Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
THE LYRIC POETRY OF EDWARD DE VERE
II
[153] Of rhetorical forms common to the two sets of writings, a minor point is a fondness for stanzas formed of a succession of interrogatives for the expression of strong emotion. Indeed, in the De Vere work, we have an entire sonnet formed of a series of questions. It is the only sonnet in the collection; and the most important point about it is that it is in the form which we now call the Shakespearean sonnet. This is an important matter and must receive attention in another connection. We shall, therefore, give a stanza in the interrogative form from another poem.
"And shall I live on earth to be her thrall?
And shall I live and serve her all in vain?
And shall I kiss the steps that she lets fall?
And shall I pray the gods to keep, the pain
From her that is so cruel still?
No, no, on her work all your will."Similar series of interrogations occur here and there throughout the most impassioned parts of "Lucrece"; and in the Shakespearean part of "Henry VI," part 3 (III. 3), we have the fo1lowing:
"Did I forget that by the house of York
My father came untimely to his death?
Did I let pass the abuse done to my niece?
Did I impale him with the regal crown?
Did I put Henry from his native right?
And am I guerdon'd at the last with shame?"
(A six-lined fragment of blank verse.)It is difficult to read these two sets of lines side by side without a feeling that both are from the same pen, and when, in the same play, we find Queen Margaret answering her own question with a repeated negative, resembling the last line of Oxford's stanza, the resemblance is most striking.
"What's worse than murderer that I may name it?
No, no, my heart will burst an if I speak."
(3 Henry VI, v. 5.)[154] Continuing these comparisons of style we would ask the reader to turn to "Lucrece," and commence reading from stanza 122, which begins:
"Why should the worm intrude the maiden; bud?"
and read on to stanza 141, which begins
"Let him have time to tear his curled hair."
In addition to the two stanzas which illustrate the succession of questions just dealt with, he will notice quite a number of stanzas in which each line, in its opening phrase, is but the repetition of a single form. Stanza 127, for example, has lines beginning: "Thou makest ... .. Thou blow'st," "Thou smother'st," "Thou foul abettor," "Thou plantest," "Thou ravisher."
Stanza 128: "Thy secret pleasure,"' "Thy private feasting," etc.
Stanza 135 : "To unmask falsehood," "To stamp the seal," etc. Similar stanzas are also found in other parts of the poem.
Stanza 82: "By knighthood," "By her untimely fears," etc.
Stanza 95: "Thou nobly base," "Thou their fair life," etc.
Or, in stanzas 106 and 107, where it takes the form of alternate lines: "He like a thievish dog," "She like a wearied lamb," etc.
Now De Vere's poem from which we last quoted is composed of six six-lined stanzas almost entirely built up in this way: the stanza already given and also:
Stanza 1:
"The trickling tears," "The secret sighs," etc.Stanza 3:
"The stricken deer," "The haggard hawk," etc.Stanza 4:
"She is my joy," "She is my pain," etc.[155] Then, as a final comparison of verses so constructed, we shall place side by side the last stanza in the series from "Lucrece" (114), with the last stanza in this poem of De Vere's: the stanza in which the closing poet, or respective poets, wind up with a malediction:
Shakespeare's "Lucrece"; stanza 141:
"Let him have time to tear his curled hair.
Let him have time against himself to rave,
Let him have time of Time's help! to despair,
Let him have time to live- a loathed slave,
Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave,
And time to see one that by alms doth live,
Disdain to him, disdained scraps W give."De Vere's "Rejected Lover":
"And let her feel the power of all your might,
And let her have her most desire with speed,
And let her pine away both day and night,
And let her moan and none lament her need,
And let all those that shall her see
Despise her state and pity me."Again we repeat, if these are not both from the same pen, never were there two poets living at the same time whose mentality and workmanship bore so striking a resemblance. Traces of this kind of work may, no doubt, be found in Chaucer, and there can be little doubt that De Vere was under the influence of Chaucer's poetry; it is also one of the literary forms he seems to have learnt from Lord Vaux, to which reference has already been made, but in De Vere, and in Shakespeare's "Lucrece," it assumes a marked development, and in the verses just cited, produces a startling correspondence quite unparalleled, so far as we know, in the poetry of the time.
So striking is the similarity of the two stanzas quoted above that it hardly seems possible to further strengthen the case they represent; and yet, in the stanza immediately [156] preceding that quoted from "Lucrece" the following line occurs:
"To make him moan, but pity not his moans."
This is almost identical with De Vere's line:
"And let her moan and none lament her need."
The former is hardly entitled to be called even a paraphrase of the latter, so nearly a copy is it. Again we point out that we have not had to search the pages of "Shakespeare" to find the selected line, but that it stands in immediate juxtaposition to the particular stanza under consideration. A comparison of these two verses, taken along with the particular line, entitles us to say that "Shakespeare" was either a kind of literary understudy of De Vere's, guilty of a most unseemly plagiarism from his chief, or he was none other than the Earl of Oxford himself.
As an example of a very unusual literary form of De Vere's, reproduced in Shakespeare, we give the following:
De Vere:
"What plague is greater than the grief of mind?
The grief of mind that eats in every vein,
In every vein that leaves such clots behind,
Such clots behind as breed such bitter pain.
So bitter pain that none shall ever find
What plague is greater than the grief of mind?"This repetition of the last phrase of each line in the succeeding line occurs in "The Comedy of Errors" (I. 2):
Shakespeare:
"She is so hot because the meat is cold;
The meat is cold because you come not home;
You come not home because you have no stomach;
You have no stomach having broke your fast;
But we that know what 'tis to watch and pray
Are penitent for your default to-day."[157] (The reader will notice that this is again one of the six-lined passages in which Shakespeare frequently indulges, even when he does not work them into finished stanzas.)
No one will deny that each line in the above stanza of De Vere's is eminently Shakespearean in diction, whilst the idea and sentiment are quite familiar to Shakespeare readers. "The grief of mind," or, as we would say, the distress that has its roots in mental constitution, temperament, or mood, rather than in external misfortune, is a thoroughly Shakespearean idea. We have it in the opening words of the "Merchant of Venice":
"In sooth I know not why I am so sad,
It wearies me, you say it wearies you,
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born
I am to learn. And such a want-wit sadness makes of me
That I have much ado to know myself."We have it again in "Richard II" in the dialogue between the Queen and Bushy (Act II. 2):
"I know no cause
Why I should welcome such a guest as grief.
My inward soul with nothing trembles.
Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows
Which shows like grief itself but is not so.
Howe'er it be
I cannot be but sad; so heavy said
As, though on thinking on no thought I think,
Makes me with heavy nothing faint and shrink.
For nothing hath begot my something grief,
Or something hath the nothing that I grieve."All this is eminently suggestive of that undercurrent of constitutional melancholy which has been remarked in "Shakespeare," and is quite a noticeable feature of the Earl of Oxford's poetry.
In Shakespeare's sonnets there occur several references [158] to the disrepute into which the writer had fallen, along with an expressed desire that his name should be buried with his body - a fact quite inconsistent with either the Stratfordian or the Baconian theory of authorship, but a strong confirmation of the theory that William Shakspere was but a mask for some one who desires personal effacement. From those expressions we need only quote one:
"When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I, all alone, beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
(Sonnet 29)When the reader has made himself familiar with the numerous passages in the sonnets dealing with the same theme (sonnets 71, 72, 81, 110, 111, 112, 121), let him compare them, and especially the words italicized above, with the following from De Vere's poem on the loss of his good name, published between 1576 and 1578:
"Fram'd in the front of forlorn hope past all recovery,
I stayless stand to abide! the shock of shame and infamy.
* * *
My spirites, my heart, my wit and force in deep distress are drown'd,
The only loss of my good name is, of those griefs the ground.
* * *
Help crave I must, and crave I will, with tears upon my face,
Of all that may in heaven or hell, in earth or air be found,
To wail with me this loss of mine, as of those griefs the ground."Personally I find it utterly impossible to read this poem of Edward De Vere's and the sonnets in which "Shakespeare" harps upon the same theme, without an overwhelming sense of there being but one mind behind the two utterances. Indeed this fact of "Shakespeare" being a man who had lost his good name ought to have appeared in our original characterization. Inattention, and some remnants of the influence of the Stratfordian tradition, which has [159] treated this insistent idea as a mere poetic pose, probably accounts for its not appearing there.
Edward de Vere's poem on the loss of his good name, and Shakespeare's sonnets on the same theme, are the only poems of their kind with which we have met in our reading of Elizabethan poetry - the only poems of their kind, we believe, to be found in English literature. The former, written at the age of twenty-six, and whilst still smarting under the sense of immediate loss, is more intense and passionate in its expression, and is full of the unrestrained impetuosity of early manhood. The latter is more the restrained expression of a matured man who had in some measure become accustomed to the loss; and would as a matter of fact, whoever the writer, be written when Oxford was forty years of age or over. Even then Oxford's words, "I stayless stand" are almost repeated in Shakespeare's "I all alone"; Oxford's "Tears upon my face" seems referred to in Shakespeare's "Beweep my outcast state"; and Shakespeare 's "Troubling deaf heaven with bootless cries" is exactly descriptive of what Oxford did in his early poem. Is this all mere chance coincidence?
A significant detail in the two poems under review is the proneness to floods of tears which both illustrate. This involuntary manifestation of a supersensitive nature and a highly strung temperament is quite a marked feature of De Vere's poetry and is repeated more than once in the "Shakespeare" sonnets. It is curious, also, that "Shakespeare's" two heroes of tragic love, Romeo and Othello, though differing in many particulars, are both subject to the same weakness. The play of "Othello," we shall have to show later, deals with events which, as we believe, occurred about the time when Oxford's poem was written; and it is a remarkable circumstance that it is this play which contains Shakespeare's well-worn lines on the loss of good name:
[160] "Good name in man or woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash,
But he who filches from me, my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed."And so, first one thing and then another fits into its place with all the unity of an elaborate mosaic the moment we introduce Edward de Vere as, the author of the Shakespeare writings. Is this too the merest coincidence?
Of works in a totally different vein take now this from a poem of De Vere's:
"Faction that ever dwells
In court where wit excels
Hath set defiance.
Fortune and love have sworn
That they were never born
Of one alliance.
* * *
Nature thought good,
Fortune should ever dwell
In court where wits excel,
Love keep the wood.
* * *
So to the wood went I,
With Love to live and die,
Fortune's forlorn."Shakespeare's play, "As You Like It," it will be recognized, is but a dramatic expansion of this idea, and contains such significant touches as the following:
This from the dialogue between Rosalind and Celia (Act I, s. 2):
"Let us mock the good housewife Fortune."
* * *
"Nay now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature."
* * *
"Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune." [161]
* * *
"Peradventure this is not Fortune's work but Nature's, who perceiveth our natural wits too dull."Later we have the Duke's remark and the reply of Amiens (Act II, s. 1):
"Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?"
* * *
"Happy is your grace
That can translate the stubborness of
Fortune Into so quiet and so, sweet a style?"It is not merely that there appear together the ideas of Nature, Fortune, Love, court-life and life in the woods, in the two sets of writings under review - ideas which may possibly be as recurrent in other writings of the times as they, are in Shakespeare's. It is rather the similarity in the peculiar colligation of ideas, and also the correspondence of such chance expressions as De Vere's "Fortune's, Forlorn" and Shakespeare's "Out of suits with Fortune," which give a stamp of fundamental unity to the two works.
There are minor points of similarity, which though insignificant in themselves, help to make up that general impression of common authorship which comes only with a close familiarity with the poems as a whole. Of these we may specify the recurrence of what seems to us a curious appeal for pity. From two separate poems of De Vere's we have the following:
"And let all those that shall her see
Despise her state and pity me.""The more my plaints I do resound
The less she pities me."And from Shakespeare's sonnets we take these:
"Pity me and wish I were renewed" (111).
"The manner of my pity-wanting pain" (140).
"Thine eyes I love and they as pitying me" (132).
"But if thou catch my hope, turn back to me,
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind." (143)[162] In making this parallel between the work of Edward de Vere and Shakespeare we shall turn now to an example which carries us back to the beginning of our enquiry. Starting with Shakespeare's lyric, we fastened upon "Venus and Adonis" as furnishing the connecting link between the two sections of work. Reverting now to this poem we find, in the first place, it contains all the imagery of these early works of De Vere's and then one of the most striking parallels we have noticed so far.
In "Venus and Adonis" we have the following verses on the "Echo." Venus is bemoaning her troubles and the echo is answering her (Stanzas 139-142):
"And now she beats her heart whereat it groans,
That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,
Make verbal repetition of her moans;
Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:
'Ay me!' she cries, and twenty times 'Woe, woe!'
And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.
"She marking them begins a wailing note,
And sings extemporally a woeful ditty;
How love makes young men thrall and old men dote,
How love is wise in folly, foolish witty:
Her heavy anthem still concludes in 'Woe.'
And still the choir of echoes answers 'So.'
* * *
"For who hath she to spend the night withal,
But idle sounds resembling parasites,
Like shrill-tongued tapsters, answering every call,
Soothing the humour of fantastic wights?
She says 'Tis so'; they answer all, 'Tis so';
And would say after her if she said 'No!'"(We observe in passing in the second stanza a repetition of the wit and folly paradox.)
We shall now give Edward de Vere's echo poem in full. It is one of the most quaintly conceived and most skilfully executed pieces of versification, and hardly admits of curtailment. To enjoy it fully the reader must remember that "Vere," retaining its French sound, is pronounced somewhat like the word [163] "bare," and the last syllable in words like "fever" and "quiver" must, in this instance, be given the same full sound. Oxford's name, we may remark, frequently appears in old records as "Ver."
VISION OF A FAIR MAID, WITH ECHO VERSES.
Sitting alone upon my thoughts in melancholy mood,
In sight of sea, and at my back an ancient hoary wood,
I saw a fair young lady come her secret fears to wail,
Clad all in colour of a nun, and covered with a veil.
Yet (for the day was calm and clear) I might discern her face,
As one might see a damask rose hid under crystal glass.
Three times with her soft hand full hard on her left side she knocks,
And sighed so sore as might have made some pity in, the rocks.
From sighs and shedding amber tears into sweet song she brake,
When thus the Echo answer'd her to every word she spake..
Oh heavens, who was the first that bred in me this fever? - Vere.
Who was the first that gave the wound, whose fear I wear for ever? - Vere.
What tyrant, Cupid, to my harm, usurps thy golden quiver? - Vere.
What wight first caught this heart, and, can from bondage it deliver? - Vere.
Yet who doth most adore this wight, oh hollow caves tell true? - You.
What nymph deserves his liking best yet doth in sorrow rue? - You.
What makes him not reward good will with some reward or ruth? - Youth.
What makes him show besides his birth such pride and such untruth? - Youth.
May I his favour match with love if he my love will try? - Ay.
May I requite his birth with faith? Then faithful will I die? - Ay.
And I that knew this lady well, said, Lord, how great a miracle,
To her how Echo told the truth as true as Phoebus oracle.After studying these two poems carefully and comparing specially the words in italics, then recalling De Vere's poem on "Women" turning upon the simile of the haggard hawk and keeping in mind that in De Vere's Echo poem we have a young woman making the caves re-echo with her lover's [164] name, consider now the speech that "Shakespeare" puts into the mouth of Juliet:
"Hist! Romeo hist! Oh for a falconer's voice
To lure this tassel-gentle back again.
Bondage is hoarse and may not speak aloud,
Else would I tear the cave where Echo lies
And make her airy tongue more hoarse than mine
With repetition of my Romeo's name." (II, 2.)
(A six-lined fragment of blank verse.)In presence of such a correspondence in the work as these verses present, it seems almost like a waste of effort to add further comparisons; and yet, so redolent of De Vere's work is this particular play of Shakespeare's that we feel compelled to draw attention to parallel passages like the following:
De Vere:
(1) "'that with the careful culver, climbs the worn and withered tree,
To entertain my thoughts, and there may hap to moan,
That never am less idle, lo! than when I am alone."Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet," I. 1)
"He stole into the covert of the wood
I, measuring his affections by my own,
That most are busied when they're most alone."De Vere:
"Patience perforce is such a pinching pain."
Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet," I. 5)
"Patience perforce makes my flesh tremble."
De Vere:
"His bitter ball is sugared bliss.
Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet," I. 1)
[165] "A choking gall and a preserving sweet
Now seeming sweet convert to bitter gall." (I. 5.)De Vere:
"O cruel hap and hard estate,
That forceth me to love my foe."Shakespeare ("Romeo and Juliet," I. 2)
"Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathed enemy."Returning now to the "Venus" echo verses we find that they are immediately followed by this:
"Lo! here the lark, weary of nest,
From his, moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold,
That cedar tops and hills seem burnished gold" (s. 143).To this add the following line from "Romeo and Juliet"
"It was the lark the herald of the morn." (III. 5).
Now compare this Shakespearean work with the following from De Vere:
"The lively lark stretched forth her wings
The messenger of morning bright;
And with her cheerful voice did sing
The Day's approach discharging Night.
When that Aurora blushing red
Descried the guilt of Thetis' bed."This again suggests the following from "Romeo and Juliet":
"Many a morning hath he there been seen
* * *
But all too soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed, etc." (I. 1.)[166] "Romeo and Juliet" also contains two separate six-lined stanzas (on the Lord Vaux model), and also what are probably the first of the Shakespearean sonnets - which are, as already mentioned, identical in form with the only sonnet that appears in De Vere's early poems.
Another matter, which is not poetical, deserves to be mentioned here. It must have struck many people as strange that Juliet at the time of her marriage should be represented as a mere child of fourteen. There is no special point in the play to necessitate having one so young for the tragical part she had to play. Extraordinarily young as she was, however, she was the actual age of De Vere's wife at the time of their marriage: the ceremony being merely postponed until her fifteenth birthday was reached.
We must now recall the fact that when we selected De Vere as the possible author of Shakespeare's plays and poems, and found that he satisfied the essential conditions of our original characterization, we had no knowledge whatever of these poems of his, almost every line of which we now find paralleled in Shakespeare. To discover such a correspondence in the poems under such circumstances furnishes, to the discoverer at any rate, a much greater weight of evidence than if he had been acquainted with the writings at the outset. It will be observed that, in making these comparisons, the passages quoted from Shakespeare which are suggestive of Oxford's early poetry belong mainly to what is accepted as Shakespeare's early work, such as "Venus," "Lucrece," "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and "Romeo and Juliet." On the other hand the traces of the De Vere poetry in the later Shakespearean work are very slight. This, it will also be remembered, is in precise accordance with the principle which guided us in the first stages of our search, namely, that it would be the poet's early work which would appear under his own name, and that it would be found to link itself on to the earliest Shakespearean [167] work. Again, as the De Vere collection is only a small one, it will be seen, from the number of poems quoted, that practically the whole of the De Vere work is deposited, as it were, in Shakespeare. The evidence furnished by such parallelism must not, however, be viewed alone; it must be connected specially with the testimony which literary authorities have given us as to the specific qualities of De Vere's poetry adduced in the preceding chapter. It must also be connected with these important considerations of chronology which allow the early career of Oxford to, fit in exactly with later production of the "Shakespeare" dramas, and to all this must also be added the fact of his presenting in his person so many of the conditions and attributes which recent Shakespearean study has assigned to the great dramatist. The reader should then ask himself whether it would be common sense to keep on believing that all this is mere accident.
If from reading the echo poem of De Vere with its quaint and delicate humour, the reader will turn to such verses as those beginning,
"Fain would I sing, but fury makes me mad,"
or,
"Fram'd in the front of forlorn hope,"
and then again recall the fact that Edward de Vere, in his work for the stage, is reported as being "the best in comedy" in his day, he will get an idea of the striking combination of humour and tragedy in the nature and work of this remarkable man. All the startling contrast of high comedy and profound tragedy which stands out from the pages of Shakespeare finds its counterpart in the work of De Vere, as we shall also find it does in his actual life. With this in mind, let it be recalled that, at the very moment when Shakespeare was writing the sonnets, with all their tragic depth, and with hardly a trace of lightheartedness, revealing a soul darkened by disappointment, disillusionment and self-condemnation, he was also preparing for the, stage plays which for three hundred years have, by their exquisite fun, [168] supplied the world with inexhaustible laughter. We read some of the sonnets and we feel that the writer must have been the most despairing of pessimists.
"Give notice to the world that, I am gone
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell."We turn to the comedies he wrote for the stage, and we think of him as the merriest of men. Which was the real Shakespeare? The Shakespeare revealed in the sonnets or the Shakespeare revealed in the comedies? Probably neither by itself. The sonnets are, however, direct personal poetry; the comedies are literature and stage plays. The natural assumption, therefore, is that in his inmost life he was more the Shakespeare of the sonnets than of the comedies. If, therefore, we suppose that "Shakespeare" is Edward de Vere, we find him expressing himself directly on the point in the following lines:
"I am not as I seem to be,
For when I smile I am not glad,
A thrall, although you count, me free,
I, most in mirth, most pensive sad.
I smile to hide my bitter spite,
As Hannibal that saw in sight,
His country's, soil with Carthage town,
By Roman force defaced down."We give the entire stanza in order that, in passing, its structure may be noted. It will be seen that it is identical in metre and rhyme with Shakespeare's poem. "When daisies pied and violets blue," with which "Love's Labour's Lost" finishes (leaving out, of course, the interjected word "cuckoo"). The observant reader may notice, too, that the latter poem is preceded by the words, "Ver, begin"; and remembering that Oxford's name was, very frequently spelt "Ver," he will be able to imagine the elation which would have appeared in certain quarters, if, in this the first Shakespearean play, for such it is considered, there had occurred the words, "Bacon, begin."
[169] Another stanza in the same poem of De Vere's runs thus:
"I Hannibal that smile for grief
And let you Ceasar's tears suffice,
The one that laughs at his mischief
The other all for joy that cries.
I smile to see me scorned so,
You weep for joy to see me woe."This is at once suggestive of the lines in "Lear" (I. 4):
"Then they for sudden joy did weep
And I for sorrow sung."Returning to our theme, one of the most penetrating of observers amongst writers on Shakespeare, Richard Bagehot, although believing in the essential gaiety of the poet's nature, remarks that "all through his works there is a certain tinge of musing sadness pervading, and as it were softening their gaiety," exactly as Edward de Vere described himself in the former of the above stanzas. This is just what we might expect to find in a writer whose life had been saddened, but who preserved by a deliberate effort his appreciation of fun; whose self-command enabled him to throw aside the burden of melancholy and revel for a while in the enjoyment of his own lighter faculties, but who, throughout it all, never quite forgot the sadness that lay at the bottom of his soul, and who, when the special effort was over, would swing back upon himself with an intensified sense of his own inner sufferings. These are just the conditions to yield that remarkable combination of tragedy and comedy which distinguishes Shakespeare, and they are the conditions, too, most likely to be furnished by the nature and circumstances of Edward de Vere.
Viewing the lyric work of Edward de Vere as a whole we feel justified in claiming that it contains much more than a possible promise of the work of Shakespeare. What is wanting to it is the vast and varied knowledge of human nature depicted in the Shakespearean dramas. This [170] demands a wide and intense experience of life; a life involving loss as well as gain; and the years intervening between the two sets of works, years in which he was busy with his troupes of play-actors, the "Oxford Boys," would certainly be full of such experience to him. And if we assume the identity of Oxford with "Shakespeare" it must be conceded that one misses from the personal poems of Shakespeare, the sonnets, certain sweet and "gracious" touches contained in the early personal poems of De Vere, whilst one meets also with some harsher and more defiant notes. The iron had evidently entered more deeply into his soul, his nature had become in a measure "subdued to what it worked in, like the dyer's hand," but out of the tragedy of his own life were born the imperishable masterpieces in tragic drama that will probably remain for all time the supreme glory of English literature.
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In working out our investigations we found, first of all, a remarkable set of coincidences between the circumstances of Edward de Vere and the conditions which we supposed to pertain to the writer of Shakespeare's dramas. Our last chapter showed us an equally remarkable set of coincidences connected with the general literary position and the dominant qualities of Oxford's poetry. The chapter we are now finishing, the most critical in the piecing together of the case, reveals what we claim to be a most extraordinary correspondence in the details of the work.
When, therefore, the poems of De Vere shall have be come familiar to English readers, it will not be surprising if those who are thoroughly intimate with Shakespeare's work are able to detect much more striking points of similarity than any that are here indicated. It must, however, be kept in mind that the value of these correspondences depends not so much upon the striking character of a few of them, which might conceivably be matched elsewhere, but upon the cumulative effect of them all. Taken in their [171] mass then, we believe that sufficient has already been made out, which, supported as it is by the other lines of our argument, leaves little room for doubt that the problem of the authorship of Shakespeare's works has at last been solved. Valuable as is the other evidence which we have been able to collect, we might have hesitated for a very long while before venturing, on the strength of that alone, to assume the responsibility of claiming publicly that we had succeeded in identifying Shakespeare. Now, however, that we have been able to examine the early poetry of De Vere, and subject it to a careful comparison with the early Shakespearean work, it has become impossible to hesitate any longer in proclaiming Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, as the real author of "Shakespeare's" works.