ANONYMOUS (Roland Emmerich 2011)

[Howard Schumann]

"There really is no point in debating this issue with people who are uninformed..."

That was not directed to you but to the scholar who thinks the Oxfordians are a cult.

Yes, I have studied the issue for 15 years but that doesn't mean I consider myself in possession of the truth. It is a very complex issue and there are many unanswered questions. I've been trying to keep up with all the reviews, articles, and blogs that have been piling up since the film came out and it is hard not to feel a sense of despair how people just parrot what they've heard from the vocal and obnoxious professors like James Shapiro.

I never thought a Jew could be so dogmatic and intolerant. The hardest part is for people to be willing to let go of their safe and comfortable beliefs and look at the issue with fresh eyes. Marcel Proust said it like this, "The real voyage of discovery lies in not seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes." I say to people who are stuck in their Stratfordian fantasy land, that it takes research and an open mind. But an open mind is a rare commodity these days. People are so conditioned to accept whatever an authority figure says without questioning.

Clarity cannot be brought to the issue by looking at websites like Wikepedia and think you know something about it. Wikipedia is open to anyone to edit it and the one on the Oxfordian theory has been the victim of a campaign by Stratfordians to modify so it comes out looking as if the theory has no merit.

I admit there is a lot of appeal in the idea of the egalitarian uneducated genius from Stratford who was able to overcome his class limitations and become the greatest writer in the English language. The only question to ask is not whether he could have written the plays and poems, not whether he might have, or should have. The question to ask is - did he? The issue has to be looked at without attachment to what you always believed and what you so much want to be true. It might take you to places you do not want to go - to places where there is darkness and betrayal, and incest, and even murder. It isn't important to me, however, if I like what I discover. The only question must be - is it the truth?

If people can let go of their attachment to the mythology and look at the evidence, it is clear to me that Edward de Vere is the true author behind the works of Shakespeare. It simply makes no sense to me whatsoever that the greatest writer in the English language would have left no paper trail to show the world how he was able to accomplish the great work that he did. Genius can come from all walks of life, from the rich as well as the poor but in every case of genius like Mozart we are able to trace the path of how they came to achieve the level they did. There are always information about how they obtained their talent, their education, their tutors, the people they met who influenced them, their early works, their trial and error.

For most writers in Shakespeare's time, even lesser writers that no one has heard of, we have documents that show that they were writers. With Shakespeare we have none. I have never seen anyone from that period during his lifetime who identified William Shakespeare and William of Stratford. When they talked about Shakespeare, they were referring to a name only. There are no physical descriptions. No one ever claimed to have met or talked with him. Ask yourself, just coming from logic and common sense, would the greatest writer in the English language be content to have his daughters remain illiterate?

Edward de Vere does not fit the picture of the haughty aristocrat. He was a man who had enormous literary ability, who was a patron of the arts, who wrote poetry and ran two theater companies and suffered a great deal in his life. His pain and his suffering is written all over the plays and Sonnets. When he says in Sonnet 81, "that I, once gone, to all the world must die' comes from the type of agony that few people have experienced, to know that your name will be lost to history and will never be given credit for the genius of his works.

I can't really say any more right now. There is no substitute here for reading books about his life and how it affected his art. If you want, I can recommend some.