far and few between: The Oxfordian Godfather (and Oxfordian Silence)

Monday, October 10, 2011

The Oxfordian Godfather (and Oxfordian Silence)

According to Peter W. Dickson . .

J. Thomas Looney did not include knowledge of the law in his original eighteen (18) indicators to help identify the author of the works attributed to 'Shakespeare'.
Looney, the 'Godfather of the Oxfordian movement', must have known the work of the barrister Sir George Greenwood, who became a member of the first Oxfordian-related organization in the 1920s in Britain (The Shakespeare Fellowship), and others before him, who noted the Bard's deep familiarity with the law, legal teminology, etc. which Stratfordians cannot easily explain with their candidate.
in his 1920 book "Shakespeare" Identified Looney postulated a second pen or second Bard -- whom he refused to identify -- to explain certain dramas that reflect the Bard's strong connection to the Lancashire region and the Lancastrian cause during the War of the Roses.
Looney came close to accepting in his subsequent debate in The National Review with the Derby advocate (MacDonald Lucas) in 1922-1923 that De Vere's own son-in-law (Derby) had a role.
Four Stratfordians -- Canino, Daugherty, Manley, and Ian Wilson -- seem in their books tantalizingly close to suggesting that Ferdinando Stanley (Lord Strange, patron of Lord Strange's Men) was the dramatist for the H6 Trilogy plus Richard III.
But they have to back off to minimize the import of Burghley's sudden rush to marry Oxford's daughter to William Stanley while Ferdinando's body was still warm.
Daugherty's book instead of having the phrase Shakespeare's Patron in the title could have easily read The Assassination of Shakespeare: Investigating the Death of the Fifth Earl of Derby.
Canino addresses the Stanley-Shakespeare relationship in Shakespeare and the Nobility where she underscores the massive power and wealth this family accumulated during the War of the Roses and the first 50-60 years of the Tudor era by always picking the winning side in unpredictable upheavals.
- The family invested heavily in the arts, theater, and world of entertainment, far more than Oxford.
- Their luck ran out in part because Ferdinando and William's mother (the Countess of Derby), who had an unrivaled legal claim to the English throne, was a spendthrift who nearly bankrupted the family.
- Canino gives more detail on the vicissitudes of the Stanleys over their long run at the top of the heap of British politics, but she recoils when it comes to the Oxford/de Vere-Derby marriage in 1595.
Greenblatt and Ackroyd, enthralled with the story about Fernando and Stratford for them had to be one of Fernando's actors/dramatists -- they only make passing reference to this marriage in 1595 of Fernando's brother to whom? to Burghley's granddaughter.
Greenblatt and Ackroyd 'choke and gag' at the thought of saying 'marriage to Oxford's daughter'; thus they keep hidden from readers any Oxfordian-Derby overlap or symbiosis.
the Stanleys with their vast estates and extravagant court -- what the Queen called "the Northern Court" -- were primed to take over after her death. This is clear and cannot be denied if you read Daugherty's new book.