Here is my 2023 analysis, published in a professional journal of forensic studies, of the handwriting of the “Audley End Unknown” Annotator. These Audley End annotations are the holy grail of Shakespeare studies: they supply a window into Shakespeare’s creative process for both Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra.
I don’t know what the Stratfordians will say about this. Their belief is doomed. If anyone can find a reason to argue with the conclusion, please do so and show me where I went wrong. My guess is that even Oliver Kamm and the rest of the Oxfrauds will just pretend this didn’t happen, at least for as long as they can.
February 19, 2025 at 1:08 am
At the end of this paper, testing by other researchers and examiners is asked for. Here is my input; I thoroughly read through the paper presented above, and have to disagree with the conclusion reached. The provided lettering samples of de Vere and Audley End are similar in style and some attributes, but are often very different letter-by-letter. Here are some examples:
-Double S: Audley End’s are wider and rounder. When the writer is making the “B” shape, they draw two humps with a point between them. De Vere’s Double S characters are narrower and tend to make a concave bend along the “B”, rather than coming to a point between the two humps. (41)
-Lower case s: De Vere’s lower case s’s tend to be curved; Audley End’s are sharper at the middle, like lightning bolts. (p.48)
-“st” ligature: De Vere’s ligature has more of a swoopy, flourish; the Audley End writer connects with a slightly-sloped line. (48)
-Lower case p: The tails of the Audley End p’s are proportionately longer than de Vere’s.
-Upper case R: The Audley End writer, in the provided examples, always swoops the pen upward at the end of the “right leg” of the R; de Vere’s “right leg” ends more straight. (p 43)
-Upper case M: De Vere starts the letter with a neat, curved “left foot,” and the Audley End writer starts with a straighter “left foot.” Additionally, de Vere always writes the first “hump” of the M as rounded outward; the Audley End writer’s “hump” is much sharper. Additionally, the “right foot” of the Audley M is always long, de Vere’s “right foot” is always short. (49)
-Capital H: When beginning an H, Audley End always includes a curved “hook.” De Vere starts the letter with a straight line. For the “left foot” of the H: Audley End always curves the “left foot” outward. De Vere curves the “left foot” of the H inward. (56)
-Capital I-J: De Vere always crosses his I-J characters, at least in the provided samples. Audley End does not. To be fair, the caption of this chart acknowledges these differences. (56)
If you scrubbed all mention of de Vere from this this paper and its comparison charts, and if you replaced the name on the “de Vere” column with “Shakespeare” or “Sir Henry Neville,” I’d be just as quick to criticize its oversights and tunnel vision. Glancing similarities between the Audley End handwriting and de Vere’s do not “confirm” that they come from the same hand — the formal differences between the many of the letters are obvious. I urge the author to reconsider the methodology.
April 20, 2025 at 9:48 pm
The differences you describe are in some cases real, but you are misinterpreting them. You write:
If you scrubbed all mention of de Vere from this this paper and its comparison charts, and if you replaced the name on the “de Vere” column with “Shakespeare” or “Sir Henry Neville,” I’d be just as quick to criticize its oversights and tunnel vision. Glancing similarities between the Audley End handwriting and de Vere’s do not “confirm” that they come from the same hand — the formal differences between the many of the letters are obvious. I urge the author to reconsider the methodology.
I urge you to learn something about how forensic handwriting is done and how incidental difference is distinguished from difference that indicates distinct writership. You clearly don’t understand this distinction and are being more than a little generous to your own lack of knowledge of the relevant factors.
Moreover, Sir, you leave your readers hanging: if these notes are not in Edward de Vere’s hand, who are they? You have no answer, just as you have no concept (that one can tell by your post) of the problem of variation in early modern handwriting.
December 11, 2025 at 3:45 pm
Why should we believe these characteristics are diagnostic of different writership of the samples and not merely expressions of natural variation?
February 26, 2025 at 5:59 pm
George Gascoigne has been proposed by Robert Prechter in his book Oxford’s Voices, as one of Oxford’s voices. He is also one of the very very few 16th Century English writer who used the ae diphthong apart from de Vere. Would it be possible to compare the handwriting in the documents where his ae diphthong appears, with the handwriting of de Vere’s?
April 20, 2025 at 9:35 pm
I put little stake in much of what Robert Prechter says, but the argument that Gascoigne was used as a front by Oxford is stronger than most of his arguments. The handwriting is distinct, but the two men were clearly associated and Oxfordians long before Prechter have proposed some sort of complicated relationship between the two men. But as for Gascoigne MS material being written in Oxford’s hand, no, it just isn’t.
March 4, 2025 at 11:41 pm
In the fall I took a class with a Stratfordian professor. I raised the Oxford issues with respect to a couple of the plays that we read. In my opinion, he can see problems with the Stratford narrative if certain facts are established such as some of the Italian travel narrative, and I wrote extensively on your handwriting analysis. His response to these two issues was that (1) perhaps Stratford travelled to Italy (and particularly Rome ) during those ‘lost’ years and gained his Italian knowledge this way, and regarding Audley End, he actually proposed some sort of partnership or knowledge transfer between Oxford and Stratford. Thus, in essence, he acknowledged the facts may indeed bear on the authorship question, but he tried to find patches to the problems. His main focus on Shakespeare is arguing that the author was a Catholic and aspects of the plays reflect that (which it does seem in studying the Stratford family history there is that link though that person not the author). One other point, he wanted to see confirmation on the handwriting analysis by someone outside the Oxford world. It is hard for people to shift their paradigm and worldview. The key is to educate young people & college students and others whose life’s work does not depend on the outcome of this question, who can look at the evidence more objectively. Great work!
July 23, 2025 at 4:32 pm
Hi Colleen,
Apologies for the delayed response to your fascinating comment. I seem to have approved your comment, intending to reply at a later time, and then got distracted and failed to return to the question.
Finding “patches” indicates that your professor had entered the negotiating phase of his denial. There is a long and fascinating history of this sort of intellectual maneuvering and we will see a lot more of that kind of ad hoc rationalizing before this matter is resolved. Regarding the issue of the Audley End handwriting, here is a brief response:
1) Although I am an Oxfordian, my analysis was published in a peer-reviewed journal for board-certified forensic professionals with a distinguished an completely impartial editorial board which would not have signed on to the publication unless they were convinced that the article met professional standards. It is worth noting, moreover, what such standards consist of. English professors rarely if ever are called upon to testify in court. Not so with board-certified forensic experts, who may expect their testimony to be questioned under cross examination and whose conclusions can support or debunk decisions that involve large sums of money or, in criminal case, even result in the conviction or acquittal of defendants. So when Stratfordians make that argument, they do now know where they stand.
2) I would love to have my results tested by a reputable third party practitioner or (even better) a forensics lab. There are many things of which I have doubts, but one thing of which I have no doubt at all, is that their findings would corroborate mine. In fact, in my analysis I went above and beyond the standards of the discipline by analyzing and explaining the few slight divergences in the samples (most importantly, the matter of slant, since the Audley End annotator consistently writes with a more upright slant than de Vere does in his surviving letters).
3) When I say, “reputable third party practitioner,” I am not talking about your professor’s graduate student, but someone who has professional training and a reputation to maintain, someone who does not draw casual negative conclusions from minor variations that are ultimately illustrations of what is known to forensic analysts as “Natural variation,” not evidence that two samples are written by different persons.
Finally, regarding the question of religion — the author of the plays was definitively not a Catholic. Please see, e.g., Dan Wright’s impressive book on this matter. He was sympathetic to Catholicism, but the evidence of the plays really makes this an untenable position.
The author’s religious influences (de Vere’s grandfather patronized the radical Protestant playwright John Bayle, he was tutored by the Protestant Sir Thomas Smith and later raised in the household of William Cecil, and tutored by the Calvinist translator, his Uncle Arthur Golding) were persistently Protestant. In Venice, however, he worshiped at the Greek Orthodox Church, and Jonathan Jackson has recently argued (on this website among other places), that his sensibilities were also influenced by Greek orthodox theology, a view supported by the evidence of Greek orthodox works dedicated to his wife Anne Cecil.
Thank you again for your thoughtful contribution to the discussion. I agree that the key is to educate young people. I long ago gave up the hope that this matter would be resolved in my own lifetime, so I am eager to help pass the torch. I look forward to future discussion!
April 10, 2025 at 2:42 am
Prof. Stritmatter: I appreciate you posting this article. It is a remarkable piece and it represents quite a significant accomplishment on your part, both in employing recognized and detailed forensic handwriting techniques and then tying it your considerable work on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. I can’t even begin to imagine how much time was put into it. Well done!
July 10, 2025 at 9:30 pm
Thank you, Cary!
I very much appreciate your kind words. Yes, it took a lot of time and patient assembling of evidence and I think it may be unique in some ways as a highly detailed and forensically fine-tuned study of a particular problem of writership. From my experience I think that a more modern approach — using computer modeling and algorithms in a partially automated analysis would come to the same conclusion. I have worked with such practicioners on another project and I’m hoping someone with real expertise and authority beyond my own will replicate it.
December 11, 2025 at 3:29 pm
Hi Cary,
Thank you so much for your kind words. I appreciate your interest and your discerning intellect that is available to evidence properly presented and interpreted so that the evidence does the speaking, and not the assumptions (let alone prejudices, prejudgements,and just plain bad manners of so many). Yes, it was a long slog and in the end my editor and typographer had to cut things off a few days shy of what I wanted. Its easy to make incidental mistakes in a study with so many moving parts and different types of visual evidence to draw what should be a watertight case but which you also know someone will inevitably find some objection or other to it. So your kind words mean a lot to me, and I apologize for not responding sooner. I thought I was keeping up with the comments, but apparently not.