Oxford’s Vocabulary

Meet Oxford as a writer.

If Oxford were to write as “Shakespeare”—leaving aside all other temporal, spatial, intellectual, and social paradoxes—he would need to hold two incompatible systems of orthography in mind, two dissimilar accents, with their different assonances, rhymes, and quibbles. He would have to keep them utterly distinct: never let Shakespeare’s hand or mind appear in Oxford’s letters; nor let the Essex marshes seep into the plays or poetry. He would have to speak two languages.

And if the man could write like Shakespeare, why did he go on, for decade after decade, writing like Oxford?

One of Oxford’s letters. The words marked in pink are signature spellings, none of which appear in Shakespeare’s work.