Not to put too fine a point upon it, not only has Hank Whittemore shaken the spear of scholarship at Shakespeare’s authorship, but his huge and stunning masterpiece has shaken this reviewer with new vision and insight. Though Whittemore does no bludgeoning, his insistent, assured, logical approach is so thorough that it is enough to convince the most skeptical. Yet it has been no gentle shaking. After a careful reading and digesting of this impressive volume, I must describe the experience as deeply disturbing on emotional, intellectual and psychological levels. How could something that I had been so sure about be dismantled, nay ripped to shreds, so easily?

Easily? No, verily not easily, for in truth, there was nothing easy about Whittemore’s research, except maybe the moment of truth which got him started on ten years of brilliant, exhaustive scholarship and line by line analysis of the entire 154 poem cycle of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Hank Whittemore clearly details the powerful evidence which proves beyond reasonable doubt that only Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, could have produced Shakespeare's Sonnets, written as a poetic monument to his son, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.

Such a monument was necessary so that the truth of Southampton’s parentage would be preserved for prosperity to discover. The cover of Whittemore’s tome states boldly Shake-Speares Sonnets, Never Before Imprinted, THE MONUMENT by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Perusing this work with the original sonnets side by side with Whittemore’s line by line explication, causes one to see the true meaning intended and to agree that indeed these sonnets have never before been truly imprinted.

Whittemore's The Monument is monumental in so many ways; monumental in focus and concept, research and scholarship; monumental in its cast of characters, embracing the political intrigue of England and much of Europe; monumental in its extensive quotation of Shakespearean scholarship through the ages, and primary source citations on the lives of the cast involved; monumental in size, comprising nearly 900 pages in a large format volume containing Whittemore’s line by line explication of each of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets; plus monumentally massive in providing meticulously organized supportive material to build and sustain the conclusions to which he came after such prolonged and intense research.

For over 400 years the works of William Shakespeare have been honored, revered, analyzed, critiqued, and commentated upon. Shakespeare is known as the world’s greatest poet. Multitudes are intimate with the beloved plays, made familiar to us line by line by scholars, theatrical productions and films. The sonnets are another story. They are not nearly so well known. Their meanings are enigmatic, much more difficult to decipher and controversial among Shakespearean scholars. Before Whittemore, no scholar had found a satisfying way to link all the sonnets. Those who had tried failed miserably or partially succeeded only by ignoring inconsistencies, or by speculating wildly on isolated lines. Whittemore’s accomplishment is tremendous. He has solved what has been an enigma since the first Shakespearean speculator put pen to paper. Whittemore has allowed readers to see the sonnet cycle as an understandable and believable whole. This feat is only possible if one is willing and able to give up life-long beliefs in the authorship of someone, perhaps a mere actor, called William Shakespeare.

At the heart of Whittemore’s understanding of the sonnets is the contention that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford fathered an illegitimate son of whom Queen Elizabeth I was the mother. That child grew up to be Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. This is the young man, the RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, AND BARON OF TITCHFIELD, long believed to be the high patron to whom the "untutored" Shakespeare dedicated Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece in 1594. The Monument provides ample literary evidence to confirm the validity of this parentage.

As for the sonnets themselves, Whittemore presents a convincing unified chronology. The first 26 sonnets were written from 1591 to 1600 during the years when Oxford still had hope that his political maneuvers might succeed in making Southampton the official heir to Elizabeth’s throne. Then, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, unacknowledged heir to Elizabeth’s throne, was imprisoned in the Tower for treason (ostensibly against his own mother). The imprisonment lasted from February 8, 1601 until April 9, 1603. The 100 sonnets, numbers 27-126, that Whittemore places at the center of the entire sonnet sequence, were, in Whittemore’s concordance, written by Oxford to his son during his incarceration. They are called the "Fair Youth" series and were meant to be an encouragement to Wriothesley, imprisoned and under sentence of death, as his father struggled on the outside to save him from execution and to eventually have him freed.

Besides revealing Southampton’s parentage, the sonnets were also meant to be a monument to the truth of the unspoken and unspeakable political situation wherein Southampton supported the Essex rebellion against his own mother’s throne. During this time Oxford was, of course, forced to write under a pen name not only by the political censorship imposed in Elizabethan England, but by the extreme circumstances. Part three of the sonnets, 127-152, written during those same 3 years of Southampton’s imprisonment Feb 8, 1601-March 24, 1603 are designated the "Dark Lady" sonnets. Sonnet #127 corresponds in time to #27, both of which depict the night of the Essex revolt and the imprisonment of Southampton. A precise parallel is noted by Whittemore between the first 26 sonnets and last 26 as bookends for the central 100. In this last section most astonishing new insights are given to well known sonnets like: "My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the Sunne;" with its repetition of word "Will", capitalized, playing on Oxford’s pseudonym and Elizabeth’s will; "Be wise as thou art cruel"; and many other sonnets previously thought to concern a love triangle which suddenly spring into clarity when the fair youth and dark lady characters are known to be Southampton and Elizabeth and the poet figure is accepted to be Oxford.

For Oxford to take on the pseudonym of Shakes-speare was, as Whittemore points out, quite fitting in the Elizabethan age, as the term "shaking of the spear" was commonly used to indicate military and chivalric traditions. Oxford, says Whittemore, adopted the pseudonym to place his poetry into the chivalric framework as well as to "express his role as a knight shaking the ‘spear’ of his pen on behalf of Southampton and Queen Elizabeth I . . . of whom he would write: ‘Two loves I have of comfort and despair/ Which like two spirits do suggest me still;/The better angel is a man right fair,/The worser spirit is a woman coloured ill’" (Sonnet 144). To see the fair youth as Southampton and the dark lady as Elizabeth, through the eyes of Whittemore’s clarification, clears away a massive fog of uncertainty.

This and many other mysteries of the sonnets are solved by Whittemore. All those years of wondering are over. The sonnets were written to and about real people. They are not merely literary convention. The man to whom many are addressed is not a homosexual partner, but a beloved son. The dark lady is not some dark skinned unknown, but black hearted Elizabeth. The "rival poet" is Oxford himself. The real order of the sonnets is illuminated beyond doubt. The mystery of the WH to whom sonnets are dedicated is completely clarified when it is not the lowly commoner William Shakespeare speaking with such familiarity to "Mr. W. H" which was the designation given to the Earl of Southampton, a peer of the realm, but his own father, the Earl of Oxford. The extreme importance placed upon the supposed love affair delineated in the sonnets becomes clarified when it is known that indeed the heir to the throne and the future of England were involved. Only a few challenging lines remain to be understood, along with the question of the exact date of Oxford’s death and why the cycle appeared in 1609. The question of why the sonnets were ignored by contemporaries could be explained by the insecure accession of James I to the throne, making any question of Elizabeth’s heirs still politically incorrect. The remaining mysteries are minor compared to the magnificent enormity of what has been solved.

The sonnets, as Whittemore makes evident are hard to understand because they were written on two levels. On the surface they appeared to follow love poetry conventions, seeming to present a triangle of two men and a dark lady. This cover story, Oxford hoped would get his sonnets past the censors. Certain repeated words become a code that could be deciphered to reveal the true story, which Oxford hoped would be discovered by posterity. Whittemore adds several pages of "translations" of this code in an appendix, plus continual notes throughout the text. Just a few examples of this code are some of the oft repeated words used to describe Elizabeth, such as Beauty, Rose, black, heart, Cynthia, the moon, and her motto Ever the Same; Southampton being represented as a Bud, and his motto, One for All, All for One, which is played upon continually; and the repeated use of "Truth," ever, every as representative of deVere.

Whittemore’s research uncovers the meaning of sonnets never before understood as describing the trial that condemned both Essex and Southampton to death, with Oxford as one of the judges, forced to vote for execution. Next came the execution of Essex, and the continued imprisonment of Southampton, his life being spared, as explained brilliantly by Whittemore, due only to his father’s efforts, this being the first plausible rationale for why Southampton was not executed. His sentence was changed to "misprision" (of treason), not a capital offense, as seen in Whittemore’s translation of Sonnet 87. With Whittemore’s help, Sonnet 106 becomes obviously about Elizabeth’s death and Southampton’s release from the tower as well as about the waste of the life of a rightful heir to the throne. This new insight into history and so much more Whittemore has revealed in his depiction of the sonnets as a monument to Southampton. Thus Oxford’s prophecy comes true:

"Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read" (Sonnet 81, ll.9-10).

Oxford has indeed created the enduring monument he promised.
"And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crest and tombs of brass are spent" (Sonnet 107 ll.13-14).

It has been a long wait, but finally the 21st Century is discovering this monument.

If one embraces the thinking and research of Whittemore, as it deserves to be embraced, one has to come to terms perhaps with the conclusion that not only did Shakespeare not write the sonnets, he possibly did not write the plays either. Accepting Oxford’s authorship certainly explains many of the questions asked about the author of Shakespeare’s plays, such as how could an uneducated commoner like William Shakespeare have the vast knowledge exhibited in the plays, and how could he get away with the political diatribe seen in so many of the plays. These questions are matter for future volumes. In the meantime anyone who cares deeply for the work of this author long known as Shake-speare, simply must not only read, but study Whittemore’s absorbing work. Judge its value for yourself, see if every line whose meaning you ever wondered about becomes much clearer, be astonished, and go forth to spread the word to others who still remain in the dark.