CHAPTER 6.
Quid hic vides?
'Vestigia,' dixit porcellus. Vestigia ungularum. Vagitum brevem excitatumque emisit.
'O Pu! Credis vusillum significare?'
'Significare possunt' dixit Pu. 'Modo significant, modo autem minime. De vestigiis
semper dubitandum est.'
--Winnie Ille Pu¹
For reasons already noted, the void at the heart of the Shakespeare question vanishes when one
considers the alternate proposition that Edward de Vere wrote the works ascribed to the book-less Mr.
Shakspere². According to the Oxfordian theory, "Shakespeare” translated his native brilliance and
superlative education into a body of literary creation both personal in its elaborate evocation of the raw
stuff of a specific lived experience --including reading -- and universal and enduring in its generic artistic
reformulation of those experiences.
One vital new line of evidence supporting this proposition is the discovery of books from de Vere's
library, which have begun to lend corroborative substance to the claims advanced by Looney, Ogburn,
Fowler, Miller and others. The potential for future discovery of additional books once owned by de Vere
is difficult to estimate. However, record of several such books is preserved in extant documents preserved
for the Court of Wards --
an institution in which
De Vere, as we have seen, was a prominent ward.
Among these, for example, we may note the following:
To William Seres, stationer, for a Geneva Bible gilt, a Chaucer, Plutarch’s
works in French, and other
books and papers……..2 7 10³
While noting that
the gilded Bible sold in this record is almost certainly the copy discussed in the
present dissertation
4
, we should not overlook the significance of de Vere’s purchase of books by Plutarch
1
Winnie Ille Pu by A. A. Milnei (Novi Eboraci: Sumptibus Duttonis, MCMLX). Latin Translation by Alexander Dutton.
2
I follow the spelling as used by the New Shakspere Society founded by Furnivall et alia to denote the Stratford Shakspere, whose name was
typically, if not always, spelled without the "e" after "Shak."
3
The document is S.P. Dom. Add., 19.38.
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