Anderson writes this book by beginning with the assumption that Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. He proceeds to tell his story of de Vere, speculating about how he used the famous nom-de-plume as a vehicle to express dangerous political, psychological, and romantic themes from his life. He tells the story of a passionate man who needed to keep his literary pursuits under the radar.

I didn't begin reading this book with a strong opinion in the Shakespeare authorship debates, and I didn't know much about Edward de Vere. So it wasn't easy to start by assuming the Shakespere-de Vere link. I now take the Oxfordian hypothesis seriously. I'm becoming comfortable with Anderson's speculations regarding time, place and person. Scholarship on the de Vere-Shakespeare link will be interesting to me from here on out.

A number of things made it possible for me to enjoy this LONG book. Anderson's Shakespeare By Another Name website provided audio abstracts that feature Anderson describing the book, as well as blogs detailing recent developments. Listening to those podcasts kept me awake. Moreover, I tracked down Roger Stritmatter's 2001 PhD thesis online. Stritmatter and his work are two cornerstones of Anderson's book, as Anderson states in the acknowledgements. I found major portions of the dissertation to be available for free online at the ShakespeareFellowship website. The online dissertation contains scholarly discussions of de Vere and photographed material that is missing from Anderson's picture-free book. I guess that I needed Stritmatter's illustrations and scholarly rigor to help me feel comfortable with Anderson's speculations. I'm hoping that Stritmatter writes his own book, frankly, since he's been studying the Oxfordian hypothesis for at least a decade, too. Finally, it helped to review European history, and the history of England. If you know the history, then you'll appreciate Anderson's ability to experience and explain the zeitgeist of de Vere's England. My sense is that Anderson has calibrated his vivid speculative imagination with facts.

Some key circumstantial evidence:

Edward de Vere's Bible exists, and the consensus - based on considerable recent research - is that it was marked by de Vere himself. Of the 1000 verses that he marked, one quarter show up in Shakespeare's works, and this is unlikely (statistically) to be a fluke. Stritmatter's PhD thesis demonstrated this and more.

De Vere traveled in Italy in 1575-1576, and visited the locations that emerge in Shakespeare's literature. There are portions of All's Well That Ends Well and Two Gentlemen of Verona that seem to cite events that occurred during de Vere's visits.

Hamlet reeks of material from de Vere's life. In fact, it seems that themes from all of Shakespeare's work can be linked to themes from de Vere's life. Shakespeare's literary universe looks a lot like de Vere's dysfunctional family system.


The famous "Ashbourne Portrait" of Shakespeare may well be a modified picture of de Vere. This was discussed in Appendix D, and was some of the most fascinating material in the book.

If I try to imagine Shakespeare's personality, based on the contents of his creative outputs, it is easy to imagine someone like de Vere. Here was someone who must have had both artistic and scientific temperaments, for he wrote about romance, tragedy, science, botany, decay, melancholy, neglect, unrequited love, power, injustice, and gloomy fate. He seemed well-travelled and quite well-educated.

So Anderson's story and the de Vere hypothesis ring true, at least for now. I may trudge through this again, more carefully, when I feel like reading another 500 pages...

The book is well written and researched. Read it, and then read Brenda James's "The Truth Will Out". She reckons that the totally ignored and long forgotten Sir Henry Neville was Shakespeare. The funny thing is that the huge wealth of detail in Mark Anderson's book does not negate James's theory - if anything it enhances it - the details that are said could only refer to Oxford - such as specific Italian stuff, and details of holding a canopy, also apply to Neville. I think that Neville rewrote a lot of Oxford's protoplays - it says as much in the introduction to the first published play by "Shakespeare" - which were first performed 10, 15 or even 20 years before "Shakespeare" rewrote them.

Ponder this - Neville was in the Tower of London for more than two years WITH Southampton! They were both sentenced to death for their part in the Essex plot. Southampton betrayed Neville - in one of the sonnets Neville forgives him.

Then ask yourself what did Ben Jonson, the chap who put together the First Folio, mean when he wrote
"To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name" - the first line of his two page dedication to Shakespeare.

That can also be written
To draw no NV (Shakespeare) on thy name.

Neville sometimes signed himself NV.

And to finish, imagine that Elizabeth had children. The Spanish Ambassador thought she had 5 or 6. How many children, where did they end up, who placed them, who were the fathers, did they get special treatment or special education, were the families rewarded in any way, what jobs did they get or not get?

My list is rather long ! and include Oxford 1548 - 1604, Sir Philip Sidney 1554-1586, Essex 1556-1601, Francis Bacon 1561-1626, Neville 1563-1615, and Southampton 1573-1624. They were all remarkably literate, as was Elizabeth. Study their histories - they are all interrelated - common threads are Cecil and Robert Dudley. Most of them were only sons - the exception being Bacon - sons were very important in those days - to keep the dynastic line going. Look at their portraits - they have all got orange beards! Seymour was the father of Oxford, Dudley the father of Sidney, Bacon, Neville and Essex, and Oxford the father of Southampton. .. Maybe!

It is a very good book - buy it. The connections between the plays and Oxford's own life are very numerous and fantastic - really a great number of the plays are a sort of royal Soap Opera - an Elizabethan version of our "Eastenders". I think that both Oxford and Neville worked on the plays - maybe with a little help from Elizabeth herself! - but the finished language - like the King James Bible - is by Neville.

Mark Anderson has written a landmark, lucid book of friendly, measured argumentation and incredibly vivid detail. Rather than uselessly debating with pig-headed strats, he carefully relates the plethora of connections between Oxford's life and the prose of "Shakespeare," thus revealing the plays as being intensely if not staggeringly autobiographical. Mr. Anderson I think will be ultimately responsible for launching 1000s of research ships, which must now go forth and amplify and modulate the wealth of arguments and observations he vigorously peppers onto each page. For me a major "smoking gun" -- proof that Oxford is Shakespeare -- is the sheer number and vigor of the correlations between the known events of Oxford's voyage to Italy and their appearance in the Shakespearean plays. For even just beginning to relate Oxford's marvelous journey and its retelling in the plays, we should be very grateful to Mr. Anderson for his hard, focused historical work. .