Poems of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Book excerpt: Once an acclaimed poet and playwright of the Elizabethan Era, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) had fallen into obscurity. Attention to his biography and writings returned with the publication of J. Thomas Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified in 1920. The collection here is of his early and few poems the majority of scholars believed to have been written by him. Much of his mature work (post 1576 when Oxford stopped signing his name to works) has been lost or has possibly been assigned to other poets/playwrights. His absence from the page and from Elizabeth's court has naturally been explained away as him remaking himself as the author of Shake-Speare. Historians have wondered what would the callow works of Shakespeare look like? Perhaps these poems are the best example of that as many in the Shakespeare Author Debate try to prove that there was another "shake-scene in a country".