Shakespeare Discoveries I: A Secular Tour of "Venus and Adonis" (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798218740573)

Shakespeare Discoveries I presents a new and revolutionary interpretation of the great Shakespeare narrative poem Venus and Adonis. Utilizing a new, complete and meticulously careful transcription of the first edition of 1593, textual analysis shows that the key to the poem is the identification of Adonis as a satirical portrait of the poet and militarist Philip Sidney devised by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who portrays himself as Venus. The poem is shown to be a brazen attempt by de Vere to achieve closure of a bitter personal and professional rivalry that had been suspended due only to Sidney's death in 1586.

The book also includes a paper on the 1591 first edition of Philip Sidney's poem Astrophel and Stella. Until recently this publication has been regarded as a notorious pirate edition. The hundreds of unauthorized editorial changes to Sidney's poem that it contains, however, have come to be construed as thoughtful, sensitive editing. A prefactory letter to the reader by the satirist Thomas Nashe is shown to be a masterly crafted mockery of Sidney, his poetry and his circle. A dedicatory letter signed by the publisher, Thomas Newman, is shown to be the work of Edward de Vere, with echoes and affectations similar to those of the dedicatory letters prefacing the first publications of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. De Vere, who is also perceived as likely to have made the editorial changes, is shown to be the author of the poem that ends the book, giving himself the last word.