I bought this in September 2022 and started reading it immediately...but then something shiny caught my eye and I didn't go back...though of course I kept meaning to. But this morning I finished reading a doctoral thesis by my friend (Dr.) David Wright--which was about Hamlet--and it started the Shakespeare fire in my brain. So I went searching for this book. Astonishingly enough, I found it within minutes.
(And that's just the living room books. There are four times that many in the basement, two and a half bookshelves in my bedroom, and a shelf in the dining room. Not to mention the kids' books....)
ANYway...liii + 183 = 236 pages, but I'm betting it won't take me a week+ to finish this one off.
Day 1 (DDRD 2,871), September 10, 2025
Read to page liii. And this wasn't even supposed to be Day 1. But that Willie S. is hard to resist.
Didn't get past the first page of the Introduction before this
caught my eye. Could this be the same Asimov's I've been reading continuously for the past six years (currently on my 45th of his books)?
Yep. Well...that was nice.
Speaking of nice, here is an article strongly suggesting that Polonius is a stand-in for William Cecil. Very interesting....
The Introduction was a rush through the play identifying some Oxfordian clues, but I didn't find anything particularly persuasive there. In fact, some of it seemed more than a little bit Out There 🛸, which does a disservice to The Cause, but we'll see how it goes with the textual notes. Which I WILL NOT start until tomorrow.
Day 2 (DDRD 2,872), September 11, 2025
Read to page 31.
Having the notes on the left page and the text on the right is efficient, but kind of irritating, as you have to keep bouncing back and forth between pages. Many of the notes are for stupid people who can't read Shake-speare, but some are illuminating, and a few (too few) provide Oxfordian insights. At this point I'm not very impressed with the Oxfordian gloss, but I am enjoying the play. So there's that.
Word of the day:
Day 3 (DDRD 2,873), September 12, 2025
Read to page 61.
Would've read more today, but Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama had me by the throat, and I read 100 pages or so of that.
Day 4 (DDRD 2,874), September 13, 2025
Read to page 133. Amazing how much more DDR I can get done when I'm not hip deep in a great science fiction novel.
Here's a terribly misogynistic bit:
"There is no woman's sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion,
As love doth give my heart; no
woman's heart
So big to hold so much. They
lack retention.
Alas, their love may be call'd appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the
palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment,
and revolt...." (II. iv. 90-96)
I have to admit that there is the ring of truth in this in my experience, though.
I'm enjoying the play, but I was expecting more from the notes. There are some interesting bits, but most of them are conjecture which doesn't seem very compelling to me. Maybe this wasn't the best play to use for Oxfordian annotations.
Ah, there's nothing quite like a Shake-spearean insult:
"For Andrew, if he were opened and you find so
much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat
the rest of the anatomy." (III. ii. 50-52)
And about that Fourth Wall:
"If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." (III. iv. 110-111)
In a footnote there's a reference to a miniature portrait entitled "Man Clasping a Hand from a Cloud" by Nicholas Hilliard. England, and Delahoyde suggests that it might be of Edward de Vere, but oddly he does not give us a picture of it. So here ya go:
 |
| Public Domain |
Looks pretty Edward de Vere-y to me.
I just peeked ahead at the Further Reading at the end of this book, and according to it there are four more Oxfordian Shake-speares Out There: Anthony and Cleopatra, Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. I'm most familiar with the last two, so that might have to be next up.
"None can be call'd deformed but the unkind." (III. iv. 329)
Fuckin' A, Bubba.
Day 5 (DDRD 2,875), September 14, 2025
Read to page 183, The End.
According to a footnote (actually a sidenote) on page 144, "God buy you" is a form of "God be with you. (The phrase evolved into "Good-bye.")
Finished this while in church with 1 hour and 11 minutes to go before the service begins. Fortunately...
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