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Oxford's Additions to Holinshed
Update: November 23, 2024: An expanded version 2 of Evidence of Oxford as Sidney is now available in the file section below.
Update: November 10, 2024: Exciting news! I have added a file evidencing Oxford's hand in writing parts of Sir Philip Sidney's published works. See file section below for details!
This website is dedicated to exploring the possibility that Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote many of the additions to the second edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1587). The reports, spreadsheets and tables that you find here are the work of Alister Hill, an independent Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ) researcher and are based on the groundbreaking work of Robert Prechter in Oxford's Voices (www.oxfords voices.com).
The main report can be found in the file section below. Feel free to download as required. Updates and a change log will appear as needed. New sections will be added regularly so please be sure to pop back for updates regularly.
Fans of Oxford's Voices can discuss its far reaching implications at Oxford's Allonyms on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/share/g/8LButWtgQxipkoyY/)
For this study I have compared the 1577 and 1587 editions of Holinshed's Chronicles (https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/Holinshed/) in search of the voice of Oxford in additions to the 1587 edition. I began with volume 6 and so far have identified 729 additions likely by Oxford, containing more than a quarter of a million words. These additions include 5804 literary parallels to the Shakespeare canon through rare words (10 or less occurrence in the canon) and phrases.
The additions contain literary parallels to every play in the canon as well as Lover’s Complaint, Passionate Pilgrim, Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis and 67 out of 154 sonnets (including sonnets 1 and 154). The most referenced plays are 1 Henry VI (250) and Richard III (240) and the least are Midsummer (84) and Two Gentlemen (87). Only five plays are referenced less than 100 times. The Henry VIII chapter has 51 unique references to the play and the Henry VI chapter has 76 unique references to the three Henry VI plays.
I was initially drawn to additions by Abraham Fleming, Oxford’s personal secretary [OV, pp. 1714/5] which are introduced with ver words: verie, truelie, truth, veries, everie; and which contain Latin inscriptions by Ovid, Juvenal and Virgil amongst others. I also noticed similar patterns in anonymous additions. Additions by Francis Thinn (Thynne) were unsimilar and lacked the lyricy of language to be Oxford’s.
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