Hi orda,

I find the Oxfordian argument tends to contort those facts which don't suit it. eg there is no reason to suppose Shakespeare's education was poor - but of course we have no records from the bleeding sixteenth century about who went to the school which was practically next door to him! We only know that the curriculum by law included Latin grammar, rhetoric and classics. And that the school was taught by Oxford graduates who would have been well capable of teaching young Will his Ovid or of starting him on Plutarch.

But as a commoner, of course there is little history. We get glimpses of the sort one would expect of a hard-working and successful playwright and a common player.

Re travel, the Oxfordians claim he has local knowledge of the continent. But he makes some crass errors for someone who is meant to have spent almost a year in Northern Italy. By comparison, I once spent 6 weeks in Venice 27 years ago, and I can still remember it had canals, gondolas, a lagoon, a lido, an ocean etc!!

"Oxfordians claim that the author must have had a detailed knowledge of the Continent, especially of Italy, in order to have written the plays. They cite their man's extensive tour of Italy as clear evidence of him having the first-hand knowledge they claim is required of that country to have written the plays. But the plays clearly show that Shakespeare didn't have an intimate knowledge of the Continent. In fact, the basic errors he makes describing the Continent are consistent with someone who had never even visited there.

In The Winter's Tale he writes of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia:

Antigonus: "Thou art perfect then our ship hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?"
Mariner: "Ay, my lord, and fear we have landed in ill time."

Act 3, Scene 3

But Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) is land-locked. It doesn't have a shoreline.

In Two Gentlemen of Verona he writes of travelling by ship between Milan and Verona:

Valentine: "But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee that art a votary to fond desire? Once more adieu. My father at the road expects my coming, there to see me shipped."
Proteus: "And thither will I bring thee, Valentine."
Valentine: "Sweet Proteus, no. Now let us take our leave. To Milan."

Act 1, Scene 1

Speed: "Sir Proteus, save you. Saw you my master?"
Proteus: "But now he parted hence to embark for Milan."
Speed: "Twenty to one, then, he is shipped already"

Act 1, Scene 1

Proteus: "Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wreck"

Act 1, Scene 1

Second Outlaw: "Whither travel you?"
Valentine: "To Verona."
First Outlaw: "Whence came you?"
Valentine: "From Milan."

Act 4, Scene 1

But Verona and Milan are inland cities. No ship could travel between the two.

Elsewhere in the same play he writes of the need to catch the tide at Verona in order to set sail:

Panthino: "Lance, away, away, aboard. Thy master is shipped, and thou art to post after with oars. What’s the matter? Why weep’st thou, man? Away, ass, you’ll lose the tide if you tarry any longer."

Act 2, Scene 3

There is no way that one could lose the tide at Verona. The Adriatic Sea in general has insignificant tides of less than 2 metres that are irrelevant to a ship's ability to set sail. The water levels are virtually constant at all times. Conversely, the River Thames has a large tide that large vessels have to take account of for setting sail. No doubt the London-based playwright who hadn't visited Italy was writing what he knew of London and its river leading to the sea, not what he obviously didn't know of Verona.

In The Tempest he writes of travelling by barque (three-masted ship) from Milan:

Prosporo: "Fated to th’ purpose did Antonio open the gates of Milan; and, i’ th’ dead of darkness, the ministers for th’ purpose hurried thence me and thy crying self...they hurried us aboard a barque, bore us some leagues to sea, where they prepared a rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged nor tackle, sail, nor mast—the very rats instinctively have quit it."

Act 1 Scene 2

Again, Milan is not a sea-port.

In The Taming of the Shrew the author writes of Tranio's father being a sailmaker in Bergamo:

Vincentio: "Thy father! O villain, he is a sailmaker in Bergamo."

But Bergamo is in the foothills of the Italian Alps, over 130 kilometres from the nearest coast - one of the oddest places possible in Italy to locate a sail-making business.

Elsewhere in the same play, he has Padua as a sea-port:

Lucentio: "If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore...For in a quarrel since I came ashore."

Act 1, Scene 1

But Padua is an inland city.

And again in the same play, Mantuan ships are temporarily kept at Venice:

Tranio: "’Tis death for anyone in Mantua to come to Padua. Know you not the cause? Your ships are stayed at Venice, and the Duke, for private quarrel ’twixt your Duke and him."

But Mantua is an inland city, no ship could go there.

Again, in the same play, Padua is placed within the region of Lombardy:

Lucentio: "Tranio, since for the great desire I had to see fair Padua, nursery of arts, I am arrived fore fruitful Lombardy."

Act 1, Scene 1

But Padua has never been within the region of Lombardy. It has never been less than 80 kilometres outside of it.

Especially interesting is how and why one would embark on a 1,000 mile, 2-week voyage from Verona to Milan as in Two Gentlemen of Verona when to achieve it one would have to sail from Verona down the Adige River to the Adriatic, proceed south to the Ionian Sea then up the Tyrrhenian (around the complete length of Italy) then on to Genoa before a final 80 mile overland trip to Milan itself. Particularly when one could simply avoid the voyage altogether and simply make the 80 mile overland trip from Verona direct to Milan using the excellent roads in use between the 2 cities since Roman times. The sailing trip is a mere incidental in the play included by virtue of the misapprehension Shakespeare had of these 2 cities rather than any dramatic potential they provided.

How could Edward de Vere, who toured Northern Italy for 10 months be so ignorant of Italy's geography?

Conversely, William Shakespeare is not known to have actually visited the Continent so may well make these kinds of mistakes that are not significant to the actual functioning of the plays but are, nevertheless, still errors."

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/Oxford.html

I accept that some of the circumstantial evidence is attractive. But for me, it fails under the microscope. And in the final analysis, I don't see Shakespeare in any of De Vere's known writing (or at least in the five or six poems of his that I've read), which is where I would presume he would be most obvious.

In the end, these things are judgement calls and we trust what we choose. Maybe I am just conservative in this case.