Surveying the field of Shakespeare studies in the early pages of ‘Shakespeare’ Identified, Looney approves of the growing ‘tendency to put aside the old conception of a writer creating everything by the vigour of his imagination, and to regard the writings as reflecting the personality and experiences of the author’. Cecil Palmer’s comments about the state of Looney’s submitted manuscript appear in Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletter (March 1952). For Congreve’s influence on Looney’s view of Elizabethan politics, see Richard Congreve, Elizabeth of England (London, 1862), and his Historical Lectures (London, 1900). Strachey’s remarks about The Tempest are quoted from Lytton Strachey, ‘Shakespeare’s Final Period’, Books and Characters (New York, 1922), pp. 64–9; the essay first appeared in The Independent Review in 1906.
For the destruction of unsold copies of Looney’s book during the war, see Hope and Holston, The Shakespeare Controversy. For more on Looney’s vision of the Second World War, see his letter to Eva Turner Clark, quoted in the Shakespeare Fellowship News-letter 1 (1940): ‘To me, however, it does not appear to be a struggle between democracy and dictatorship so much as between material force and spiritual interests.’ On 10 June 1939 Looney had made clear his explicit disgust with the Nazis: ‘In the centuries that lie ahead, when the words Nazi and Hitler are remembered only with feelings of disgust and aversion and as synonyms for cruelty and bad faith, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Tennyson & Shelly [sic] will continue to be honoured as expressions of what is most enduring and characteristic of Humanity’ (as quoted in vol. 1 of the third edition of Looney, ‘Shakespeare’ Identified). See Looney’s letter to Flodden W. Heron of San Francisco, of 5 July 1941, which is partially reprinted in ‘A Great Pioneer’s Ideas on Intellectual Freedom’, Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly 6 (1945).
FREUD, AGAIN
See vol. 3 of Jones, Life and Work as well as the Correspondence of Freud and Jones, especially the letters of 7 March 1928, 11 March 1928, 29 April 1928 and 3 May 1928. It’s uncertain when Freud first read Looney’s book; Jones says ‘some ten years’ after 1913, or roughly 1923 (Life and Works, vol. 3); Peter Gay, who seems to have overlooked this passage in Jones, argues for a later date, perhaps 1926 (Reading Freud). And see Strachey, Bloomsbury/Freud, for the letter of 25 December 1928. And yet in the next sentence Freud, who apparently wants to have it both ways, is unwilling to relinquish his notion, which Looney would have sharply challenged, that Oxford ‘certainly emerges in Hamlet as the first modern neurotic’. Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York, 1998), provides information about Ernst Brücke and Positivism. For Freud’s correspondence with Reik, see Theodor Reik, The Search Within: The Inner Experiences of a Psychoanalyst (New York, 1956).
For Freud’s later thoughts on the seduction theory (including his belief that the fantasies were connected not with the father but with the mother, and that actual ‘seducers turned out as a rule to have been older children’) see Freud’s 1924 ‘An Autobiographical Study’ as well as his paper on ‘Female Sexuality’ (1931). For his further exploration of the workings of the Oedipal theory, see, especially ‘The Dissolution of the Oedipal Complex’ (1924), all of which can be found in the standard edition of his works. For a more qualified view of Freud’s rejection of the seduction theory in favour of an Oedipal one, see Paul Robinson, Freud and his Critics (Berkeley, 1993).
For the exchange with Sachs, see Hanns Sachs, Freud: Master and Friend (Cambridge, Mass., 1944), and with Zweig, see The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig, ed. Ernest L. Freud and trans. Elaine and William Robson-Scott (New York, 1970). See too Richard Flatter, ‘Sigmund Freud on Shakespeare’, Shakespeare Quarterly 2 (1951), pp. 368–9; H. R. Woudhuysen, ‘A Freudian Oxfordian’, Times Literary Supplement 20–26 April 1990; and Freud’s letter to James S. H. Branson, 25 March 1934, reproduced in ‘Appendix A’ of Jones, Life and Works.
Freud’s letter in English to Smiley Blanton of 20 December 1937 can be found in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, The Margaret Gray Blanton Papers, MSS 93, Box 13, Folder 2. Freud would amend his long-held views on Hamlet and advocate Oxford’s authorship first in a footnote added in 1930 to The Interpretation of Dreams; then in a footnote to Moses and Monotheism (1939); and, finally, in a posthumous 1940 edition of his Outline of Psychoanalysis.
Freud added a footnote to An Autobiographical Study in 1935 in which he writes:
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works which have so long been attributed to him. Since the appearance of J. T. Looney’s volume ‘Shakespeare’ Identified, I am almost convinced that in fact Edward de Vere, earl of Oxford, is concealed behind this pseudonym.
His translator James Strachey was ‘taken aback’ at this and asked Freud to ‘reconsider’ in part because of Looney’s ‘unfortunate name’. Freud wrote back sharply on 29 August 1935, saying ‘I cannot understand the English attitude to this question: Edward de Vere was as good an Englishman as Will Shakspere.’ While willing to accede to Strachey’s request for the English edition, he asks that the note be included in the American edition, where the ‘same sort of narcissistic defence need not be feared’.
I quote from Freud’s account of ‘the ideals of Hitlerism’ from his letter to Marie Bonaparte, quoted in Giovanni Costigan, Sigmund Freud: A Short Biography (New York, 1965). See too his letter of 7 April 1933 to Ernest Jones in their Correspondence. Freud’s description of himself as Looney’s ‘follower’ is quoted from A. Bronson Feldman, ‘Confessions of William Shakespeare’. Looney’s daughter’s account appears in Percy Allen, ‘John Thomas Looney (1870–1944)’, Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletter (May 1944). For Looney’s letter to Freud of 15 July 1938, see J. Thomas Looney to Sigmund Freud, Container number 36, Sigmund Freud Papers, Sigmund Freud Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
OXFORDIANS
For the rise of various aristocratic candidates, see Churchill, Shakespeare and His Betters; Gibson, Shakespeare Claimants; Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?; and Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives. For Sherlock Holmes, see Claud W. Sykes, Alias William Shakespeare? (London, 1947). The first to develop the argument for Derby was James Greenstreet, ‘A Hitherto Unknown Noble Author of Elizabethan Comedies’ (July 1891), ‘Further Notices of William Stanley’ (January 1892), and ‘Testimonies against the Accepted Authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays’ (May 1892), all published in The Genealogist. But it wasn’t until 1915 that the case for Derby was fully articulated. Latham Davis made the case for Essex in Shake-speare: England’s Ulysses (Seaford, Delaware, 1905); J. C. Nicol argued for Southampton’s solo authorship in The Real Shakespeare (London, 1905). For the Derbyites, see especially: Robert Frazer, The Silent Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 1915) and Abel Lefranc, Sous le masque de William Shakespeare: William Stanley, Vie Comte de Derby, 2 vols (Paris, 1919). Burkhard Hermann (writing under the name Peter Alvor) first proposed in 1906 that Rutland wrote the comedies, Southampton the tragedies and histories. Rutland’s solo authorship was then urged in the introduction to the German play Der wahre Shakespeare, by Carl Bleibtreu, who followed that up two years later with Die Lösung der Shakespearefrage in 1909 and again with Shakespeares Geheimnis (Berne, 1923). Rutland’s greatest advocate was Célestin Demblon, who in 1912 published Lord Rutland est Shakespeare and two years later L’Auteur d’Hamlet et son monde (Paris, 1914). For the earliest claim about Marlowe’s role in writing Shakespeare’s plays, see Wilbur G. Zeigler, It Was Marlowe (Chicago, 1895).
For Freud’s high regard for Turner’s scholarship, see his letter of 20 December 1937 to Smiley Blanton in the Wisconsin Historical Society, The Margaret Gray Blanton Papers, MSS 93, Box 13, Folder 2. For Looney’s essay on The Merry Wives, see J. Thomas Looney, ‘The Earl of Oxford as “Shakespeare”: New Evidence’, The Golden Hind (1922), pp. 23–30. For biographical facts about de Vere’s life, see Alan H. Nelson’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as well as his biography, Monstrous Adversary: the
Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool, 2003). David Chandler is one of the few critics to consider Oxfordian methodology; see his ‘Historicizing Difference: Anti-Stratfordians and the Academy’, Elizabethan Review (1991). That electronic journal is now defunct, but his important article can be found at: web.archive.org/web/20060506133739/ http://www.jmucci.com/ER/articles/chandler.htm.
For the founding of the Shakespeare Fellowship, see B. R. Ward, The Mystery of ‘Mr. W. H.’ (London, 1923); Shakespeare Authorship Review 1 (1959); as well as the archives of Brunel University, which includes the original Shakespeare Fellowship list of members, ‘Shakespeare Fellowship Library’ (SAT-0067, Brunel University). For Charles Wisner Barrell, see ‘Identifying “Shakespeare”’, Scientific American (January 1940), as well as Ogburn, The Mysterious William Shakespeare. For Leslie Howard, see Hope and Holston, The Shakespeare Controversy. Looney’s words about circumstantial evidence, as well as his views of Oxford’s links to other poets, appear in his edition of The Poems of Edward De Vere (London, 1921); his letter of 1927 to Mr Hadder is reprinted in the Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletter (September 1952). For an extended list of works of other writers reattributed by various supporters to Oxford, see, for example, Paul Streitz, Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I (Darien, Connecticut, 2001); see too The Oxford Authorship Site, www.oxford-shakespeare.com; and more recently, Oxfordian editor Stephanie Hughes’s claims in ‘Beyond the Authorship Question: Was Shakespeare Only the Beginning?’, Shakespeare Matters 4 (Spring 2005).
For the episode in which Marlowe’s works were attributed to Shakespeare in the early nineteenth century, see David Chandler, ‘Marlowe: A Hoax by William Taylor’, Notes and Queries 239 (June 1994), 220–2. For the claim that Looney’s work eschewed ciphers, see the advertisement in Looney’s edition of the Poems of Edward de Vere. For George Frisbee’s findings, see his Edward de Vere: A Great Elizabethan (London, 1931). Looney’s remarks about Allen are recorded in his letter to Joan Violet Robinson, 3 September 1933, published in Christopher Paul, ‘A New Letter by J. T. Looney Brought to Light’, Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 43 (Summer 2007). For Freud on Allen, see Woudhuysen, ‘A Freudian Oxfordian’.
For more on the Prince Tudor theories, see Ogburn, The Mysterious William Shakespeare; Ogburn’s letter to the editor of The Elizabethan Review, 5.1 (Spring 1997); and Paul H. Altrocchi, ‘A Royal Shame: The Origins and History of the Prince Tudor Theory’, Shakespeare Matters 4 (Summer, 2005). For the origins of the theory, see Percy Allen, Lord Oxford and Shakespeare: A Reply to John Drinkwater (London, 1933) and Allen’s collaboration with B. M. Ward, An Enquiry into the Relations between Lord Oxford as ‘Shakespeare,’ Queen Elizabeth and the Fair Youth of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (London, 1936).
For Prince Tudor, Part II, see Paul Streitz, Oxford: Son of Queen Elizabeth I. As incestuous as these relationships are, Streitz drew a firm line when it comes to any homoerotic affection on Oxford’s part toward his son and half-brother Southampton. Streitz provides a useful lineage extending from the union of Elizabeth and Seymour, then Elizabeth and Oxford, down through Southampton, leading in a direct line to Princess Diana. For an Oxfordian critique of the theory, see Christopher Paul, ‘The Prince Tudor Dilemma: Hip Thesis, Hypothesis or Old Wives’ Tale?’, Oxfordian 5 (2002), pp. 47–69. For Roger Stritmatter’s remarks, see The Oxfordian 2 (1999).
For the vote of confidence in Allen, see the Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletter (March 1946). For Stephen Greenblatt on speaking with the dead, see the opening of Shakespearean Negotiations (Berkeley, 1988). For more on Hester Dowden, see Edmund Bentley, Far Horizon: A Biography of Hester Dowden, Medium and Psychic Investigator (London, 1951). Percy Allen recounts his séances and discoveries in Talks with Elizabethans: Revealing the Mystery of ‘William Shakespeare’ (London, 1947?), which reprints the sonnet quoted here on its title page.
For the fortunes of the Oxfordian movement, see, in addition to Ogburn, The Mysterious William Shakespeare: Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly 5 (1944); Shakespeare Authorship Review 7 (1962); Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter, 15 December 1966; and Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter, 25 May 1966. For the challenges to Barrell’s claims about the Ashbourne portrait, see Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, Records and Images. For the decline of the Oxfordian movement in the 1960s and 1970s, see Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter, 28 February 1969; Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter, 31 March 1970; Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (Fall 1976); see too the prefatory page in memory of Charlton Ogburn Jr, The Oxfordian 2 (1999), as well as Charles Vere’s comments in the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (1994). Louis B. Wright’s remarks appear in ‘The Anti-Shakespeare Industry and the Growth of Cults’, Virginia Quarterly Review 35 (1959); and see Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives.
For more on Ogburn, see Shakespeare Matters (Summer, 2007); Charlton Ogburn, ‘President’s Message’, Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (Fall 1976); and the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (30 March 1966). For the Fairness Doctrine, see Fred W. Friendly,The Good Guys, The Bad Guys and The First Amendment: Free Speech vs. Fairness in Broadcasting (New York, 1976), and Steven J. Simmons The Fairness Doctrine and the Media (Berkeley, 1978). For Ogburn’s efforts, see, in addition to The Mysterious William Shakespeare: Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (Winter 1979), and his ‘President’s Message’.
SHAKESPEARE ON TRIAL
For the moot court in Washington DC, see James Lardner, ‘Who Wrote Shakespeare?’, the New Yorker, 11 April 1988, and ‘Washington Talk: Briefing; In Re Shakespeare’, New York Times, 10 September 1987. Kreeger hoped to have the justices prepare by reading Schoenbaum’s Documentary Life and Ogburn’s Mysterious William Shakespeare. This didn’t work out, and they relied primarily on the arguments of two American University law professors: Peter Jasri for Oxford, James Boyle for Shakespeare. For a full transcript, see American University Law Review 37 (Spring 1988), pp. 609–826. Ogburn’s letter of complaint appears in the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter 24 (Spring 1988). And see the interview with Charlton Ogburn, conducted by Dr Sheila Tombe, in Apostrophe (Spring/Summer 1996). Also see Kreeger’s ‘Preface’, American University Law Review 37.3 (Spring, 1988). Justice Stevens was even more explicit in suggesting how the Oxfordians should pursue their case five years later in an address he gave at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. By then he had come around almost completely to Oxfordian assumptions about the autobiographical nature of the plays as well as their aristocratic bias. See US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, ‘The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review 140 (1992).
For the moot court in London, see David J. Hanson, ‘A Wildcatter Reports on the London Moot Court Hearing in an Open Letter to Russell des Cognets’, The Shakespeare Newsletter (Spring–Summer 1989). Lord Ackner ended on a witty note, quoting James Barrie: ‘I know not whether Bacon wrote the words of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me he missed the opportunity of his life’ – from a transcript of the moot court case in the archives of the International Shakespeare Globe Centre, ‘Shakespeare Globe Trust, Shakespeare Moot, Judges Summing Up’ (file ‘1988 Moot’). See too Gordon C. Cyr, ‘Let the Real Debate Begin! Legalisms of “Moot” Format Obscure the Authorship Question’, The Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter 25 (Winter 1989). See as well the Shakespeare Moot of 26 November 1988: ‘Appraisals from Anonymous Sources’ that follows Cyr’s account. For Hunt’s financial support and for additional background into the relationship of these two British organisations, see Charles Beauclerk’s correspondence in the Brunel University library archives, Shakespeare Authorship Trust, Box 0033. And for the British edition of Ogburn’s book, see Charlton Ogburn, The Mystery of William Shakespeare: An Abridgement of the Original American Edition, ed. Lord Vere (London, 1988).
For the number of viewers, see ‘News Items of Interest from Gary Goldstein’, in Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter 25 (Summer 1989); WGBH-TV in Boston also reported that it was
their most popular Frontline series that season. For more on the restored fortunes of the Oxfordian movement, see: the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter (June 1992); and Lewis H. Lapham, ‘Notebook: Full Fathom Five’, Harper’s Magazine (April 1999). The poll is cited from cnn.com, 15 June 1997. On Westminster, see Nathan Baca, ‘Commemorating Marlowe’, Shakespeare Matters 2 (Fall 2002); and see Shakespeare Matters (Summer 2003) for fundraising efforts.
On William Niederkorn’s agnosticism, I quote from his unsolicited email to me of 9 January 2007. For more on Niederkorn, see Shakespeare Matters 1 (Summer 2002) and Shakespeare Matters 4 (Winter 2005). See too, William S. Niederkorn, ‘The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas from the Traditional Camp’, New York Times, 30 August 2005. For a helpful analysis of Niederkorn on Shakespeare, see Ron Rosenbaum, ‘The Shakespeare Code: Is Times Guy Kind of Bard “Creationist”?’, New York Observer, 19 September 2005. And for a critique of Niederkorn’s conclusion that each side has its own story to tell, see my ‘Happy Birthday, Whoever You Were’, Telegraph (23 April 2006). For National Public Radio and Renée Montagne, see ‘The Real Shakespeare: Evidence Points to Earl’, NPR, 4 July 2008. The award was given to her at the 13th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference in 2009. For Oxfordians on the US Supreme Court, see Jess Bravin, ‘Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion on Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays’, Wall Street Journal, 18 April 2009. For a sense of recent Oxfordian scholarship, see Richard Malim, ed., Great Oxford. And for a representative Oxfordian edition of Shakespeare’s plays, see William Shakespeare, Macbeth, edited and ‘Fully Annotated from an Oxfordian Perspective’, Richard F. Whalen (Truro, Mass., 2007).
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