Oxford World's Classics: Three Major Plays

Nothing in his behavior, at any point in his life, indicated the least gift for compassion, empathy, or generosity of spirit-or indeed the commitment to hard work that would have allowed him to write more than three dozen plays anonymously, in addition to the work under his own name, while remaining actively engaged at court. Looney never produced evidence to explain why Oxford -a man of boundless vanity-would seek to hide his identity. Why would he be happy to give the world some unremembered plays and middling poems under his own name, but then retreat into anonymity as he developed, in middle age, a fantastic genius? All Looney would say on the matter was: БЂњThat, however, is his business, not ours.БЂ«Actually, if we are to believe in Oxford, it is entirely our business. It has to be. The problems with Oxford donБЂ™t end quite there. There is the matter of the dedications to his two narrative poems. At the time of Venus and Adonis, Oxford was forty-four years old and a senior earl to Southampton, who was still a downy youth ...»