Whose Testimony? 
April 17, 2001 

by Joe Sobran

     This is April, the month "Shakespeare" was 
born. The generally accepted author, William 
Shakspere (as the family name was usually spelled), 
was born around April 23, 1564. The real author, 
Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, was born on 
April 12, 1550. 

     Shakespeare lovers still debate about which of 
these men, William or Oxford, was the real author. 
My own book about the authorship question, ALIAS 
SHAKESPEARE, is about to be published across the 
Atlantic in a German translation. It's about time I 
got some international acclaim. 

     My contention has always been that the 
solution to the mystery lies in the Shakespeare 
Sonnets, published in 1609. There the poet tells a 
lot about himself: he's a public figure of high 
birth, but is over the hill, out of money, lame, 
and in disgrace. All this matches Oxford, one of 
the most scandalous figures of his day. It doesn't 
describe William, who was young, obscure, 
prosperous, and never notorious for anything. 

     Moreover, the poet tells a young man, almost 
surely the third earl of Southampton, that it's 
time for the youth to get married and beget an 
heir. Why William would care whether Southampton 
got married is anyone's guess, but Oxford had an 
excellent reason: Southampton was under pressure to 
marry Oxford's daughter! 

     Yet William was identified as the author 
"Shakespeare" by several acquaintances in the 1623 
Folio edition of the plays, and for the last three 
centuries all Shakespeare biographers have taken 
the Folio testimony as dogma. Unquestionable. 
Beyond doubt. Documentary proof. Solid fact. 

     But what if the Folio testimony was meant to 
mislead the public? Not a chance, say the 
professional scholars. It's dogma, you see. 

     But what if the Folio testimony conflicts with 
the poet's own testimony about himself in the 
Sonnets? Never mind, say the scholars. The Sonnets 
may be fictional. 

     Well, they certainly don't sound "fictional" 
at all. The great critic A.C. Bradley, quoted in my 
book, settled that question long ago. Not only are 
the Sonnets palpably sincere; if they tell a 
fictional story, they tell it with a clumsy 
incompetence that is totally out of character for 
the author of ROMEO AND JULIET and OTHELLO. They 
have the jaggedness of fact. 

     Here we have a curious situation. In the minds 
of the scholars, the Folio testimony continues to 
trump the poet's testimony. It should be the other 
way around, shouldn't it? You'd think what the 
great poet said about himself to his intimates, in 
his own matchless eloquence, would take priority 
over what others said about him for public 
consumption years after his death. 

     The great majority of the Sonnets are 
addressed to the "lovely boy"; only a few are 
written to the more famous dark mistress. The ones 
to the youth allude to painful facts in the poet's 
life which the youth would have known already; 
there is little chance of deception. Unlike the 
Folio testimony for William, these poems couldn't 
have been designed to fool the public -- and they 
seem not to have been intended for publication. 

     In fact the poet says he hopes "my name [will] 
be buried where my body is." How could he mean 
that, if "William Shakespeare," already appearing 
on popular and celebrated works, was his real name? 
The Folio testimony doesn't explain the Sonnets 
(which were omitted from the Folio); but the 
Sonnets may explain why the Folio testimony was 
necessary -- to keep Oxford's identity "buried." 

     In short, the scholars never even consider the 
possibility that the Folio testimony, rather than 
the Sonnets, may be "fictional." They base their 
conviction that William of Stratford was 
"Shakespeare" not on what the poet says about 
himself, but on what was said about him by others 
in implicit contradiction of his own heartfelt 
words. 

     By taking the Folio testimony instead of the 
Sonnets as their crucial document, the scholars 
have made their naive faith in the Folio witnesses 
a methodological postulate, which requires them to 
discount any conflicting evidence. Common sense 
would seem to dictate that the poet's biography 
begin, at least, with his autobiographical poems -- 
and if what these poems tell us conflicts with the 
Folio testimony, so much the worse for that 
testimony. 

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