Edward or Will?

Down the Primrose Path

—Poems by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

—Public Domain Photos
 

BED TRICK
(All’s Well That Ends Well, Acts Three and Four)

The Earl of Oxford forsook his lady’s bed, [but] 
the father of Lady Anne [William Cecil, Lord Burghley] 
by stratagem contrived that her husband should 
unknowingly sleep with her, believing her to be 
another woman…
                —Thomas Wright, in The History and
                   Topography of the County of Essex (1836)
 

Did I only dream I slept with you? The room
Pitch-black, the drapes drawn tight around the window…
Drink-bludgeoned, I fell haycock, I fell windrow
Onto your bed. Yet many a drunken groom
Can see with hands in the dark less well than I.
I fingered the rent in the skirt of your bed-jacket,
Pickpocket with index penetrating your placket,
Avowing upright behavior in that spy,
As fitly becomes the consort of a whore.
Upon my haunch, our Rockingham, Buckingham act
Shuts innocence and peace outside the dark door,
Forever seals us in as vile a pact
As ever did hot red wax. Thus runs my life:
With you did I sleep, loose wench, or with you, wife?


(first pub. in WTF! from Rattlesnake Press)

SWEET COUNTESS ANNE
Lady Oxford to her estranged husband, Edward de Vere
 
My lord, it pains me deeply to learn how
Displeased you are with me, I know not why.
No tears of mine stain paper, and yet now,
To know one lost in sorrow, hear me sigh.
If you trust me not, then I pray you heed
Your own misgivings touching servants, friends,
All those who claim to love, yet in worst need
Desert you, telling tales that serve their ends.
You think ill of my father, mother; blame
May be theirs, as ’tis mine. And in the dark,
Some whisper, one did lure you to her shame
To bed with her for whom you feel scant spark.
Yet your small offspring from some deed was born.
For her sake, and your own, free me from scorn. 

SPEECH FROM A “SERENE BUST”

The bust, too—there in the Stratford Church.  The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust […] with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle, expression of a bladder.                
           —Mark Twain

… He wouldn’t be debauched, and if invited to writ[e]: he was in pain.               

           —John Aubrey, from notes on Shakespeare (late 17th century)


Silent I was and silent I will be.
How else did I hold New Place without fear?
And where were my thanks from Him, that were my fee?
Keep up an earl’s false front with my shut lip?
Silver-gilt bowl for those small-town, thankless tasks
Purveying wool, leather, dunning your gawk-and-geck
Ewe-herders for shillings and pence—lawsuits, tra-la!
Repute from my mute carved image, bust raised high.
Escutcheon? Such as a gentleman displays! 

IDLE MIND

“[I] never am less idle, lo, than when I am alone.”
                —Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford

I, measuring his affections by my own,
That most are busied when they're most alone,
Pursued my humour not pursuing his,
And gladly shunn’d who gladly fled from me.
                —Romeo and Juliet, Act One, Scene One


He benefits from idling, left alone;
It gives him space to breathe, and time for thought.
But is this not the means that rakes the groan
From deep within this one (so close to nought)?
What stirs the crowded brain to work toward wit
Prods that fierce buzzing-beehive noise to sound:
Which, enemy to that mind, that hive, will flit,
Dart, make to spin one’s head as if it’s wound
In strips or yards or lengths of fabric tight,
So tight that it fits close as does a mask;
Yet let one speak to him, and let in light;
Wherefore why live closed up as in a cask?
Conflicted mind, all storm, receives the Muse;
Yet open to life, or poetry refuse.

His conscious and unconscious: both employed,
These bring our Oxford to the mind of Freud.*


*Sigmund Freud wrote to J. T. Looney with words of congratulation on having found a credible Shakespeare, one who “has almost everything,” whereas the Stratford man has “almost nothing” to support his having been the author.

J. THOMAS LOONEY’S EIGHTEEN CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING SHAKESPEARE, VERSIFIED*
(A Mnemonic)

Of recognized genius, and mysterious.
Aren’t you surprised? The teensiest smidge more curious?

Apparent eccentricity.
Like a Scarlet Pimpernel’s duplicity?

A man apart, and unconventional.
What part compulsive? What part intentional?

Apparent inferiority.
Aberrant interiority?

An Englishman of literary tastes.
To him, unliterary lives are wastes.

Enthusiasm for drama.
He must chronicle life’s trauma.

Contrast to the orthodox Shakespeare.
The contest strips the Stratford man’s veneer.

Known as a lyric poet.
With the specimens to show it.

Classical education.
His labor, our edification.

A man with feudal connections.
Thinks the upstarts have venal convictions.

Shakespeare an aristocrat.
What’s illogical about that?

Lancastrian sympathies.
Lancastrian histories, composed like symphonies.

Italian enthusiasm.
You mean Renaissance humanism?

A follower of sport.
Knows just how great nobles cavort.

Susceptible to the power of music.
Dislike sweet sounds? Not I, but you, sick.

Loose and improvident in money matters.
So loose, the plays pile up, while the money scatters.

Doubtful, conflicted in attitude toward woman.
Sweet passion, wrath, remorse, gratitude? (He’s human).

Of Catholic leanings but touched with skepticism.
Biblical, but inside, some split or schism.


* These criteria, developed largely from internal evidence in the plays and poems, and their recurring concerns, should be applied to anyone who would lay claim to the “Shakespeare” works. (Oxford passed with flying colors in Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identified of 1920.)

This March is the centenary of J. Thomas Looney's Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, the book that started a whole revolution in Shakespeare studies (and has endured the slings and arrows of outraged traditionalists, without anyone mounting a truly credible counterattack). So, as Looney himself might say, "hot-foot" upon the Baxian poems came an unexpected surge of Oxford-themed verse... hope this mix of old and new is not amiss. For more, see "Celebrating the Oxfordian Centennial: 1920-2020 | Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship" (shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/shakespeare-identified-100/).

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

So he that takes the pain to pen the book
Reaps not the gifts of goodly golden muse:
But those gain that who on the work shall look,
And from the sour the sweet by skill doth choose.
For he that beats the bush the bird not gets,
But who sits still and holdeth fast the nets.

—Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

___________________

Our thanks to Tom Goff for adding a little Shakespeare/de Vere class to the Kitchen today!

For the true story of how one academic found joy and peace by becoming an “Oxfordian” (a believer in Edward de Vere as Shakespeare), go to www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-neurochemical-self/201811/shakespeare-s-true-identity-helped-me-understand-myself/.

For the website of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, including 20 of de Vere’s poems, see shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/twenty-poems-de-vere/.

No April-Foolin’, April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Here’s a site to get you into the spirit: poets.org/national-poetry-month/.

What do you think? Are you an Oxfordian?

—Medusa

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