page_title: Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
section_title: Methodology of Oxfordian argument
hierarchical_section_title: Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship / Case against Oxfordian theory / Methodology of Oxfordian argument
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of Shakespeare's King Lear (1608)
context_page_description: The Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. Though literary scholars reject all alternative authorship candidates, including Oxford, interest in the Oxfordian theory continues. Since the 1920s, the Oxfordian theory has been the most popular alternative Shakespeare authorship theory.
  The convergence of documentary evidence of the type used by academics for authorial attribution – title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records – sufficiently establishes Shakespeare's authorship for the overwhelming majority of Shakespeare scholars and literary historians, and no such documentary evidence links Oxford to Shakespeare's works. Oxfordians, however, reject the historical record and claim that circumstantial evidence supports Oxford’s authorship, proposing that the contradictory historical evidence is part of a conspiracy theory that falsified the record to protect the identity of the real author.
context_section_description: Specialists in Elizabethan literary history object to the methodology of Oxfordian arguments. In lieu of any evidence of the type commonly used for authorship attribution, Oxfordians discard the methods used by historians and employ other types of arguments to make their case, the most common being supposed parallels between Oxford's life and Shakespeare's works.
  Another is finding cryptic allusions to Oxford's supposed play writing in other literary works of the era that to them suggest that his authorship was obvious to those "in the know". David Kathman writes that their methods are subjective and devoid of any evidential value, because they use a "double standard". Their arguments are "not taken seriously by Shakespeare scholars because they consistently distort and misrepresent the historical record", "neglect to provide necessary context" and are in some cases "outright fabrication[s]". One major evidential objection to the Oxfordian theory is Edward de Vere's 1604 death, after which a number of Shakespeare's plays are generally believed to have been written. In The Shakespeare Claimants, a 1962 examination of the authorship question, H. N. Gibson concluded that "... on analysis the Oxfordian case appears to me a very weak one".
caption: Title page of the first quarto  King Lear, one of 12 plays scholars say were written after Oxford's death in 1604. Oxfordians say that no direct evidence exists that any of the plays were composed after 1604.
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