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April 22, 2019 Additional Information Contact: Steven Sabel (951)532-6803 [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New book documents connections of the poems of Edward de Vere to the works of Shakespeare

NATIONAL – A new publication of collected lyric and narrative poetry of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford includes documented connections between particular phraseology in Oxford’s early poems and derivative forms found in the works of Shakespeare. “The Poems of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford . . . and the Shakespeare Question: He that Takes the Pain to Pen the Book,” edited by Roger Stritmatter, PhD, is now available through Amazon.

“Often an idea, figure of speech, or particular phraseology that originates in de Vere’s poems gets recycled multiple times with slight variations over time in the Shakespeare plays and poems,” said Stritmatter, professor of humanities at Coppin State University.

Stritmatter led a team of more than a dozen researchers and collaborators through more than three years of research and writing to assemble thousands of linguistic parallelisms between the de Vere poems, and the plays and poems of Shakespeare. The range and variety of these parallelisms are sampled in detailed notes that walk the reader through this collection of 21 poems attributed to de Vere, and another 11 poems possibly written by de Vere.

“Over and again we discovered elements that occur first in de Vere and later in derivative forms in Shakespeare. It is clear that the book represents a significant breakthrough for the Oxfordian hypothesis,” Stritmatter said.

“He that Takes the Pain to Pen the Book” is the first volume in a series of “Brief Chronicles” books under the general editorship of Stritmatter for the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, a non- profit organization dedicated to supporting research and discussion of the Shakespeare Authorship Question.

“A comparative study of Oxford’s place in the development of Elizabethan poetics in these volumes makes it apparent that by a very early date, the young Earl was anticipating what “Shakespeare” would later do,” said Tom Regnier, immediate past president of SOF, and coordinator of publishing the “Brief Chronicles” series.

- more - PR/Page 2. The next two projected volumes in the series are a second volume of de Vere poems due out in May, and a book on the pedagogy of the authorship question scheduled to publish in October.

“The foremost 19th century British literary scholar, Alexander Grosart, referring to Oxford in 1872, declared that an ‘unlifted shadow…lies over his memory.’ The series aims to uplift the shadow to restore a man whose reputation has long been eclipsed by error, envy, and obfuscation,” Regnier said.

Key contributors to the project included Gary Goldstein, editor of “The Oxfordian,” an annual peer reviewed journal of the Early Modern Period and Shakespeare’s works; Robert R. Prechter, CMT, president of Elliott Wave International; and Bryan H. Wildenthal, JD, professor of law emeritus, Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

“Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of writing this book has been to follow the neurolinguistic pathways of the bard’s imagination as revealed by systematic study,” said Stritmatter. “It was also exciting to work with so many volunteers to assemble the book’s intricate documentation of the close cognitive and emotional connections between the young de Vere and the mature works of Shakespeare.”

Stritmatter says the book contests the popular misconception of de Vere as an “intellectual lightweight,” “monstrous adversary,” and “rotten poet.”

“On the contrary, closely examined through and in his poetry, de Vere emerges as a deeply studied and original poetic voice,” Stritmatter said. “In a piece of scholarly disruption, the book transforms what has been widely conjectured as a weakness of the Oxfordian case into one of its strongest planks. De Vere’s poems constitute essential missing elements of evidence in the Shakespearean question.”

Stritmatter has studied Shakespeare authorship for more than 25 years. He is included in more than 100 publications listed in the “Index to Oxfordian Publications.” In 2001 he completed his University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation on the de Vere Geneva Bible, owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library. His most recent work on a lost-and-found Herman Melville manuscript appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

At a time of year when the Stratfordian establishment is often commemorating the life of the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, Stritmatter’s new book furthers growing implications that history has identified the wrong man as the author of the works of Shakespeare.

“Publication of this copiously documented study explodes a central myth of the Stratfordian ideology by documenting a series of profound linguistic connections between the poetry of the 17th Earl of Oxford and the works of Shakespeare. The implications of these findings for the study of the authorship question and Shakespeare generally, are difficult to overestimate.

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Roger Stritmatter, PhD, is a professor of humanities and literature at Coppin State University with numerous publications in peer reviewed journals of literary studies, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and forensic studies. His 2001 University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation on the de Vere Geneva Bible, owned by the Folger Shakespeare library, was featured in a February 10, 2002 NYT article. The 2017 fourth edition of the “Index to Oxfordian Publications” identifies 116 articles by him, more than 20 in peer reviewed academic journals, including “The Shakespeare Yearbook,” “Review of English Studies,” “Notes and Queries,” and the “Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review.” He is the author, with award-winning young adult novelist, Lynne Kositsky, of “On the Date, Sources, and Design of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’” (McFarland 2013) and, with Alexander Waugh, “A New Shakespeare Allusion Book: Literary Allusions to Shakespeare, 1584-1786 from Historical Principles.” He has appeared in two Shakespeare authorship documentaries, “Last Will. and Testament” (2012) and “Nothing Truer than the Truth” (2018).