View example sentences and word forms for Oxfordian.
Oxfordian meaning
A native or resident of Oxford. | One who believes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
Example sentences (10)
Sobran was also an Oxfordian on the Shakespeare authorship question, another position he may have held as much to ruffle the establishment as for its (dubious) merits.
Non-Oxfordian writers do not see any evidence of partiality for the de Vere family in the plays.
Oxfordian arguments rely heavily on biographical allusions; adherents find correspondences between incidents and circumstances in Oxford's life and events in Shakespeare's plays, sonnets, and longer poems.
Oxfordian Louis P. Bénézet created the "Bénézet test", a collage of lines from Shakespeare and lines he thought were representative of Oxford, challenging non-specialists to tell the difference between the two authors.
Oxfordian researchers respond that the annual publication of "new" or "corrected" Shakespeare plays stopped in 1604, and that the dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets implies that the author was dead prior to their publication in 1609.
Oxfordian William Farina refers to Shakespeare's apparent knowledge of the Jewish ghetto, Venetian architecture and laws in The Merchant of Venice, especially the city's "notorious Alien Statute".
Specialists in Elizabethan literary history object to the methodology of Oxfordian arguments.
That no plays survive under Oxford's name is also important to the Oxfordian theory.
The most compelling evidence against the Oxfordian theory is de Vere's death in 1604, since the generally accepted chronology of Shakespeare's plays places the composition of approximately twelve of the plays after that date.
Variant Oxfordian theories Although most Oxfordians agree on the main arguments for Oxford, the theory has spawned schismatic variants that have not met with wide acceptance by all Oxfordians, although they have gained much attention.