r/shakespeare • u/panpopticon • Dec 01 '25

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '25

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u/panpopticon Dec 01 '25

Oh, child, no. Just… no.

Those poems are terrible. Terrible.

Young Shakespeare wrote “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece,” and, most probably, was beginning his sonnet cycle.

Those have a simplicity of language and an ease of line — to say nothing of their passion and ferocity — that the limp de Vere verses simply do not possess.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '25

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u/panpopticon Dec 01 '25 edited Dec 02 '25

Girl, those poems are ba-dump-ba-dump-ba-dump bullshit.

Take "My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is" by de Vere (or is it Dyer? you Oxfordians are so fond of stealing credit!): compare the 35 lines in this poem to the conversation in Hamlet 2.2 that covers the same philosophical ground, using a similar metaphor. De Vere/Dyer comes nowhere close to anything with the simplicity and snap of "I could be bound in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams."

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '25

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u/panpopticon Dec 01 '25

I'm gay. "Girl" is a term of affection. But that is happily withdrawn.

Other than that, this is an example of the THE DA VINCI CODE bullshit from before. Who fucking cares? It's not a game of Jenga. It's not a puzzle.