I've been following this debate over William Shakespeare's authorship of his plays for many years now and find it all very interesting. This book offers some new food for thought that I found compelling. For being such a famous playwright, I have often wondered that more records concerning his plays and life can't be found! I wonder if there will ever be definitive proof either way?

The book starts from the premise the Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, is actually the writer of Shakespeare's plays. The evidence for this is pretty compelling but is far better covered in others books, particularly The Mysterious Mr. Shakespeare.

This book makes additional allegations about the Earls life, his involvement in the literary world of the time, and the veiled messages in the plays. While there is lots of good information here, and clearly the author has read lots of Shakespearean criticism, I found the book to be lacking in many ways.

Some of his assumptions are either unjustified or just plain wrong. He certainly doesn't do that good a job of proving his allegations about the Earl's life that are new. That's a problem when you are breaking new ground for a theory that already is not widely accepted.

Beauclerk also makes blanket assumptions about writers' unconscious messages and that an overriding mythology is underneath their work. I don't necessarily agree with either of these assumptions, nor does he show them in any general way, he just assumes that the reader agrees with them.

Because of all these assumptions he focuses on Hamlet far more than any other of the plays and his interpretation is weird and rather Freudian.

A further problem is the organization of the book, it's all over the place. Much of the time it follows a chronological organization, but into that he brings digressions covering the whole chronology of the plays, long sections on Hamlet and other stuff that makes the whole thing confused.

I was very excited to read this book and very disappointed by it,.

Anyone who has more than a cursory knowledge of Shakespeare has heard the rumors that the glove maker from Stratford-Upon-Avon may not have authored the plays that bear his name. In this book, Beauclerk takes the side of the Oxfordians who claim that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true Bard. The author of this book offers up compelling evidence framed around the political, economical, and even social realities of the time.

I recommend this book to Shakespearean scholars,--even if your views are antipodal to Beauclerk--anglophiles, and students of British literature. You may find yourself surprised by what you find within these pages.

Before reading this book I was loosely acquainted with the theory that the works of William Shakespeare were not penned by the "Bard of Avon" but were in reality written by others. This belief is accentuated by the fact that relatively few records of his private life have survived and there are also remarkably sparse contemporary recordings featuring him in the diaries and notes of the period. There is also no written contemporary description of his appearance.

Doubts have long existed regarding the authorship of the works attributed to him with alternative candidates being proposed that include the likes of Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon and the subject of this book Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. The latter is known as the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship and has become the most popular theory since the 1920's.

It must firstly be said that despite the evidence presented in this book the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars and literary historians still attest to the fact that Shakespeare not Oxford was the author of the celebrated plays and sonnets that have been attributed to his name and the Oxfordians do propose a conspiracy theory that believes that records were falsified to ensure the identity of the real author being Oxford was never revealed.

So when reading this book a big subliminal warning sign is ever present and the many theories propounded in the book included the allegation that Oxford was the secret son of Elisabeth I need to back checked and cross referenced against other sources. Having said this the book is a tour de force and makes for a compelling and riveting read encompassing not only the content and context of many of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets but also delves into the history of the Tudors and the politics of that time.


Scholarly and well written with a wealth of supporting evidence, this is certainly a richly thought provoking book that is engrossingly enjoyable and if nothing else it would lead you onto other books on the subject. The problem is of course is it true or just another high class conspiracy theory book. You decide?.

Very interesting and thought provoking. I've read books about this era before and this is a whole new take.

Excellent! Through and easy to use o read .
Review scheduled for publication date .

This book was interesting and I enjoyed certain parts. But overall it seemed, for the most part, a little unbelievable.