@DavidBensonActor]

Fascinating and engagingly, unpretentiously presented - as much as anything, it is a celebration of the thrills of doing your own research and making your own discoveries. I imagine anyone with a closed mind on the authorship question will find this easy to dismiss as it requires concentration and a willingness to follow the threads of Waugh's argument; much easier to dismiss with a sneer. However, I am left wanting to know more much more about John Dee and his powers of encryption and to look for clues of my own.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Good luck finding out about Dee's "powers of encryption". He wrote and published extensively. Guess what he never wrote about.

[@timothyharris4708]

Ah, a 'closed mind' on the authorship question - someone has quickly learned to use the stale strategy, used regularly by 'Marlovians', 'Baconians' & 'Oxfordians', to insinuate without addressing any arguments or evidence that anyone who disagrees them has presented. '(C)oncentration and a willingness to follow the threads of Waugh's arguments' - Waugh's arguments are threadbare, as you would find if you bothered to concentrate on them and knew anything about the matter at all. Ignorance and folly provide a strange kind of bliss.

[@DavidBensonActor]

@@timothyharris4708 Everything you say of me in this unpleasant and patronising comment is true of yourself. I note that in over a decade of YT membership you have uploaded no content, suggesting you are here merely to 'troll' others.

[@timothyharris4708]

​@@DavidBensonActor Alas, it is not true of myself, however much you would like it to be. I am not a 'member' of KZbin, so this YT membership you speak of refers to you, I suppose. Perhaps you 'upload' content of a kind - I am afraid that, having seen the content & nature of the only two comments of yours I have come across, I have no desire to waste my time on what you upload, which is doubtless as silly and ignorant as your comments. As for being 'unpleasant and patronising', I suggest you look at your first dishonest and hackneyed comment ('hackneyed' since it is the kind of thing trotted out by Waugh himself and every ignorant follower of his as a substitute for argument), where you assert that anybody who disagrees with Waugh lacks the 'concentration' and 'willingness' to 'follow the threads of Waugh's arguments', preferring to dismiss them with a 'sneer'. This is of course wholly untrue. Waugh's claims have been shown to be false, for there is a large amount of evidence that disproves them. I suggest that instead of whoring after the latest conspiracies and charlatans like Waugh, you acquaint yourself with the arguments of people who actually know something about the matter. It will not require much effort on your part, though perhaps rather more effort than is required for falling for the blandishments of a man like Waugh.

[@DavidBensonActor]

@@timothyharris4708 And a Merry Christmas to you too

[@holly.alexandria]

This is fascinating

[@SiriusDraconis]

This is only the tip of the spear. It's much more interesting the further you dig. Shakespeare is not about literature, it's about the history of the human race and the hiding of secret religious artifacts.

[@devogrant2817]

@@SiriusDraconis Yep!! it's about druids, Jesuit, templars, Phoenicians,freemasons, old-world buildings, architect. mud floods ,resets, maritime law .....and keeping the common people under the yoke !!!

[@johnneville403]

@@SiriusDraconis The authorship of Shakespeare's plays is part of a much wider, arcane conspiracy? Well, colour me surprised.

[@billythedog-309]

Whenever somebody claims that a made up mystery can be solved by the proper reading of a complicated code you can bet that the answer is a deliberate fake or the one who solves it is sorely deluded.

[@AwareLife]

So there in never ever such a thing as mystery or complicated codes it seems. Hardly. Especially when if you are found out you would be severly socially demeaned or even imprisoned. Want to read a few books about codes and secrecy in history? You are holdiig to a very shallow delusion about use of codes in history I'm afraid. Your confidence is ill warranted.

[@billythedog-309]

@@AwareLife l really ought to pay attention to people who know the real facts, but can't be bothered to learn how to spell, yet somehow l just can't bring myself to do it.

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

What is a "made up mystery"? Can you give some examples? And some examples of how complicated code was suggested to solve any of those examples...

[@timothyharris4708]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 Mysteries like those you fall for.

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

"Never Before Imprinted" is an anagram for "Be In Print For M. E. De Vere" M.E. = Mister E = Mystery Mystery De Vere. It's also an anagram for "M. Vere - Poet, Friend: B.I" B.I. is Ben Jonson. IGNORE ALL CODES! Codes would only be present if the Works were really by Edward de Vere. All those codes and anagrams are a COINCIDENCE! Conspiracy Theory v. Coincidence Theory. It's all a big COINCIDENCE! Thats you.

[@raymondpiper8294]

There is plenty of documentation showing Shakespeare owned property in stratford and also london . He was not a fictional or supposed personage , as this all implies . Whether or not he directly penned all his works attributed to him is another subject .

[@anthonyryan998]

I didn't get the impression that the man Shakespeare was a fiction, just that (the belief presented here) is that he wasn't the playwright. The evidence is strong that someone -- Dee most likely apparently -- believed de Vere was the actual playwright. Why would he go to so much trouble if it wasn't true though? That doesn't make it true of course... Much food for thought.

[@ishmaelforester9825]

He almost certainly did mate. Nobody who really knows what they are talking about can justify any other attribution. It was William Shakespeare, son of a glovemaker, actor, and the most brilliant writer for the the English renaissance stage. But he became really famous and it was a long time ago so conspiracy mid-wits prattle.

[@gilgamars]

@@ishmaelforester9825 read!!! A simple examination of the evidence would suggest that a glove makers son with an illiterate daughter was not the playwright!

[@Nullifidian]

@@gilgamars So what documentary evidence do you have that shows anyone else wrote Shakespeare's plays?

[@caststagemysteries]

Who was John Dee's character in the plays?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

Nobody. John Dee wasn't in the plays.

[@davidstott1721]

Paul said "But by the grace of God I am what I am", not I am that I am. In the context of the scriptures there was nothing wrong with what he wrote.

[@bouncycastle955]

It's been shown time and time again, that if you're motivated to find something in a source, you can always find it. People did this with works like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and even Sesame Street in response to people doing exactly the same nonsense with the Bible Code. Give it up.

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

A tremendous number of motivated people have looked for Stratford-related ciphers in the same material but have come up with nothing. Were they simply not motivated enough? What was discovered hiding in Harry Potter...just wondering...

[@bouncycastle955]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 the fact that you think the Stratford people don't put forward a similar case is very telling. Time to hit google, my friend.

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

@@bouncycastle955 Google comes up with nothing except Baconian ciphers. So what is you being wrong about "the fact" very telling of? And no we are not friends, but maybe we can be intellectual equals if you can come up with a better response that is based on truth.

[@bouncycastle955]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 my grandma can't figure out facebook but even she doesn't have trouble performing a google search. We aren't going to be intellectual equals until you get that one down, chum.

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

@@bouncycastle955 Have YOU actually googled Shakespeare+cipher?

[@akranier]

Sorry, but this is not convincing at all. He simply twists and turns the text until it comes out what he wants. Example Oxford. Tauros means bull and not ox. He simply says that the tauros means ox and then puts it for the "ford", et voilà he has Oxford. In this way I can also work out from a Dutch ladies' bicycle that Edward De Vere wrote the poems.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

And Tau has no connection whatsoever with Taurus.

[@Zettel9016]

Based on the ancient Greek and presumably Latin words for bull, the variant with OS was apparently chosen for the superficial resemblance to the Duch word os (ox), as in oeros (aurochs).

[@souloftheage]

Trust me when I say "There are much much better channels on Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford." I watched 30min and though it wasted.

[@werels8895]

"One, two, three, but where is the fourth?" -Socrates, Timaeus

[@JanetteHeffernan]

Very clever interpretation but In the end without physical evidence we shall never know. Personally I think the works are in such different styles that many people had a part in producing the text to these plays and the works are compilations under a single name but they are so wonderful that who cares. Ghost writers are always with us.

[@Nullifidian]

But they're aren't "in such different styles" in a way that's meaningful for authorship. Stylistically, there's a consistent voice, even in the co-authored works, which are a minority of Shakespeare's total output. The stylometric signature is consistent within the canonical plays of Shakespeare and inconsistent with every other early modern author who left verse or dramatic writing to compare it to. These tests measure things like the frequency of feminine endings, the frequency of contractions, the frequency of end-stopped lines, etc. that are unlikely things for authors to pay conscious attention to. The plays are stylistically different in terms of subject matter and genre, but that doesn't mean anything with respect to authorship, because playwrights typically wrote across several genres in the early modern era: comedies, tragedies, tragicomedies, and histories, plus sub-categories within these like city comedy or revenge tragedy. For example, after John Ford transitioned to writing solo-authored plays in the mid-1620s, he turned out tragedies ( _'Tis Pity She's a Whore_ - his most famous work - _The Broken Heart_ , and _Love's Sacrifice_ ), tragicomedies ( _The Queen_ and _The Lover's Melancholy_ ), comedies ( _The Fancies Chaste and Noble_ and _The Lady's Trial_ ), and one history play, _Perkin Warbeck_ , which T. S. Eliot thought ranked with Shakespeare's great histories.

[@afhickman]

I just read a book that says if Shakespeare had written about anything, he'd have written about gloves. Which explains why Ben Jonson only wrote about bricks and Christopher Marlowe only wrote about shoes.

[@Nullifidian]

Not to mention that allusions to the gloves and the glovers' trade are frequently encountered in the plays. In _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ , Falstaff's beard is likened to "a glover's paring-knife", in _Twelfth Night_ Feste says of Viola's banter with him that "[a] sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit", etc.

[@veronica_._._._]

This is 50% fraternal societies faking a their backstory, and 50% intense disdain for commoners.

[@kathydent2116]

Shakespeare did write about gloves. Or, rather, about the leather used in glovemaking. He also used many Warwickshire dialect words in his work. This is not something that the Oxfordians want to discuss.

[@T0varisch]

@@kathydent2116 no mention of Stratford, no school attended, no mention by a single person in Stratford of this greatest of poets. Most damning, John Hall, friend of Drayton who's huge chunk of marble in the South Transept just happens to be staring down at De Vere's grave, never mentions anything about his father in law. I've heard Oxfordians talk about De Vere's references to leather working, I'll find you the video if you want.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@T0varisch No, thank you.

[@rhys3350]

I'm a descendant of the De Vere family, there are a lot of other descendants of the family currently living in Australia.

[@timothyharris4708]

I hope they stay there.

[@alanoffer]

Whether you believe this or not it’s a fascinating idea ,,I’m hooked at the first few minutes ,

[@timothyharris4708]

So long as you are not hooked in...

[@edoregan100]

How did De Vere come to know so much about leather-working- Stratford Will's father was a glover- and Warwickshire flora?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 I'll take "Things For Which There Is No Evidence for 100, Alex." No evidence he has the free run of anything, not that Gerarde mentioned any of the peculiar midlands names for flowers Shakespeare used. De Vere was persona non grata at Cecil House after murdering a servant and then accusing Cecil's daughter of cuckolding him, knocking up one of the Queen's ladies, and generally being an all-around shit. Gerarde, who was also one of Cecil's servants, would more likely have dedicated some hemlock or dodgy mushrooms to De Vere.

[@vetstadiumastroturf5756]

@@Jeffhowardmeade Yes there is evidence you dense maroon. HE LIVED THERE! No wonder the PD fired you.

[@joecurran2811]

There are two lines mentioning gloves in the whole of Shakespeare's plays

[@joecurran2811]

​@@JeffhowardmeadeYou do realise none of those character attacks on Edward De Vere mean he didn't write the plays don't you? Ever heard of Lord Byron?

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

​@@vetstadiumastroturf5756 Evidence of what? Gerarde's Herball was a verbatim copy of Rembert Dodoens' 1554 Cruijdeboeck. There is no mention of any plant in the book being in Cecil's garden. Not that Gerarde was working for Cecil before De Vere was given the boot. Gerarde was a Barber surgeon. His first known association with Cecil was the year Anne Cecil died. As usual, you're confusing nuggets of shit for pearls.

[@DingbatToast]

What is easy when compared to why. Why anyone would go to these lengths to hide the name of a playwright. The Why would need to be as crucial as the code is cryptic otherwise you are still left asking why?

[@Nullifidian]

The why becomes easier when you look at it from the other direction. Waugh knows he has no documentary evidence for de Vere's authorship, so he has to go on extended hallucinations about codes to generate something, anything, to serve in place of the evidence he doesn't have.

[@DingbatToast]

@@Nullifidian Agreed, though the "why" I was referring to was why people at the time would've created such a complex code to hide the name of the playwright unless being discovered meant something quite catastrophic to justify the complexity of the code created

[@factandsuspicionpodcast2727]

My guy probably thought the Da Vinci Code was a documentary.

[@livescript4462]

When the Beatles wrote number 9 do you think they were talking about Jesus christ?

[@jimihendrix3143]

Yes

[@shirleykathan-sayess5764]

We were assigned to write a paper on Shakespeare when I was a senior in high school (1966). I told my teacher that I didn’t think Shakespeare was the author of the plays and poetry and requested to write that instead. My teacher asked if I thought it was Bacon and I said no, I thought it was de Vere. He let me write it. I wish he could have seen this!

[@martas9283]

That makes me super curious about your 1966 essay! What made your case for De Vere back then, his education? Travels in Italy? Poetry? At school (in the '70s) I always thought Mr. Shakespeare would have needed a lot of help. I put it down to the upper-class patrons he might have consulted, but hearing various arguments in Oxford's favour, plus Alexander Waugh's brilliant cipher- based evidence, I am now convinced De Vere fits the Shake-speare profile better than any writer of his time

[@willrich3908]

didn't De Vere die in 1604?

[@martas9283]

@@willrich3908 Yes he did, which begs the question, who else had a go? Someone at least equally skilled and educated. But it makes sense to me to think of the Shakespeare output in the context of a Theater Company, with De Vere (et al.) as the playwright(s) and William as the actor / director/ pr & marketing man

[@tonebonetones]

Of course you did, Shirley. Of course you did.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@martas9283 It makes no sense at all.

[@GreenMorningDragonProductions]

I think if Shakespeare was proved to be a fake/cypher/composite England would have an existential crisis.

[@paullappin106]

At 39:50 he shows Greens work and i need to be honest i never looked much into it when i first seen this example, but perhaps its just an effect from the presentation but there is no way any of those triangles are right angles. Not even close. Ill probably go check for myself now Damn! so addictive sometimes.

[@arthurneuendorffer4914]

paul lappin wrote: At 39:50 he shows Greens work and... there is no way any of those triangles are right angles. Not even close. ------------------------------------------------- This distorted video also produces an ellipse (not a circle): kzbin.info/www/bejne/jnjRZ5iAoLafn8k One must go to the undistorted Alan Green source: tinyurl.com/yydnzwbn Alan Green's cyan right triangle marked by {(e-1), sqrt(3), G(dot)} is a 30º/60º/90º triangle with 'almost' the orientation of the 30º/60º/90º triangle pointing to the Westminster burial site. If Shaksper's merry drinking buddies: Drayton & Jonson are substituted for: Chaucer & Spenser as the hypotenuse a smaller self similar 30º/60º/90º triangle points to an end of the tiled section where something else may be easily buried (Beaumont?). The smaller triangle is reduced in size by a factor of [1+sqrt(3)] ~ "e" : probably the exact length ratio of Alan Green's adjacent "blue" right triangle designated "e". In England in the 18th & 19th centuries Saint BLAISE was adopted as mascot of woolworkers' pageants. Blaise had brought prosperity (symbolised by the WOOLSACK*) to England by teaching the English to *COMB wool. ------------------------------------------------------------ The Stratford church ALTAR [ www.tobeornottobe.org/ ] forms a 30º/60º/90º triangle with Mr. WOOLSACK & *Mr. COMBE*: www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol3/pp269-282 www.northernvicar.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/february-c-214.jpg

[@seanodonovan5451]

Hi Paul. I've gone through Greens work myself and it's worth your consideration. Yes, these triangles do not appear to be right angled triangles in this presentation but this is due to the screen proportions distorting the image. I've also watched all of your uploads (highly recommended) so I know you are thorough in your own research. Greens work is fascinating, incredibly detailed, mind boggling, thought provoking and potentially groundbreaking. Be skeptical but not dismissive. Thank you for all your great research

[@paullappin106]

@@seanodonovan5451 first thing I did was go and check the source after I posted, had to be the presentation distorting the view. I probably should of came back and edited my post but I forgot. Sorry

[@patricktilton5377]

I've been fascinated for some time, now, by the findings of both Alan Green and Alexander Waugh, which complement each other, and it's nice to see Mr. Waugh give credit to Mr. Green -- and to John Rollett, for his "6-2-4" insight, which jump-started this decryption, one might say -- for his discovery of the hidden circle geometry on the Title page. Why "Brian's Bookshelves" has a problem with the letter "T" being a symbol for "God" is beyond me. I may not believe in the existence of God, but from my study of the Bible, including the languages in which Judaeo-Christian scripture was written -- Hebrew and Greek -- the very word (in Greek) translated "God" is Theos, spelled Theta-Epsilon-Omicron-Sigma; and, after the English language ceased using the archaic letter Thorn regularly, that meant that the single letter Theta was transliterated with the two English [i.e. Latin alphabetic] letters T and H . . . and perhaps Mr. Waugh might add this buttressing fact to his Triple Tau christogram, which also looks like a 'T' atop an 'H'. And when Jesus refers to himself as the Alpha and Omega, that's like saying -- in Hebrew -- that he's the Aleph and the Taw, Taw being equivalent to the Greek letter Tau; it would be like saying he's the "A" and the "Z" if using the English alphabet, the First and the Last. It makes perfect sense, and if "BB" can't see that, he's willfully blind. Waugh's presentation here -- as are his other KZbin videos -- is absolutely brilliant: it took a bit of latter day genius to rediscover the work of genius that John Dee (et al.) put into these two pages [Title and dedication] of SHAKESPEARES SONNETS. I became a Non-Stratfordian after reading the first part of Charlton Ogburn's THE MYSTERIOUS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, and I became an Oxfordian by the time I finished it: the brilliant work that Rollett, Waugh, and Green have done towards decrypting these two enigmatic pages has only proved to be the icing on the cake . . . the cherry on the top of the chocolate shake. How any thinking person can remain a Stratfordian after having the Big Secret decoded so magnificently . . . well, I just have to pity them. Every great mystery has a Red Herring in it, to throw you off-the-scent. The Red Herring of this mystery of mysteries was a chap named William Shakspere, and he's served his purpose. But the mystery's been solved. The true author of the immortal poems and plays was Edward de Vere, XVIIth Earl of Oxford. And now we all know where he's buried, thanks to Mr. Waugh. VERO NIHIL VERIUS indeed!

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

The fact that you had to jump through so many mental hoops to reach that conclusion is prima facie evidence that it's a bunch of made-up malarkey. If the letter T were somehow a symbol for God, there would be a documented history of this being the case, don't you think?

[@timothyharris4708]

Have you ever read de Vere's insipid verse & insipid prose (or read about his equally insipid life) and compared it to what Shakespeare does? No, you haven't. What appalls me is the appeal to ignorant and thoughtless people of the pitiful abstractions and fake 'discoveries' of someone like Waugh. Those who believe that Marlowe faked his death and wrote all of Shakespeare's plays are another example. I love Marlowe's work, and think him a great writer, but his sensibility and manner of writing are radically different from Shakespeare's. The supporters of Marlowe as Shakespeare seem wholly unable to comprehend how Marlowe's manner of writing both verse and plays differs from Shakespeare's. Waugh is descended from a family of unpleasant snobs, and he is continuing the tradition. Nobody supposes that because Dickens spent part of his childhood working in a blacking factory he was not the 'real' writer of his novels, or because Mark Twain finished his formal education at the age of twelve that somebody else must have written 'Huckleberry Finn'. But snobbish little men like Waugh spend their time wasting their own & others' time appealing to the pathetic snobbery of the ignorant and insensitive, and the fact that they no doubt receive fat fees for the rubbish that they propagate infuriates me. .

[@patricktilton5377]

@@timothyharris4708 I've said it before and I'll say it here again. Before 1920, when the first book suggesting that Edward de Vere was 'Shakespeare' was published, the few people who had ever read Oxford's extant poetry -- his juvenilia -- had generally only good things to say about his poetic talents. It wasn't until AFTER he was suggested to have gone on to write the 'Shakespeare' works under a pseudonym/allonym, that Stratfordians began to denigrate Oxford's juvenilia -- poems he wrote when he was a kid, just getting his feet wet in the art of versifying. Secondly: Waugh's discoveries are not 'fake'. They're THERE, for anyone to see who has eyes to see. Thirdly, it's interesting that you cite 'Mark Twain' -- a man whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a man who ridiculed the notion that William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the 'Shakespeare' works. At the time he died, the 'candidate' for Shakespeare's laurels whom most Non-Stratfordians gravitated to was Sir Francis Bacon; whether Twain would have shifted his allegiance to Edward de Vere -- had he lived another 10+ years and had the opportunity to read "SHAKESPEARE IDENTIFIED" (1920) -- is something we'll never know. Maybe he would have remained a Baconian. Maybe he would have become an Oxfordian. But he died believing that Shakspere of Stratford was not and could never have been the author of HAMLET. The accusations of 'snobbery' by you Stratfordian hacks is utterly abominable. The fact is that 'Shakespeare' was as great as he was because he was LUCKY, because he -- being born to privilege -- had access to an education that only the wealthiest people in England could provide for their children. A commoner like Ben Jonson, true, could acquire a great education, when granted the patronage of another -- but even he could not have had access to the best libraries of that day. There were no public libraries back then where anybody from any rank of society could go to peruse any and every book to their heart's content. When Edward's father died, he -- aged only 12 -- became a Ward of the Crown, living until his majority in the household of William Cecil, the most powerful man in England as well as the possessor of the greatest personal library in England. One of the tutors Cecil provided for his Ward was Laurence Nowell, an expert in Anglo-Saxon language and literature -- the very man who acquired the manuscript containing the only extant text of BEOWULF. Scholars have puzzled over the strange fact that Hamlet's dying words to Horatio bear an uncanny resemblance to Beowulf's dying words to Wiglaf . . . but it makes perfect sense for Edward de Vere, in a play written about a Danish Prince, to make use of BEOWULF as a source, going above and beyond the extant versions of the Hamlet/Amlodhi myth from Belleforest and Saxo Grammaticus. Oxford was UNIQUELY positioned to have an awareness of the contents of BEOWULF, given that his tutor (who was in possession of the manuscript) was able to translate it for him. Nobody else -- from Bacon to Marlowe to Kyd to Lyly to Jonson to Shakspere of Stratford, NOBODY ELSE -- was in such a position to become familiar with such an obscure source. Nobody but the privileged nobleman's son, raised as a Ward with access to all the books he could ever dream of having to pursue bookish interests. It's not 'snobbery' to recognize that the wealthy and privileged were born with advantages they didn't earn, yet nevertheless enjoyed through the accident of their aristocratic birth. Kudos to any enterprising person who accomplishes great things WITHOUT enjoying access to the best possible education society might have to offer. But let us -- if we're not mentally deranged -- admit that even in the ranks of the aristocracy there are those who occasionally pursue a passion that makes them "lose caste" among their own peers. Edward de Vere became not only the hidden author of the greatest dramas ever written in English, but he was also the principal patron of a school of poet-dramatists -- i.e. he was 'slumming it' with fellow poets devoted to the dramatic arts. The Queen herself thwarted his earlier aspirations of seeking military glory -- as his cousins Horace and Francis (the Fighting Veres) did -- because she cherished his gifts as a poet, she being a connoisseur of poetry and one who delighted in Plays. De Vere was allowed to achieve greatness as a writer, a poet-dramatist . . . a pursuit that his status as the premier Earl of England prevented him from receiving public acknowledgement for it. The 'rules' of the game demanded that he publish his works either ANONYMOUSLY (as the first 5 plays were), or PSEUDONYMOUSLY and/or ALLONYMOUSLY. Thus, he invented the name "William Shakespeare" and published the polished poem VENUS AND ADONIS in 1583 as "the first heir of my invention" -- i.e. the first work published using that invented name. And the rest is history.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@patricktilton5377 Yes no doubt you have said it before, and no doubt you have said it again. 'And the rest is history,' you write triumphantly at the end of your screed. It is not. Yes, I am well aware of Mark Twain's ideas about who wrote certain plays. But I was not discussing that, or interested in discussing that. The point is the snobbery (I mean it) of people who suppose that people born into relatively humble circumstances are unlikely to produce good or great work. The final words that Beowulf speaks are these: 'Þú eart endeláf ússes cynnes Waégmundinga ealle wyrd forswéop míne mágas tó metodsceafte eorlas on elne· ic him æfter sceal.' Hamlet's final words are as follows: O, I die, Horatio. The potent poison quite o’ercrows my spirit. I cannot live to hear the news from England, But I do prophesy th’election lights On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, Which have solicited-the rest is silence. Perhaps it is the case that you are unable to read Old English. In case you cannot, which I suspect is so, let me assure you that it is both wrong and disingenuous to assert that Beowulf's dying words bear any resemblance to Hamlet's, and it is also wrong and disingenuous to assert that 'Scholars have puzzled over the strange fact that Hamlet's dying words to Horatio bear an uncanny resemblance to Beowulf's dying words to Wiglaf.' I very much doubt that you can, or will, provide a list of those 'scholars'. Your whole screed is riddled with this kind of ambiguous, vapid nonsense. You provide no evidence whatsoever for your claims - merely a sort of allusive, superficial knowingness that is designed to appeal to the ignorant, the foolish and the conspiracy-minded. It certainly does not appeal to me. I prefer honesty & truth.

[@timothyharris4708]

The first sentence should read: 'Yes no doubt you have said it before, and no doubt you will say it again.'

[@colinallan1962]

Fascinating but the sonnets were published in 1609. De Vere was buried in Hackney in 1604. In November 1612 his widow stated in her will that she wanted to be buried beside him in Hackney. She died in December 1612. There is a monument to a Vere relative in Westminster abbey in 1609 and there is a much later De Vere family tomb but Westminster has no record of reinterrment for Oxford. Or even Oxenford which is the name he used in his signature but that name wouldn't add up to 17. Oh pother!

[@menschkeit1]

if true, this is mind-boggling

[@AndreasDelleske]

So your mind was Schrödinger-boggled?

[@menschkeit1]

​@Paul Gauthier you have merely asserted this, not proven it.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@menschkeit1 In which respect, it's rather like this video, isn't it? The difference is that what Paul Gauthier said is based on the documentary record. We have Shakespeare's name on the title pages of the quartos of the sonnets. We have Shakespeare's name on the title pages of several quarto editions and all the folio editions of his plays. In the First Folio, we have multiple authors affirming that he was the author and employing imagery of the actor in their commendatory poems, including at least two who knew him personally. Shakespeare acted in at least two of Ben Jonson's plays, according to cast lists in Ben Jonson's _Works_ ( _Every Man in His Humour_ and _Sejanus His Fall_ ) and Leonard Digges was a fellow Stratfordian and an enthusiastic Shakespeare fanboy and a family friend through his stepfather, Thomas Russell, whom Shakespeare named as one of the two overseers of his will. Leonard Digges also famously referred to Shakespeare's "Stratford monument", which is in Stratford-upon-Avon to this day and depicts Shakespeare with a pen and paper, in the subfusc of a scholar, and has a Latin inscription likening him to Virgil for art ("arte Maronem"-Virgil's full name was Publius Vergilius Maro) and in English says that "all that he hath writ | Leaves living art but page to serve his wit". And John Heminges and Henry Condell, in their dedication, affirmed that Shakespeare was the author of the plays as well as being their "Friend, & Fellow [i.e., fellow actor]", and his name is included first in the list of Principal Actors in the book. In fact, every single contemporary who bothered to write or speak about the subject affirmed he was an author. They affirmed it not only in published writings, but in marginalia, personal notes, and in at least one private conversation (between William Drummond of Hawthornden and Ben Jonson, which Drummond took down). If it were _anyone_ else, this would be sufficient evidence to conclude that they were an actor-playwright. However, because it's the Great Shakespeare, some people who want to be contrarian cast doubt on his authorship not because it's in any way suspect but because they want to fancy that they have an 'interesting and independent' take on an important issue. Plus, it allows them to rationalize away why they could never appreciate Shakespeare-as most of them don't. Most of them have tin ears for poetry and trying to have a constructive conversation with them about Shakespeare's unique literary style and psychological insight is like trying to have a conversation on the greatness of J. S. Bach with someone who is completely tone deaf.

[@menschkeit1]

Maybe, and maybe you have yet to account for the many problems with Shaksper’s case for being Shake-speare. On the legal scales of means, motive and opportunity, Vere has everything, and Shaksper next to nothing.

[@Nullifidian]

​@@menschkeit1 "Maybe, and maybe you have yet to account for the many problems with Shaksper’s case for being Shake-speare." Well, considering that his name was only spelled "Shaksper" twice, and one of those times was in 1609 when Edward Alleyn noted his purchase of "Shaksper sonetts" for 5d., while the title page of the sonnets says "Shake-speares Sonnets", I think the identity "Shaksper" = "Shake-speare" has just been demonstrated. QED. However, perhaps you'll do me the favor of presenting these "many problems", the evidence by which you know these "problems" are a) actually true and b) truly problematic, and explain why these alleged "problems" count for more than direct documentary evidence. "On the legal scales of means, motive and opportunity, Vere has everything, and Shaksper next to nothing." Okay, let's discuss the means: writing Shakespeare's plays and non-dramatic verse took poetic genius and flexibility with language. Edward de Vere's published poetry is flat and uninspired. He pads his lines with monosyllables merely because he can't think of any better way to reach the requisite number of beats per line. He produces ungrammatical abominations for the same reason and occasionally inflects words differently in the same sentence just to make the minimum beat number. His stale images move over the same territory like a dog returning to its vomit. There is no building on a conceit with him. There are no flights of fancy. Instead, he's stuck firmly on the ground plodding away with his monosyllables. As for motive: what motive?! Any motive you would ascribe to Edward de Vere would have to be sheer fantasy based on the prior assumption that he was the author. Whereas for a professional actor-playwright like Shakespeare, the motive is easily apparent: writing plays was his _job_ . Writing plays was how he could justify his favored position as one of the sharers in the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men, which made him and the other sharers quite wealthy men. Edward de Vere only had to sit on his arse while the crown gave him a £1000 per annum welfare check paid quarterly. What possible motivation would he have had to write plays for the public Bankside theatres? It wouldn't have earned him enough even to keep him in scented gloves. And if he had had the bizarre notion of writing plays to entertain the proles, why wouldn't he have given them to the very company he patronized? Oxford's Men existed until about 1602, when it was folded in with Worcester's Men. Why enrich a rival theatrical troupe? There's no reason why he should have peddled his plays to anybody, since even if he wanted to preserve his incognito most early modern plays were published anonymously (as were Shakespeare's own plays between 1594 - 1598, even though _Venus and Adonis_ had been published in 1593 and _The Rape of Lucrece_ in 1594 with Shakespeare's name on them. Was de Vere working the long con?). However, if he had wished to have them attributed to somebody, wouldn't it have been easier to have them attributed to either John Lyly or Anthony Munday, both of whom were playwrights de Vere employed as his ostensible secretaries? Finally, opportunity: he had no opportunity. Point one: he died with a third of Shakespeare's _oeuvre_ yet to be written. This might have been the point at which to abandon the hypothesis. There is no kind of lack of opportunity quite as bad as being dead. Point two: about a quarter of Shakespeare's plays are collaborative. Where did Edward de Vere get a chance to meet up and write his plays with Thomas Kyd ( _Edward III_ ), Thomas Nashe ( _1 Henry VI_ ), George Peele ( _Titus Andronicus_ ), and Thomas Middleton ( _Timon of Athens_ )? How did he collaborate with John Fletcher ( _Henry VIII_ , _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ , and _Cardenio_ ) and George Wilkins ( _Pericles_ ) when neither of them had written a line of dramatic writing before his death? Point three: _Cardenio_ is based on an episode in the First Part of _Don Quixote_ by Miguel de Cervantes. How did Edward de Vere adapt a play on a subject from a novel that hadn't been published yet? The First Part of _Don Quixote_ wasn't published until 1605 and not until 1612 in English in the translation by Thomas Shelton, which is a fine date for a late Shakespeare/Fletcher collaboration, but a bit late for de Vere, who had been dead by 8 years at this point. Point four: _The Tempest_ is based on an account of a wreck that happened off Bermuda where everyone survived, where the survivors split into two groups, the other members of the flotilla had erroneously thought that the ship had sunk with all hands, there was dissension and conspiracies among the survivors, including a plot against the Governor that was discovered before the time was ripe for its execution, leading to an order that every man should wear his sword (in the play Sebastian and Antonio's plot against the King is foiled and everyone wears their swords in other to forestall another attempt on his life). Parallels could be multiplied endlessly. Shakespeare usually used the word "thunderbolt", but for this play he used the word "thunder-stroke" twice. His source also wrote about "strokes of thunder". This play is his only use of "bosky", a word also used in this source document. The document, written by William Strachey, is dated July 15, 1610. The community the _Sea Venture_ was going to resupply, the Jamestown colony, didn't even come into existence until after de Vere's death (it was founded in 1607). It is evident that Shakespeare had access to Strachey's letter or a manuscript copy when he was writing his last solo-authored play, a play de Vere couldn't have possibly written. Point five: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ , a collaboration between John Fletcher and William Shakespeare, where we can tell that they were working side by side because at one point one author brings characters onstage who were already brought on by the other, contains a simplified version of a masque called _The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn_ by Francis Beaumont. It was written for the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to the Elector-Palatine of the Rhine, Frederick V, which was celebrated in February 1613, nearly a decade after Edward de Vere died. Point six: The late plays like _The Tempest_ and _Two Noble Kinsmen_ show a different style of playing, more focused on impressive theatrical effects, inspired by masques, etc. which came with a new venue. The Blackfriars wasn't available to the King's Men until 1608, four years after de Vere's death, but within the last five of Shakespeare's active career. Act breaks allowed time for trimming wicks and changing burnt out candles. Sword fights were no longer staged but merely reported because the nobility paid extra to sit on stools on stage at the fashionable indoor theatres ( _Every Man Out of His Humour_ by Ben Jonson and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ by Francis Beaumont both have fun with this practice) so they could both see and be seen. It wouldn't have done to spear a peer. The idea that Edward de Vere could have anticipated the dramatic possibilities and restrictions of a venue the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men didn't have access to until after his death is absurd. I could go on, but I think the point is made.

[@jamesaiello4667]

A one and half hour hilarious stream of conscious rant full of literary and biographhical ILLUSIONS

[@garrymcdougall9481]

It's allusions. And tell me your interperetation.

[@linofacioli3344]

Why does he sum up 3 x 5 as 9? (VVV = IX) 21:25

[@jonmelon9792]

He's saying that the three V shaped thingys mean Via,Veritas,Vita, as quoted by IX (Jesus Christ)

[@tullochgorum6323]

Yawn. There's the small issue that Shakespeare's plays mention events after De Vere was dead. Computer textual analysis excludes De Vere as a candidate. It also shows that many of the plays were collaborations with other working playwrights - why would an aristocrat do that? The plays contain Stratfordian dialect and use a lot of terms from glove-making and nature references from Arden. They also demonstrate a deep understanding of agricultural and mercantile life. Shakespeare is one of the best documented commoners of the age. These people are basically snobs - they can't accept that the greatest writer in the language was a tradesman's son. So they come up with speculative drivel like this.

[@clevellbarney8917]

They can't accept it. That's the key in most Shakespeare conspiracies.

[@ishmaelforester9825]

That is it. You're exactly right. But ultimately more glory to Shakespeare. The idea an aristocrat wrote Shakespeare's wonderful comic commoners for the stage is ridiculous. They would have been insulted if you suggested it then. He was who he was always attributed as. An Earl wrote the likes of Bardolph, Pistol, Quickly and Doll? Fuck off. It's blatantly obvious he wasn't a noble.

[@ishmaelforester9825]

The fact (from a certain point of view) was one of the legitimate censures of Will Shakespeare. His 'native wood notes wild' in miltons phrase, associated with his commoner origins. I mean it's stunningly clear from the works he was relatively unconnected and rolling dice. It was only later people began to assimilate his style with genius or sublimity.

[@mushtaqbhat1895]

That a commoner could not have such an in-depth knowledge regarding courtly life is perhaps a valid argument, but by same token, how could a noble man have the in-depth knowledge of the emerging trader classes, artisans and the country folk? In fact the former could be looked up in most of the extant literature beginning from Homer. Most of it was there, cannonized in literature and (stll extant) history, whereas. the latter, especially that related to Stratford or greater England was just emerging. Beecher Stowe or Charles Dickens would appear centuries later. Homer or the bards who wrote the great epics certainly must have listened to the tales of the sea farers. It probably sets a categorical imperative to not being of noble birth, because the latter generally condones too much familiarity in relationships with the lower classes and generally implies only a canonnized, highly biased, historical text-book-aquired knowledge about the latter. I can not imagine a barons son ever showing any interest in the private lives of their serfs or servants, or paying visits to their country cottages, let alone learning their dialect or goings about their family lives. Just as today the boulevard papers make fortunes by gossip-printing about celebrities with higher incomes and life styles, I assume the doings at court were widely circulated, through mouth and print. And a poet and a genius would have no problem, weaving a tale about it, just as Homer or the bards, wove remarkable ones about palaces, courtly intrigues and far away lands and sea shores, places they probably had never seen.

[@tullochgorum6323]

@@mushtaqbhat1895 There's also some evidence that as a young man Shakespeare spent time as a tutor and actor with the aristocratic Hoghton family in Lancashire. If true, the family had extensive experience of court life. Plus he was, of course, literate - and there were plenty of sources he could have used. Later in life he had close court connections. So there's really no mystery to explain. On the other hand the De Vere theory has insuperable issues - I thought it had died a death until I saw this lecture. The computer textual analysis is decisive - De Vere had a totally different writing style to the man who wrote the plays and poems - it's not even close. This is a kind of textual fingerprint you can't consciously change - and on all the standard tests De Vere didn't write the plays. The same with all the other main candidates, by the way. And there's the small issue that Shakespeare was active and writing years after De Vere's death... As I said above - this is just snobbery. These people can't accept that the son of a glover was our greatest poet - so they had to award the mantle of greatness to some random aristo instead... shakespeareauthorship.com/elval.html

[@tamrielsknight]

Even if we believe that Shakespeare is a pseudonym then why would someone go to so much trouble to conceal his identity as the real Shakespeare? It's not like he was an especially hunted fugitive back in the day or an agent of rebellion.

[@Aethelvlad]

Because you don't understand the content Shakespeare included or how he encoded the secrets of the Universe. Those who have eyes can see it, and he would have been hunted for releasing what he did when he did, even if you today do not see the deeper coding. He appears to be a normal poet, and you can't see why they would persecute him. That's how effective he was.

[@bluebellwood4287]

In those days in higher echelons it was considered very poor taste to write plays. His court life and reputation were important to him.and so...

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

@@bluebellwood4287 He was publicly lauded as a writer of comic interludes performed at court. It was not considered beneath his station. Had he written any of Shakespeare's plays, literally hundreds of people at court would have known they were his, including many who hated him. SOMEBODY would have said something when De Vere's Hamlet suddenly appeared in print under the name "Shakespeare".

[@garrymcdougall9481]

See the rest of the evidence, and you'll be challenged.

[@michaelhorning6014]

Cripes, this stupid cryptogram garbage again. Let it go, dude. Will Shakespeare wrote the plays.

[@p5rsona]

Wow so you were there in 1600??

[@michaelhorning6014]

@@p5rsona documented member and shareholder in Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men. Mentioned by contemporaries as a playwright, with specific titles mentioned. Plays published under his name. Zero evidence anyone else wrote them. Case closed.

[@p5rsona]

@@michaelhorning6014 Plays published under his name. i too can have plays published under my name. nothing of what you wrote proves HE wrote them. why would he abruptly retire back in his hometown, go into farming and never write again? why nothing found with his handwriting?

[@michaelhorning6014]

@@p5rsona now you're just flailing wildly.

[@p5rsona]

@@michaelhorning6014 am I? can you at least try refuting my points?

[@dakrontu]

At 1:04:00: Use of VV instead of W was common at the time.

[@Nullifidian]

Presumably Waugh thinks that Edward de Vere was also the secret author of _The Second Part of The Honest Whore_ (but not the first) and _The Discoverie of Witchcraft_ .

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

VV for W was common but it seems to always refer to Vere's involvement somehow, either as author or patron or subject. The letter "W" , although already in existence, was named at this time, named Double U instead of the Double V that it resembles (because that would be just too obvious...naming a letter for Vere...)

[@Nullifidian]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 So the example, I gave, _The Second Part of the Honest Whore_ , was somehow patronized by Edward de Vere, even though it was written after his lifetime and not published until 1630? Or are you implying that Thomas Dekker was contemplating thusly: "Edward de Vere... Edward de Vere... ah, a prostitute!"? Also, since the same characters reappear in both plays, but the VV digraph for W only appears on the quarto of the second part, how is that consistent with this frankly laughable claim? (And I did laugh, out loud and long, and even harder at your final sentence. One thing to be said for this subject: it's a cornucopia of risible assertions.)

[@stevenhershkowitz2265]

​@@Nullifidian Thankyou for pointing this out. A quick look at the cover of Honest Whore rings off alarm bells for sure. The name is a Shakespeare parody and the cover mimics the dedication to the Sonnets. And the word "whore" may be important. Greg Alexander has made a couple of videos indicating the importance of the word ORE in Shakespeare/Vere. I will pass it on to him. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oYKopYmGoJiWaNU

[@Nullifidian]

@@stevenhershkowitz2265 "The name is a Shakespeare parody...." How? Because it comes in two parts? That's the only commonality I can see between the two. And if that is it, then it's utter lunacy because the play is in two parts, so what would you have Dekker call the second part? "...and the cover mimics the dedication to the Sonnets." You mean the dedication that Shakespeare didn't write, but Thomas Thorpe, the printer, did? And it doesn't "mimic" the dedication to the sonnets at all. That kind of tapering layout was a commonplace of printing back then (but so was VV for W, and you're still mad enough to attribute some allegedly 'hidden meaning' to it). The sonnets were printed in 1609. In 1592, the first quarto of _Arden of Feversham_ shows the same kind of tapering. So does _The Merry Devill of Edmonton_ , printed a year before the sonnets. So do huge amounts of early modern printing. "Greg Alexander has made a couple of videos indicating the importance of the word ORE in Shakespeare/Vere." I'm sure he has, because it's only one of the most common sequence of letters in English. How about this? Edward de Vere's Christian name starts with E, E is the most common letter in the English language, and therefore Edward de Vere is the secret author of everything ever written in the language. He's also the secret author of the standard eye chart. De Vere's involvement with optometry has never been suspected... until now. Constantly hidden from the view of mortal eyes, but yet omnipresent: the Oxfordian version of de Vere and the Deity seem to have a lot in common, probably because de Vere is your personal god.

[@tommymcqueeney4412]

Fifty years ago, as a college English major, I wrote a term paper in my 302 class on William Shakespeare. My professor was not amused when I chose my title for research -- "A Discourse on the Repudiation of Shake-Speare." My theory was that there was a team of learned writers, all with the expanse of language, travel, and societal experiences to create such amazing productions. They all had reasons not to be identified. "Shaxsper" was their stooge. I named Sir Francis Bacon as the coordinator with major contributions from Christopher Marlow and Edward de Vere (who both predeceased the stagehand Shaxsper). It is more and more apparent that I may have been correct fifty years ago. The term paper was furiously graded, and because my research was blasphemous to the professor, I received a C-. I was proud of the research and the flow of the argument. Perhaps a half-century later, I may be vindicated. Thank you Alexander Waugh.

[@timothyharris4708]

Fifty years ago, and you have never grown up.

[@joecurran2811]

You were certainly onto something. It's still considered largely blasphemous sadly.

[@timothyharris4708]

@@joecurran2811 Not blasphemous. Simply and stalely wrong, and shown to be so. .

[@gustavmahler1466]

Just because you found the same sentence else where does not prove plagiarism

[@NlHILIST]

Excellent! Much clear independent rational thinking here by Waugh. He puts generations of ivory tower academics to shame as little more than sheep blindly following sheep.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

NlHILIST He makes shit up so that he can leap from one clue to the next until he connects just the right dots to draw his picture. How many steps did he have to go through to get from a worn letter T to Oxen? Where, outside of Oxfordian thought, is the upside-down cross of St. Peter ever referred to as the "Fourth Cross"? Real cyphers do not rely upon the cryptoanalyst to add their own context.

[@jimnaz5267]

it could well be

[@oldschool1993]

Across the hall in a different auditorium there was some guy with an apostrophe in his name claiming that Shakespeare was black.

[@BlowinFree]

Lol, there’s always one, isn’t there.

[@hans-joachimbierwirth4727]

A jewish black lesbian. With a pegleg. Descendant of a later misdeed of Henry V.

[@RHV617]

Shakespeare wasn't Black, he was a swarthy Englishmen.

[@steveclark8538]

Couldn’t make it thru the ramshackle opening about crosses and T’s etc….sorry

[@Nullifidian]

Speaking as someone who watched the whole thing, you've missed nothing.

[@olafshomkirtimukh9935]

Why would the earl use a pseudonym? was "writing" infra dig for the nobility? + the classic portrait that we all know of Shakespeare (from the 1st Folio), was it then also entirely imaginary or based on someone who actually lent his face to the construction of the myth -- for it, certainly, isn't the portrait of Earl de Vere.

[@chuckschillingvideos]

Numerology = complete silliness. Take this seriously at your own risk.

[@annascott3542]

Numerology, codes and ciphers might be silly to us moderns, but it wasn’t to people living in Elizabethan England.

[@nippernappertton]

@@annascott3542 yeah, they were dead serious about numbers and their properties.

[@Nullifidian]

@@annascott3542 And if you can demonstrate that Waugh's dribble parallels the early modern understanding of numerology, then you'll be doing more than Waugh himself has ever been able to do. Waugh simply makes up these associations himself, massaging the data and inventing the context freely, and then 'validating' the results because they tell him what he wants to hear. It's a textbook case of confirmation bias. If one were feeling unkind, one might ask him how these elaborate codes were supposed to be preserved when compositors chose the layout and the spelling of words themselves.

[@robertn800]

Alan Turing was obsessed with cryptography, numerical puzzles, ciphers etc. His knowledge of those “silly” things helped him break the German Enigma Code during WWar 2 and saved millions of lives by ending the war 2 years early, according to Historians . Alan Turing was instrumental in developing computers 💻 which enables you to watch this. Silly 😜 indeed

[@Nullifidian]

@@robertn800 A "numerical puzzle" is _not_ the same thing as numerology. Numerology is attaching supposedly "arcane" significance to the appearance of certain numbers. An example relevant to this video is the number of Oxfordians who go out of their way to find instances of the number 17 in Shakespeare texts because Oxford was the 17th earl. But the problem is that Oxford never knew he was the 17th earl, and the error in the genealogy wasn't corrected until after his death and wasn't generally accepted until the late 1600s. Numerology is sometimes allied with gematria, the process of assigning a numerical value to words and names, most often with a religious significance like the Tetragrammaton. Numerology was of no help whatsoever in the war, and Alan Turing never believed in it. But even if he did, eminence in science or maths is no guarantee against being a crank in other areas.

[@helenamcginty4920]

The upper echelons of english society cannot stand the idea that a man nit if their class could write the plays. Those of his own time, pre Public School days, had no such difficulty.

[@nippernappertton]

If there ever was a more fallacious argument against this evidence, please let me know. Did you even watch the presentation? This was message coded by the peers of the author, and the odds of such a message being there by chance are 1 out of billions.

[@Nullifidian]

@@nippernappertton There is no message. Waugh's febrile hallucinations would require greater accuracy than was possible in early modern printing. Waugh supplies half the context for his supposed 'decryptions', makes up whatever he needs to get the results he wants, and then decides that he's successfully 'decoded' it by how much it tells him what he wants to see.

[@annarboriter]

@@Nullifidian As a biologist, you certainly do spend much your days posting about Stratfordian myths and defaming scholars outside your field

[@Nullifidian]

@@annarboriter So what if I do spend my time posting on this subject? It's a combination of having a general interest in early modern theatre, a specific interest in Shakespeare, and a general interest in pseudoscience/pseudohistory/etc. The last also includes an interest in creationism and its new "intelligent design" variant, relativity-denialism (in the scientific rather than the philosophical sense), geocentrism, the flat earth, the so-called "Church of Scientology", the 9/11 Truth movement, JFK assassination conspiracy theories, and Anatoly Fomenko's ludicrous idea that the events of the classical European civilizations happened 1,000 years later and that the intervening time is simply an elaborate fiction (e.g. Alexander the Great would have conquered in the 7th century CE, Julius Caesar would have been assassinated in the mid-10th century, etc.). I don't make a specific point of critiquing _only_ the claims of anti-Shakespearians. Are you still trying to imply that I'm a paid shill because nobody could possibly think that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare without being paid to think it? If that's the case, then the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust must be going bankrupt because Shakespeare's authorship is a consensus among everyone but an increasingly vanishingly small handful of cranks. The anti-Shakespearians are graying and dying and not being replaced at a commensurate rate. Furthermore, I don't "defame scholars outside my field". I leave that up to the anti-Shakespearians, who have more practice in it. Virtually none of them are trained scholars in relevant fields, but they're perfectly content to assert that the real scholars are either deluded or even consciously engaged in a conspiracy to suppress 'the truth'. The guy you cited elsewhere, Joseph Sobran, was a journalist who was so ignorant that he didn't know that Henslowe's Christian name (he of the famous diary) was Philip. None of the Ogburns were early modern scholars. Nor was J. Thomas Looney, who was just a schoolteacher who hadn't heard of Edward de Vere until he picked his name out of a classroom set of _Palgrave's Golden Treasury_ . Since this is a video featuring Alexander Waugh, it's worth pointing out that he has a history of defamation in its proper, literal, legal sense. On one occasion, he falsely claimed that one of his critics was in trouble with the police, which he was then obliged to delete because British libel law is dangerous territory. His primary response to criticism is to delete it if it's in the comments to his own videos and, failing that, to childishly insult the critic. The entire edifice of anti-Shakespearianism consists of a bunch of rank amateurs slinging feces at the people who have relevant expertise in the subject, almost all of whom accept that Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him (even if some think that some of the plays were co-authored by other people as well). This is the _third_ chance you've had to present some evidence for Oxford (by far the least promising candidate with the possible exceptions of Daniel Defoe and Anne Whateley), or even the fourth since you could have forestalled me asking. It's starting to appear as if you're aware that nothing you have to present will stand up to scrutiny. But if you know that's the case, why continue with the charade of pretending that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's works?

[@benpholmes]

Wow, what a beautiful mind! This reminds me of mathematician John Nash in the famous biopic . . . before he got mental help.

[@latifahafid7880]

I thought of the same thing.

[@davidhawk9678]

stopped watching at @40.47 when this supposedly intellectual started calling an ellipse a "perfect circle" up until then nothing he even said was about Shakespeare being a fake.

[@elescritorsecreto]

I watched the whole thing and what complete utter nonsense. Why on earth would people back then go through such a massive effort to disguise the “real author” when they had no way of knowing that Shakespeare would be regarded as a literally genius in the future. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that his plays saw a resurgence in the public eye. His plays weren’t meant to be READ, they were meant to be seen. All these cyphers and clues remind me of Flat Earth logic and Nostradamus BS. You need to swap letters and create anagrams and ignore mirror images for everything to fit the agenda. If you replaced any letters with the number 6, this man would find a convenient way to show how 6 was important in the identity of Edward De Vere. And the clue pointing to the funerary monument in Westminster? It points to SHAKESPEARE’S monument. Yet this man insists it’s not Shakespeare, it’s De Vere. Wake up! De Vere was a nobleman who died in obscurity. If he wanted to take credit for the plays, he could have done so because playwrights weren’t criminals. There was no stigma. Also, De Vere was already a published poet, so explain to me how it was acceptable to publish poems yet disguise stage plays?There are lots of clues to McCartney’s death on the Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road albums. Clues that you need to twist to make fit. That doesn’t mean Paul McCartney was replaced by a body double in 1966. There are only 36 letters of the alphabet, so of course you are going to find occasional patterns that make you feel there is something significant going on. Open up any novel and count how many times ISH and TT appears in proximity to each other. The only thing that matters is hard science. You want De Vere as the true author? Collect the DNA from Westminster to prove how it’s really De Vere. But I think you know very well that grave in Westminster is empty because it’s a monument to a man who is buried in Stratford. Or better yet, use analytical AI software to compare the language in De Veer’s published poems with any one of Shakespeare’s plays. I’m guessing you don’t want to do that because you might not like what it reveals.

[@stevenedwards4470]

I'm either too ignorant to follow some of this properly or this guy is chasing artificially flavored rainbows. Why was any of this necessary? Why was such a convoluted misdirection about Shakespeare's identity and burial place needed after his death? And how was this whipped up in the days and years following his death? It's like some person or people said "We believe our secret friend is a great writer so let's obfuscate his identity and burial place so no one can honor him thusly". Also, Shakespeare's reputation is largely a product of the past centuries. How lofty were his achievements held a few days after he died?

[@lairdhaynes1986]

It's skittles all the way down.

[@adamguerrero5293]

The works of Shakespeare were entirely revolutionary, not only in "his" time but still to this day. There are challenges on royalty & class, male dominance, legal bias, religion, on & on. Have you not read the plays? Could you not see how in a time even more backwards than ours today that challenging notions, particularly through compelling poetry & humor, would draw the ire of those who benefit most from those institutions?

[@jono3697]

VERO NIHIL VERIUS

[@Nullifidian]

​@@adamguerrero5293 Okay, so what's the logic here? Edward de Vere was secretly a republican, socialist, and male feminist-even though he was an entirely selfish S.O.B. who answered William Cecil when Cecil begged him to take more care about not blowing through his estate that "mine is made to serve me" and he dumped his wife and children on Cecil and claimed that his eldest daughter was a bastard. Still, he is nevertheless a Tudor-era Clement Attlee, if not a Tudor-era Vladimir Lenin, and a tireless fighter of the patriarchy. In order to get these "revolutionary" ideas out before the public, he thought the best way to go about it was to present plays that might well not be seen or read anywhere outside of London, because all the theatres and all the stationers were in London. But, of course, he couldn't dare to be associated by name with these revolutionary plays (what a courageous fighter for freedom!), so he either used a pen name or lined up a front man, even though anonymous publication of plays was the norm in this era, and despite the fact that this body of plays was itself not published with the playwright's name until 1598, four years after the first publication of any of "Shakespeare's" plays ( _The First Part of the Contention_ [ _Henry VI, Part 2_ ] and _Titus Andronicus_ in 1594). And naturally he knew his "William Shakespeare" persona would be perfectly safe since the authorities clearly didn't care what _anybody_ said as long as they were commoners. The Master of the Revels is a complete figment of the imagination. Is any of this supposed to make sense at all?

[@adamguerrero5293]

@@Nullifidian have you read the plays? How many times do it's characters opine on the contrast between what one says v does v believes & thinks? You'd argue Abraham Lincoln couldn't have ended American slavery for all the times he argued against it in speech & letters? History is replete with contradictory characters. It makes it no less true.

[@AAMARTCLUB]

Aside from Shakespeare we have the child writer Jane Austen, born in a tiny village with little learning other than from her Pastor father. Imagination, a gift for words, insight, passion, hard work and application. One need not be a Lord. Listening to others’ experiences and the proximity of classic libraries might replace the travels of the rich in fermenting the best wine, distilling the finest liquor. The telling of the stories on stage and then the honing of those words afterwards might have taken much time but Shakespeare had time and money once the plays became popular.

[@joecurran2811]

Very sad to hear of Waugh's passing. This was superb!

[@richardmckrell4899]

I realize exercise is out of the question but how about a pressed shirt?

[@richardmckrell4899]

@Ubiquitary How about a non-pajama shirt

[@axsos]

He is too busy waffling his numerology nonsense to exercise

[@bertdpursoo373]

It seems that the real Shakespeare changes from time to time and from person to person. What is dubious about the entire project is what is the actual purpose? I believe most people would still enjoy the plays supposedly written by "the Shakespeare". The speaker talking about syntax errors is ridiculous.