No, the Rosenbach does not own the Earl of Oxford’s jug. If you came to the Friend or Faux exhibit you are familiar with the story of our Bellarmine jug; the jug is a genuine Elizabethan era object, but by the mid-20th century an unusual (and false) legend had attached itself to the piece—it was claimed to be the “Earl of Oxford’s jug,” owned by Edward de Vere, whom some insist was the true author behind Shakespeare’s works.
This incorrect identification seems to have been based on three factors: the coat of arms and date, which were interpreted as indications that it was made for Queen Elizabeth herself; the fact that de Vere used a bottle-shaped badge because of his hereditary office of Lord Great Chamberlain and Officer of the Ewrie; and the idea that the boar’s head cap referenced de Vere’s crest. Under scrutiny, this legend falls apart. The Elizabethan arms were pressed into numerous jugs and did not imply a personal connection with the Queen. Even more importantly, consultation with metals experts in the 1980s indicated that the boar’s head stopper is a 19th-century addition. Furthermore, the heraldic connection was wrong to begin with—the boar’s head is actually the crest of Campbell, Marquess of Lorne and de Vere’s crest would have been a boar passant. So, no, we do not have the Earl of Oxford’s jug, but I think it’s fascinating that people want there to be this connection with de Vere. And this brings me to recommend a new book, which I recently read, Contested Will by James Shapiro. Shapiro is an English professor at Columbia and what makes this book so great is that it is NOT another book about “who actually wrote Shakespeare.” Instead it is a fascinating look at the historical and literary circumstances that created the “authorship debate” in the first place. Shapiro examines why the competing claims about Shakespeare emerged when and how they did and what draws people, including such famous skeptics as Twain, Freud, and Keller, to these alternative Shakespeare hypotheses. How have views on fiction and autobiography changed in the past 400 years? How did the Higher Criticism employed in biblical analysis affect views on Shakespeare? What were the norms for 17th-century legal and theatrical documents and how do they affect how we understand the surviving references to Shakespeare? These are but a few of the topics Shapiro delves into as he tangles with the fascinating question of why people want to believe that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare. I found it to be a great and illuminating read; if you don’t want to take my word for it, check out these reviews.
People want to believe that someone else was the true author because they have a passion for the truth and the lies of academics will not stop them. This debate will not go away because the truth has not yet been told.
I received a very unfavorable impression from the writing approach and content of James Shapiro's 'Contested Will'. At the outset, Gulielmus Shakspere's will is not contested by anyone. The notion this person was Will(iam) Shakespeare, i.e., the nickname-pseudonym for the unknown author of the Shakespeare canon,is what is in dispute. The simple ambitious life of Shakspere is not. He could barely write his name. He was not "Shakespeare".
Shapiro approaches the literary dispute by ridiculing, faux-psycholanalyzing, and vilifying the (very respected) figures who had the insight to realize an enormous gap between the Stratford citizen's life and the Shakespeare literary achievement.
It was not spanned by "genius", since great and deep learning was inextricably involved in that achievement. Shakspere never evidenced that.
Nor is it to be answered by Shapiro's version of divine providence, the Shakespearean "imagination". Imagination has a starting point in reality, else no one could follow it, in this case the reality of the ruling class of Elizabethan England. Shapiro seeks to cloud or discount this feature of ordinary logic, in my view for a shameful ulterior motive, to eliminate any examination of the origins of the Shakespeare corpus related to any writer's existence, whoever that could have been. This reverses by fiat our understanding of art through its connection to the artist. It is false reasoning.
If Shapiro could achieve his eclipse of ordinary logic he would be a hero of the present Shakespeare establishment. It has a serious credibility deficit.
But no man can stop the search for truth, regardless of his motive or purpose. The Stratford mythology has become a comfortable dwelling that now looks out on inquiry into the truth as outrageous breaking and entering. This, it is not.
The circumstantial, linguistic, and biographical parallels between the life of the high noble Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, and the plays and poems of William Shake-Speare/Shakespeare have become extensively known. They will be recognized, if not by self-serving academics such as Shapiro, then by the readers and viewers of the art itself. This would be a healthy conclusion to the dispute. Then the academics, who conform to and comply with the mores and doctrines of their time, would have a different, more truthful, direction to take in their scholarship.
William Ray
wjray.net