A Gen Z Approach to the Shakespeare Authorship Question

So why does the Shakespeare Authorship Question exist anyway? And what makes people so convinced about the real identity of the author being Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford?

In this quick 7-minute video, Sam Meyers, a college senior linguistics major, gives a brief intro to the most important points and convincing details on the question. He points out flaws in the orthodox arguments commonly used to maintain a stranglehold on the narrative. Consider this a brief overview into what made Sam an Oxfordian, and what could make you one too, as it’s on all of us to prioritize the facts when reporting history.

[richardwaugaman]

Fantastic! A lot of relevant evidence packed into seven minutes!

[ZadenZane]

I strongly suspect that William Shakespeare didn't write the plays attributed to him but it has nothing to do with education or social class. What always baffled me was the total lack of any correspondence between Shakespeare's life and Shakespeare's works. Why are there are no surviving Shakespeare manuscripts AT ALL? Nothing linking Shakespeare to his supposed works. So much is known about Goethe, Dante and Chaucer *as writers* ー and yet almost nothing about Shakespeare, the greatest of them all! Weird.

[ronroffel]

I suppose the fast pace of the narration is for the benefit of Generation Z and their parents the "Millennials". Keep those videos coming.

[michellemelinger]

Thanks for creating this video. Well done!

[andrewyarosh]

Lots of great information and enjoyable visuals. Not so sure the supersonic speed of the narration is what is needed.

[michaeldelahoyde]

More precisely: William Shakspere did not write the plays by "William Shakespeare, " attributed to William Shakspere.

[SailOnFlyBy]

Excellent! That was fun and factual 👍🏼

[davekearney]

I wish the plays were written by the Stratford man, but there is very little evidence to indicate that. Too bad...it makes a nice story.

[ronroffel]

YouTube wouldn't let me edit my previous comment, so I will add something here. I am glad you included one of the Stratfordian tactics to debunk doubters: straw man arguments are not good scholarship, but one of the last refuges of those who have few facts to back up their theories. Another is the use of ad hominem attacks. And thanks for using John de Vere's portrait (2:38). Too many Oxfordians believe it is a portrait of Edward, but how did his hair go from dark to ginger? Good hair dye, perhaps?

[johnsmith-ehyc]

Son of the merchant class who never went to university and whose father got into financial difficulties. Born in a small town miles from the capital. I mean of course Ibsen, the second greatest playwright of all time

[tvfun]

There are historical moments in the Plays that take place after DeVere's death. How do Oxfordians reconcile that?

[brainimager]

Nice job!
Sharing with my Gen Z daughters now :)

[mancroft]

But why would Oxford do all that work and then give the credit to Shakespeare?

[headfez]

My sincere advice to this young scholar is to take the time to drill down on each of the claims he repeats and examine the available documents for William Shakespeare of Stratford. The actual historical record is more of a richly layered cake than it is a wedge of Swiss cheese - with many complex flavors to discover.

For example, it is easy to just declare that Shakespeare of Stratford was uneducated - but then there are no records of anyone attending the local grammar school for the period he would have attended. We do know who the teachers were, however, one of whom bequeathed a copy of the Latin-English dictionary, Bibliotheca Eliotae to, “the common use of the scholars of Stratford school” (Edger Fripp). Common sense dictates that the son of an alderman would have attended the school, along with Richard Field and Richard Quyny, the former being the first publisher of his work, the later writing a personal letter to him, which survives.

Shakespeare is unambiguously identified in many contemporaneous documents by that name, including one produced by the Herald, Raph Brooks who filed an unsuccessful complaint against the Grant of Arms originally awarded to Shakespeare’s father - with the taunting label, “Shakespeare the player by Garter”. Brooke’s was among the part of London society which looked down upon the acting profession and on the London professional theater. As it is, the Herald and noted historian, William Camden, defended the grant. The first linked document shows six pages from Heraldic documents. The leftmost pairs Shakespeare with the poet-playwright Michael Drayton (interesting coincidence, but “proving” nothing…). The next page to the right shows Brooks insult - while the fourth page shows that by mid-century, the insult has been transformed into a beautiful rendering of the Arms with Brooks label. The fifth page includes an insert from Stowe’s “Annals of England” (1614) where “excellent poets”, “all of whom in my own knowledge liveth together in the Queens’s raigne” are listed, “according to their priorities” - i.e. rank. Here, we have “M. William Shakespeare gentleman”. Do we know of another armigerous William Shakespeare?


Here is a compilation of other references.


Next is a compilation of noted scholar and author Diana Price’s widely discussed Literary Paper Trail - with added tables showing contemporaneous title page attributions, approximate number of attributions and how they were identified - i.e. by their initials or name.

While we could question the core design of the LPT - with a number of non playwrights (each with plenty of marks on the Paper Trail) - the document actually demonstrates the exact opposite of what Price intended. For example, on the notice of ‘Books owned, Borrowed of Given”, there is no evidence for 15 of the 25 “luminaries” accessing a book. You could form a literary all-star team of those for whom there is no surviving record - but no one seriously doubts that they did gain access to books. Such discovery is a fundamental problem in literary study.

[Short-Cipher]

At (6:33), the screen shows > _Just because the supposed publishing date was after 1604, doesn't mean it wasn't written before that year_ <, while the narrator says, "And therefore, it's not necessarily required that the author of the works lived past 1614." Oops.