Words, Words, Words: A More Accurate Understanding of Edward de Vere as Shakespeare by James Warren

During the past decade, while conducting research for Shakespeare Revolutionized and other articles, Jim Warren came across several dozen words or short phrases used in telling the story of Edward de Vere as Shakespeare that have been misconstrued. Here he presents some two dozen of them, along with brief explanations of their real meaning in the context of the times. It concludes by tying all the words and phrases together in a short, coherent restatement of the authorship story.
One example: Sidney and Oxford are described as “rivals for the hand of Anne Cecil” (Ward, 283). However, Sidney didn’t court Anne as a rival to Oxford or anyone else. His guardian, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and Anne’s father arranged a marriage for them in 1569 when Sidney was only 15 and Anne only 12. Fifteen-year-old boys simply don’t court and seek to marry 12-year-old girls. As well, Oxford didn’t become engaged to Anne until two years later, in July, 1571.
Such misunderstandings came about, perhaps, because of inappropriately applying literary evidence to real-life events, showing that great care is needed when reading de Vere’s life into the plays or when applying situations in the plays to his life.
Bio: James A. Warren is the author of Shakespeare Revolutionized: The First Hundred Years of J. Thomas Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identified (2021). As an editor and publisher, he has issued new editions of 16 books and collections of hundreds of articles by the first generations of Oxfordian scholars, including J. Thomas Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identified (2018) and “Shakespeare” Revealed: The Collected Articles and Published Letters of J. Thomas Looney (2019). His new hardback edition of Bernard M. Ward’s The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford 1550-1604 was issued earlier this year, and his novel on an Oxfordian theme, Summer Storm: A Novel of Ideas, was published in 2016. He has given presentations at more than a dozen Oxfordian conferences, and in 2020 was named the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s Oxfordian of the Year. His interest in the authorship question developed more than a decade ago, at about the time he retired from the U.S. Department of State, where he had served as a career diplomat.
Learn more at shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/

[@user-vh9vi8dt2g]

Your comments about the hawk and the handsaw may well be correct. But there is a more obvious explanation. Both are tools used in construction over many centuries. The handsaw is indispensable to the carpenter, while the plasterer would find it difficult to ply his trade without a hawk - a small board with a perpendicular handle, on which a quantity of plaster or mortar can be held in the non dominant hand and is easily available for the tool used to apply it to a surface. So the hawk sits comfortably on the wrist just like a hawk on a falconer’s left wrist. Decorative plasterwork known as pargeting can be seen on many Tudor houses and cottages in villages in the neighbourhood of Hedingham Castle.

[@steveharris8248]

One of the most interesting and pertinent videos on this topic on the internet.

[@stevenfisher5320]

Warwickshire is pronounced “War-ick-shear”

[@edgarsnake2857]

Curiouser and curiouser,

[@tedwong6605]

Thank you for providing more clarity.

[@UtubeAW]

The portrait is most likely de Vere’s father.

[@sixeses]

I think it's the Earl of Ormond.

[@ronroffel1462]

Thanks for putting the words back in their context (00:23). Without context, you can make any words mean what you want them to mean, not what was actually meant by the writer. I will challenge Warren to answer one question about the alleged portrait of the 17th earl he shows at 1:27. The man in the painting has dark hair while the man in the well-known Welbeck portrait identified as the 17th earl by the inscription has light hair. Did de Vere lighten his hair by some unknown method? If so, why? I believe the portrait is of his father John de Vere and wrongly attributed to be of his son. The high collar he wears was more popular in the 1560s when his son was in his teens. Clearly the painting shows an older man. So, is the painting of the father or his son?

[@k.e.becquer4681]

Agree. The eyebrows are very different too. I have always thought that must be a portrait of the 16th Earl.

[@vesnalazar5537]

Great presentation!

[@ContextShakespeare1740]

Thomas Lodge Rosalind is set in the Ardennes. I think there are good reasons that de Vere set his play in the forest of Arden. In my video "As you like it in context" kzbin.info/www/bejne/mmnGpKSwfdpqpqM , I give two links to the forest. Robert Dudley had been banished to Kennilworth within the Forest of Arden, many men flocked to him, those opposed to the Queen's marriage negotiations with Alencon. There is an oral tradition that Shakespeare wrote As You Like It at Billesly Manor, Warwickshire which lies within the area of the forrest of Arden. The Blue boar inn lies within the grounds of the estate the Blue Boar Inn, which was an emblem of the de Vere’s, Earls of Oxford. The estate of Billesley Manor, listed in the Doomsday book was owned by the Trussels. Edward de Vere’s Grandmother Elizabeth Trussel, who was heir to the Trussel lands owned by the senior branch of the family, married John de Vere 15th Earl of Oxford. Much of the Trussel land around Warwickshire was passed down to Edward de Vere. Even though the land was no longer forest it was still referred to as the Forest of Arden.

[@stevenfisher5320]

Leicester is pronounced “Lester.”

[@beaulah_califa9867]

I am an Oxfordianbut I found little value herein. Why waste time adding a 21st Century connotation to words used 500-years ago? I disagree w/a lot of things he said but the most irritating is the word "retirement". Yes, he went into "retirement". It is a fitting use of the word during Oxford's time when AARP didn't exist. He's (contemporaries) not a fault b/c that word is loaded w/excess baggage in our time.

[@EndoftheTownProductions]

Shakespeare refers to the Gunpowder Plot in Macbeth. He mentions "equivocation" and "equivocator" and this refers to the Catholic Priest Henry Garnet who was associated with the plot. There are also other allusions to the plot in the play. The date of the Gunpowder Plot was November 5, 1605. Therefore, the play Macbeth must have been completed after this date and most likely finished in mid to late 1606. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, died on June 24, 1604, which obviously makes it impossible for him to have written the play Macbeth which has been attributed to Shakespeare and later published in the 1623 First Folio. It is difficult to write a play after you have died and there is obviously no way for Edward to have known of the Gunpowder Plot and the trial of Henry Garnet before his death.

[@VisionsandRevisions]

If the word “equivocation” is a reference to the Gun Powder plot, then obviously de Vere could not have written MacBeth. But the notion THAT the usage of the word refers to the Plot is, itself, equivocal. The play is full of equivocation in its more common meaning of being pointedly vague. Eg, no man of woman born. Also, Cecil had been lobbying for James Stuart for years. A play predicting that Banquo’s descendants would become Kings would have political value long before 5 November, 1605.