A Comprehensive review of Alan Nelson's Monstrous Adversary 2003
This review is copyright © 2003 by Robert Brazil

Review of Part II - Youth [continued]

Chapter 10 - First Blood

47-49 N describes, in his best imitation of Truman Capote, a crisp murder story. N. offers
portions of the known facts. Still, I'm inclined to go along with part of his assessment. Fact -Brinknell walked by during an informal but "fully loaded" fencing practice and got accidentally killed by Oxford. That's not exactly the "bad" part. The bad part is that Oxford's counsel apparently decided that a suicide "felo de se" case must be claimed. The local jury was packed with sympathetic ears and they bought the ludicrous story. Years later Burghley wrote a regretful note that verifies there was a legal sham to make the case go away. Burghley's own words, 1576: "I did my best to have the jury find the death of a poor man whom he killed in my house to be found se defendendo." Burghley confesses that he tried to get the jury to find "self defense." But that's not what happened. They found "felo de se." The blame was entirely put on Brincknell. Either Cecil was outmaneuvered by other counsel, or he has conveniently remembered the case in a less distressing way. On closer inspection we see that the suicide defense emerged directly from the coroner's report, which states that Brinknell was drunk and ran upon the sword. So this defense - which was really an "offense" in strategy - was like: ... "how dare that young ruffian commit suicide on my sword during my practice time!") The coroner's report also has conclusions that I find remarkable given the state of forensic science in the 16th century: The coroner found that Brinknell had "not kept God before his eyes" and seduced by the Devil, was driven to the deed. N prints a portion of the coroner's report and summaries the rest. I don't think we will ever know what really happened that day, nor the extent of culpability of the others involved in the sham, which did cause hardship to Brinknell's family.

But N puts the blame entirely on Oxford when Burghley's note reveals that his remorse was over his own mixed culpability. This must have weighed heavily on both of them. Anyway, it happened, and N calls it murder. But murder implies premeditation and motive - and there was none of that.

Also, I don't see how it bears on the question of Oxford's candidacy as Shakespeare except to strengthen it. There IS quite a bit of the old ultra-violence and rapier death in the plays, and performed live these scenes are all chillingly authentic, as you all know. (People don't generally know what it is like to see an actual murder, but we feel that we do know after watching Shakespeare or Hitchcock)

Chapter 11 - Reckless Youth

49 - Throughout 1567, '68, '69, and '70 Oxford is living at Cecil house - his 18th birthday marriage choice deadline passed and was forgotten.

- On Dec 2. 1568, Countess Margery dies. So EO17 is only 18-and-a-half years old when mommy dies. That's very interesting from a psychoanalytic point of view as his vivid memories of her might have been colored by any anger and resentment that marred his last years with her. It's a pressure cooker for angst and art. Unresolved issues.

50 - Oxford gets his first garter vote in April 1569 (from his cousin, William Lord Howard of Effingham).
- N mentions the first known letter from Oxford (in English) to anyone - Nov. 24 1569 to Cecil. N does not mention that Oxford had written a letter to Cecil in French, dated August 23, 1563.

51 - N gives a nice list of Oxford's expenditures on clothing, including 32 pairs of Spanish shoes over 9 months. And drugs! Apparently young EO was sick a lot of the time. During one season, recuperating at Windsor and Charing Cross, his medicines & care bill was 66 pounds, or one fifth of his total "spa" expenses! As I have not examined the documents in question that N is paraphrasing and summing up I can't know if he is exaggerating. N makes the claim that EO was either chronically sick, a hypochondriac, or both.

52 - Details surrounding Fenelon in 1570, and Oxford's journey north to see or participate in the military action, March 30, 1570.

53 - More discussion of household chits that show Oxford shopped mightily for his journey: new horses, a new riding cloak, more weapons, and a portable toilet! (upholstered, no less) You gotta love this kid! He's a killer with a heart of gold!

- In the 1st Quarter of 1570 Oxford buys a gilt Geneva Bible, almost certainly the very one that is now at the Folger. Nelson agrees with Stritmatter (and I) that the record refers to this copy. Also a complete Plutarch in French etc. - this list was given by Ogburn, et al.

N admits that based on his reading, Oxford, intellectually, was strictly humanistic.
This is wonderful, The Inhuman Humanist!

53 - the Oxford heroic rescue story. N calls the document in question a "murky petition" and prints a portion - The claim is that on Aug 3, Oxford attempted a rescue of the Duke of Norfolk from the Howard family's Charterhouse. N doubts the incident took place but suggests that Oxford at that time DID control ships, men, and materiel and that he could have been running clandestine "ops" on behalf of the 16th century European Catholic Conspiracy Organization. Over the course of the book, Nelson develops the storyline that Oxford controlled men and ships and was used by the Blackfrock Jesuits as a secret conspirator. There is no evidence of any of this. Nelson simply believes the H&A accusations, which were NOT believed at the time.

Chapter 12 - Best Friends

54 - Introducing Henry Howard ... At least N is evenhanded with his patented sound-bite instant character assassinations:

"Henry survived in relative poverty and obscurity. Never interested in women or marriage, he sponged off rich relations decade after miserable decade until the ascension of James in 1603."

Then N claims that Henry Howard (hereafter HH) was "hands down the most learned nobleman of his time." I won't belabor the point, but that's pure opinion. [He is simply following the DNB article which waxes fantastic about Howard.] N praises HH's musical skills, but we are up to year 21 of EO's life and N hasn't mentioned Oxford's musical interests, skills or expenditures. My instincts tell me that N is not using everything available, but rather is using only those documents and chits that tell the story he wants to tell.

55 - 57 much background material presented on HH, Arundel and Southwell.

57- N introduces an incident of April 1570 in which residents "invaded" Oxford properties but were fought off with stiff resistance. This incident is not well-known. The reference is:
Emmison 1970 pp 104-105 ; 4 April 1570; APC ix PP 182, 187-88, 263, 373
[APC is Acts of the Privy Council]

Now the famous hanging incident - ... Hey, this is different! - Alan used to claim that it was EO17's men that ran a little hanging/strangulation experiment "for kicks," and to get testimony on what asphyxiating was like. *Now N concedes that the story relates to the 16th EO* because it mentions Oxford's wife being disgusted and walking out. He is very vague about the source of the reminiscence. Someone must have proved him wrong on this and he backed off. I distinctly recall seeing Nelson in performance about 5 years ago and he made a big show of acting out the strangulation.

Chapter 13 - Necromancer

58-62. This is astonishing - N starts by taking seriously the HH report of Oxford's alleged boasting of necromantic acts - and N frames his discussion on HH's specific charges as if they are all facts. He says flat out what no one before has ever said, quite so, of Oxford:

"Oxford was engaged in magic"

N conflates the real paper trail on this with one big blarney-stone.

The real part, which N partly recounts, is the 22-plus year association of Oxford with Dr. John Dee, Oxford's known "esoteric" book collection, the testimony of John Soowthern that Oxford knew "the seven turning flames of the skie" (i.e. he was an astrologer), and Oxford's other humanistic and scientifically-oriented intellectual interests.

N overlays Oxford's known high-minded Renaissance esotericism with the specific accusations of H&A:
* that Oxford often had "copulation with a female sprite at George Howard's house at Greenwich"
* that he invoked the dead spirit of Charles Tyrell, who told him prophecies
* that he could conjure and often had conference with Satan

Folks, here is sensationalism at its most sensational. These are generic, garden variety accusations right out of the chronicles of witch-hunting, and we can only imagine (or try to figure out) why exactly H&A took the risk of accusing both Oxford and Sir George Howard, Master of the Queens Armory, of illegal sorcery of the lowest variety.

N also conflates his black magic scenario with other bizarre reinterpretations. For instance, he cites the Dee and Soowthern testimony as *corroboration of necromancy* when they are nothing of the sort. Then he says that Thomas Watson, (the poet and translator who was in Oxford's patronage in 1582) was a bad influence on Oxford. He calls Watson (who was a brilliant linguist) a "lowbrow." Because of a vague story about Watson and a witch N thinks we have "proof" that he too was a low magician!

I did a little further study on this. Nelson bases his accusation on a chapter involving Thomas Watson in The Reckoning, a book about Christopher Marlowe by Charles Nicholl. Another sensationalist, Nicholl's Watson scenario has been shown to be baseless in the scholarly work by D. Sutton, author of the Collected Works of Thomas Watson.

N also cites the abundance of stage plays about necromancy in those decades and the many books Oxford *might have read* that described acts parallel to the H&A accusations as further direct influences on Oxford the satanist. The whole picture of Oxford and other High Lords doing low magic in one of the most opulent and well guarded mansions in England is something right out of Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick's annoying but fascinating final film. I think Nelson saw the movie for sure.

I'm nauseated. (and yesterday asphyxiated) This is a powerfully strange book. Bad voodoo, man. But the legions of neo-pagans may now be drawn toward the Oxfordian cause. I prophecisize it!

We could speculate forever whether Oxford's general interest in the esoteric ever dropped, one drunken night, into some half-in-jest event that has suddenly grown into this monstrous legend. Could something have happened? Sure, I suppose.

If so, ... if one really wanted to go that way - then one finally has rock-solid PROOF that this is the guy who wrote the Shakespeare plays. Who else, among the other candidates, or among any human alive at that time, could have had the direct experience of the numerous magical ceremonies enacted with such poignant precision in the plays. From Glendower to Cerimon - from the witches of the Scottish play to Prospero in The Tempest ... Only Oxford has the Nelson-approved-documentary-imprimitur of *simultaneous Protestantism, Catholicism, Atheism, Humanism, and Satanism* It's a unique syncretic religion that found its expression in the Shakespeare plays. And lets not forget the Ghost in Hamlet, the spiritual core of the play, giving commands in dark of night. In the H&A accusations Oxford speaks to the shade of his dead step-father! That's pretty damned close.

Chapter 14 - Oxford's Letters

62 - Nelson gives a rough total for the word count in his amalgamated file of Oxford"s letters - 50,000. My database allows more Oxford material and I have about 70,000 words by Edward de Vere. Stylometricians are still using samples of Oxford in the 20,000-30,000 word range. Thus, every stylometric study that has ever been done so far on Oxford, vis-a-vis Shakespeare and other writers, is obsolete; the test and studies all need to be run again with the larger available sample pool.

63 - N gives a useful fact without realizing the significance. In comparing Oxford's writing and penmanship with others, he opines professionally that EO's was only average, but his daughters, among others, had better handwriting, more precise and modern. Compare and contrast with Shaksper's illiterate daughters. We would expect that the REAL Shakespeare would support learning, reading, and writing for his children, and in Oxford's case, the world's leading expert says this is true. How's that for counter-spin?

63-64 - EO spells halfpenny no less than eleven different ways. He shows an extraordinary freedom in his phonetic representation. No wonder the Shakespeare publication compositors were so damn confused about every line, and only regularized sith and since when they remembered to. If spelling was something that mattered aught to Oxford (except for magic spells) then statistical analyses and discussions of Sith and Since ratios are perhaps an exercise in futility. I think we have to look at the word and not how it was spelled.

64 N notes a correspondence between Oxford's rare archaic use of "oft" for "ought" with the play Gammer Gurtons Needle and Greene's Orpharion! He also claims (citing the OED) that this is evidence of some dyslexic-type inability to use the language! But Oxford may have had a personal shorthand that spelled ought as oft as in: "you oft to go out more often." Several researchers have looked through the OED to confirm what Nelson says he read there, but his vague citation is not there. As we will see, every link in the chain of N's story about Oxford's alleged ear-brain-pen disorder is a fraudulent link, forged in a workshop of faux-scholarship, incarcerated counter-evidence, and outright lies and fabrications.

N delivers his "tin-ear" concept - that Oxford had some sort of cognitive impairment....

N's "premise" is that Oxford's occasionally unusual spellings reflect a severe speech impediment that went uncorrected and then influenced his phonetic representation of speech in words. N theorizes that no one dared to criticize the young Lord, and his impediment became ingrained and rooted deeper into his neural pathways, affecting his thinking. Even Noam Chomsky would laugh at Dr. N's fantasy. But it's worse than a fantasy, because N's 'evidence' that Oxford had a hearing/thinking/spelling problem is completely made up. Dr. N hides from his readers the many occasions Oxford spelled certain key words correctly, and only introduces examples where the spelling (or penmanship) occasionally slips. Nelson's entire theory/accusation of mental dyslexia is a knowing deliberate fraud. If one of his students had tried to pull off a con like this, the University might have had cause for handing out a punishment.

Here's a fine image: if we combine all of N's cartoon-Oxfords into one incredible super-villain (after all, Oxford IS the Monsterous Adversary!) we have this outlandishly dressed fop, armed to the teeth, high on poppy-extract, lisping,

"Thanktifie me Thatan, I am your thimple thortherous thervant..."

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66-67 N offers examples of Latin usages and spellings he doesn't like and concludes that Oxford was a bad Latinist. Nelson's claims in this regard have already been well disputed by others. Once again Dr. N withholds from his readers counter-evidence that Oxford's Latin was excellent. He could read it, write it and speak it conversationally - and on that we have the testimony of his contemporary and friend Sturmius. Even if there are occasional "irregularities' (from a modern myopic specialist's point of view) in some of the spelling of Latin in Oxford's letters, and If we decide to then say that Oxford was not an A-plus Latinist, we need to ask, "OK, but compared to whom?" Even Jonson said that "Shakespeare" accomplished quite a bit with 'small latine and lesse greek'. But the record of contemporaries speaking about Oxford praise his mastery of the classics and classical languages. This really boils down to Oxford having looser spelling than Nelson would like and nothing more. Oxford's Latin was infinitely better than Shaxper's and that is all that matters (in addition to setting the record straight) - Was Oxford's Latin adequate for the task of writing the works of Shakespeare? Yes, with considerable room to spare.

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