As Edgar Allan Poe Lives On, So Shall Eric Woolfson
September 13 2006 at 6:40 AM
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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?
~ Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford ~
Pouring over the lyrics of many of The Project songs, I am struck in much the same way that Oxfordian scholars are struck by the above Shakespearean quote. It would be difficult not to see parallels between the artistic identity of William Shakespeare and that of The Alan Parsons Project, but there is one main difference between Eric Woolfson and Edward de Vere: The 17th Earl of Oxford's identity was genuinely hidden from the rest of the world.
Eric, you may have been an enigma to many of us for choosing a childhood picture of yourself for the 1987 remaster of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but never were you ever a stranger! Even if you never sang a single song, you would still be the voice of The Project through words so simultaneously beautiful and thought-provoking so as to blur the line between lyric and poetry in much the same way that Edgar Allan Poe did. Yours is an artistic legacy that will live on well past your days, not only because it deserves to, but because it will remain in the good hands of your family and the extended family it has won for you...those like myself.
(chuckling) While I am an Oxfordian in relation to the questions surrounding the Shakespearean authorship, I do believe that William Shakespeare himself conceived the comedies attributed to his name. How that collaboration ever came to be may have the makings of another thought-provoking musical.