Alexander Waugh - ‘Vulgar Scandal’ Mentioned in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

In his Sonnets, the author "Shake-speare" reveals that he is embroiled in a "vulgar scandal" that has made him "a motley to the view" and a "disgrace in men’s eyes." This presentation asks: In whose eyes was he disgraced and what was the nature of his offense? It shows how evidence of this long-buried affair is still recoverable from existing sources and presents a fraction of it by way of introduction to an intriguing and under-researched aspect of Shakespearean biography.
This talk was presented on September 25, 2015, at the SOF Annual Conference in Ashland, Oregon.
Alexander Waugh is the author of Classical Music (1995), Opera (1996), Time (1999), and God (2002), as well as a family biography Fathers and Sons (2004), and the House of Wittgenstein (2008). He is General Editor of the scholarly 42-Volume Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh for Oxford University Press, Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Leicester, and co-edited Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial (2013).
For more on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, visit ShakespeareOxfordFellowship.org.