Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool University Press - Liverpool English Texts & Studies)

• Publisher:   Liverpool University Press
• Number Of Pages:   548
• Publication Date:   2003-09-01
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   085323678X
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780853236788

Most of these book reviews are extremely unfair to what is an excellent work of literary and historical scholarship, with a sure-footed sense of both the nature of Elizabethan social and political life and the qualities and genres of Elizabethan poetry. Nelson's book has in fact been reviewed in just such terms in most serious academic forums of the Early Modern British period. I can only presume that what these reviewers object to, is the fact that this study paints an unflattering, if truthful picture of the 17th Earl of Oxford, simply by including such copious amounts of primary historical documents, both those written by himself and those written by others about him at the time. For those people who wish to believe in the view that Edward De Vere was an exemplary figure who could have secretly written Shakespeare's plays that may be inconvenient, although there is no actual reason whatsoever why a great writer should have a pleasant personality. While it is difficult to reconcile an aristocrat so little interested in anything beyond the life of a self-obsessed courtier with the world of Shakespeare's plays, with their broad sympathy and understanding of those who live outside such a narrow world: it is not wholly impossible. Oxford's life, if unpalatable to some, is certainly exciting and complex enough to provide fascinating reading and he is not in Nelson's account undeserving of some of our sympathy within the context of the power struggles of the Elizabethan court in which he lived. What is more damaging to the view about Oxford being a remarkably gifted person, is that in this account he turns out to be more of a narcissistic, spoiled brat of the aristocracy. Oxford is very poorly educated compared to the average grammar school child (hardly uncommon in the days when Oxbridge was little more than a place aristocrats sent their young children to as a matter of course) and obsessed with money and status (which is virtually all his many surviving letters speak of). Finally, Oxford is wholly indifferent to the lives of others, for example by killing one of his servants ( accidentally we hope), and then getting the man accused of committing suicide by running on Oxford's sword by the court. The fact that this action ruins the man's wife and children is of no importance to the Earl it seems. His letters show him to be least concerned of all about anything to do with literature and one wonders if he ever read any of the books that various poets dedicated to him as a patron over his lifetime? Certainly he supported various authors and various literary works, as indeedhe wrote his own poetry, but these actions appear more to keep up with aristocratic fashions than anything else; though he would hardly be the first aristocrat to have done so. His published poetry in his own name is fairly mediocre at its best, but that is not a new discovery and in fact Nelson's analysis of the surviving poetry by Oxford is rather kinder than most literary critics have been. Perhaps though Oxford didn't take writing poetry very seriously? Oxford is certainly no Francis Bacon, nor other Elizabethan polymath, on the basis of the evidence produced in the book. In many ways it is a tragic story, perhaps much less like one of Shakespeare's plots and more like that of Waugh. How could someone born in a Castle to a famous family, growing up with so many silver spoons in their mouth, able to afford all the privileges that their age had to buy; manage to throw it all away and end up buried in a Hackney church? He did in the end manage to maintain the pity of Queen Elizabeth who gave him a pension to stave of destitution, though that could have equally been to avoid the shame of an aristocrat ending up on the streets. This then is the gripping story that Nelson tells and tells admirably. It is not the same story told by less scholarly works such as Anderson's ' "Shakespeare" By Another Name' , but that book like others of its type is focused almost wholly on the thesis that the Earl secretly wrote the works of Shakespeare and it has relatively little to say about the flesh and blood man who actually existed in the accounts of his contemporaries and in his own letters. However, if you ever want to get any sense of what the real Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was actually like, then Nelson's book offers you the opportunity.

It is necessary to redress the starry-eyed obscurantism of the previous reviewer. I leave out of account the gratuitous criticism against individuals and books of which the reviewer is unlikely to have any real acquaintance and which deserve better from any person of intellectual substance, and confine myself to the subject of *Monstrous Adversary.* No doubt Professor Nelson's work will be of considerable interest to those, like myself, who take a direct interest in Oxford's role as a formative Elizabethan intellectual -- the man who introduced *Cardanus Comforte* (aka "Hamlet's Book")to the Elizabethan reading public, subsidized the translation of Castiglione's *Courtier* into Latin, and patronized William Byrd, Nicholas Hill, and many other leading lights of his own generation with the receipts from his failing feudal estates. Most readers, unfortunately, will find it pedantic, opinionated, and dull. It is moreover the work of a man obsessed to contradict at every possible turn an intellectual heresy -- identifying the subject of his "biography" as the mind behind the name "Shakespeare" -- that he does not understand. Although Professor Nelson's command of the relevant factual matters has been challenged, it is in his interpretations that the book is profoundly unreliable and disappointing, and ocassionally borders on the surreal. Indeed Nelson's curious animus towards the subject of his biography -- evidently based on the premise that the more horrible Oxford seems the less people will be able to see him as capable of writing the plays -- is evident on nearly every page. What cannot be criticized is ignored; what cannot be ignored is twisted; what can be neither criticized, ignored, or twisted is simply conveniently ommitted. Try Mark Anderson's new biography, *"Shakespeare" By Another Name* (Gotham, 2005). Its a much better read. [...]

Professor Alan H. Nelson of Berkeley has produced Monstrous Adversary, The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Liverpool University Press, paperback, 527 pp., $32.00). Nelson's biography of Oxford offers a mass of new documentary information on his subject, with additional material available on his website: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/oxdocs.html. Prof. Nelson deserves thanks and praise for this research, as well as for his openness in sharing his archival discoveries.

In six of his chapters (29, 45, 46, and 75-7) Nelson analyzes Oxford's poetry, literary patronage, and sponsorship of acting companies. The contents of these chapters should remind readers that Nelson hails from the English Department of one of America's leading universities. When analyzing metrical conventions, the niceties of dedications, or the history of theatrical troupes, he shows the sure touch of an expert in his field. I do not imply that readers must accede to Nelson's every judgment on these matters, though I find little to disagree with, but readers should recognize an obvious professional. Unfortunately, Nelson cannot do history.

Monstrous Adversary is a documentary biography composed of extensive quotations from contemporary letters, memoranda, legal records, and such like, stitched together with Nelson's comments. Nelson asks in his "Introduction" that we let "the documentary evidence speak for itself" (p. 5). His request fails for two reasons. First, documentary evidence rarely makes sense without the appropriate context, which includes not only historical background information on the religious, legal, social, or cultural practices of a long ago era, but also personal information, such as establishing who struck the first blow in a fight, or whether a witness was truthful in other matters. As I will show, Nelson totally botches the context of event after event. Secondly, Nelson, who with some justice refers to Oxford's first biographer, B. M. Ward, as a hagiographer (250), pushes much further in the opposite direction, so much so that his study of Oxford may well be dubbed demonography.

The seventeenth Earl of Oxford was anything but a model nobleman of his time. He threw away his family fortune, he failed to develop the career expected of an earl by shouldering his share of local and national responsibilities, and he fathered a child out of wedlock. Quite possibly he also drank too much as a young man. On the other hand, he excelled in his generosity, he earned praise for his writings, and he retained the favor of his famously headstrong and moralistic Queen. But these facts have long been known. What does Nelson add to them? Quite a lot of detail and color: Nelson's persistence and skill as a document sleuth flesh out both major and minor events of Oxford's story. Unfortunately, Nelson the analyst relates to Nelson the researcher as Hyde relates to Jekyll - moreover Nelson's obsessive denigration of Oxford carries him from error into fantasy.

To read the rest of this review, go to: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/demngraf.htm.

This book provides copious new archival material discovered by the author in England and Italy regarding Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. However, the uses to which professor Nelson has applied his discoveries are mostly unscholarly. Every chapter in this new biography (the first by B.M. Ward was published in 1928) seems designed to undermine the reputation of Oxford, from his management of money and his friends to his poetry, his theatrical and literary patronage, even the grammar and spelling used in his private letters! A strange combination of excellent research and polemics.

I have for some years been interested in the nobility of 16th and 17th century England, and have read a number of pretty good biographies, so looked forward to MONSTROUS ADVERSARY with great anticipation. Unfortunately it was clear early on in the book that Nelson was anything but a disinterested biographer. The tone of the book breathes hostility toward its subject, and after having read it, as well as having looked over Nelson's web site, it's obvious why. This was not a biography per se, it was a polemic, in the guise of a biography, against the idea that de Vere was Shakespeare. Whether that idea is harebrained or not - and Nelson believes it is - is beside the point. Nelson misses no opportunity to defame de Vere, treating as valid every scrap of negative evidence, however dubious - for example, that given by his Catholic ex-friends after he had delivered them to the authorities. Nelson's interpretations are the mirror image of Ward, as he describes the earlier writer's 1928 biography; where he infers nothing but the best of his subject, Nelson infers nothing but the worst. I note that Nelson is not a historian, and quite frankly, it shows. That he relies on the likes of William F. Buckley - one of the lousiest writers of fiction I've come across - as an arbiter of de Vere's poetry implies that he must be pretty desperate to prove his case, whatever its merits. He dismisses Ward's book as "hagiography"; as I remember it, having read it years ago, it was pretty good. Nelson's, in any case, is a "hatchet job".

As to matters of style, I can do no better than quote the end of the very first sentence of the Introduction, which made my heart sink from the get-go: "[de Vere's life] ... just overlapped the reign of Elizabeth I at both ends". Ugh. And Nelson is ... oh, yes, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Ye gods.

Having paid good money for what I assumed was going to be a biography, I ended up with a screed that was obviously produced to demolish the de Vere = Shakespeare movement. If that's what Nelson wanted to write, potential readers should have been made aware of this. As it stands, this anything but impartial view of de Vere disqualifies MONSTROUS ADVERSARY as legitimate biography, for all its invaluable documentation.

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