Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?
O know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument,
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.
愛德華·德維爾,十七世牛津伯爵(Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl
of Oxford,1550-1604)最可能為莎士比亞全部著作的真實作者。在英國文學
史上,同時代的人把德維爾稱為多才多藝的抒情詩人、宮廷詩人和劇作家。據
說他性格高傲,於十六世紀80年代失去伊莉莎白女王的寵愛,被逐出宮廷,因
此有可能廣泛接觸了英國社會,同時遊歷過義大利等歐洲各國。英國學者托馬
斯·盧尼(Thomas Looney)於1922年出版《莎士比亞鑒定》(Shakespeare identified
in Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford)一書力求從德維爾的生平與莎劇
場景的平行研究中尋找旁證,由此形成莎翁著作權懷疑派中最重要的一派,
即牛津派(Oxfordian theory)。此說已接近塵埃落定。
多位莎學家認爲莎士比亞十四行詩第76首以代碼和密碼嵌入了詩人姓氏
De Vere 等多種信息,但需要特殊的解碼方法才能破解。筆者的中譯挑明了
這一點。