Home > Shakespearean Criticism > The Authorship Controversy - William Shakespeare Vs. Edward De Vere, Earl Of Oxford

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WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE VS. EDWARD DE VERE, EARL OF OXFORD

Tom Bethell (essay date 1991)

SOURCE: "Looking for Shakespeare: Two Partisans Explain and Debate the Authorship Question," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 268, No. 4, October, 1991, pp. 43-61.

[In the following essay, Bethell discusses the parallels between Hamlet and the life of Edward de Vere, and insists that the experiences of de Vere—most notably his courtly life and familiarity with Italy—show that he is more likely to have written the plays than Stratford's Shakespeare.]

Hamlet is derived from a story in François de Belleforest's Histories Tragiques (1576), not yet translated into English when Shakespeare adapted it. Shakespeare introduced new characters and greatly enlarged the roles assigned to various characters by Belieferest. One of these magnified characters is Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain to the King of Denmark, who is...

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1. Introduction
2. Overview
3. The Case For Shakespeare
4. The Case Against Shakespeare: Anti-Stratfordian Arguments
5. William Shakespeare Vs. Edward De Vere, Earl Of Oxford
6. Other Claimants: Bacon And Marlowe
7. The "New" Poems: "Shall I Die?"
8. The "New" Poems: "The Funeral Elegy
9. Further Reading
10. Copyright