Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog

“I will find where truth is hid,” Polonius vows, “though it be hid indeed within the centre.”
   
Given that Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford’s motto was Nothing Truer than Truth, and that he actually referred to himself as Truth, the King’s chief minister was also vowing that Oxford himself and his own truth could be found within the center — in this case, within the center of his “monument” of sonnets built to preserve “the living record” of Henry Wriothesley Earl of Southampton, his unacknowledged royal son by the Queen.

Sonnets 76-77 are at the exact center of the hundred-sonnet center 27-126, creating the fifty-fifty arrangement that Kositsky and Stritmatter declared to be missing. 

Oxford in Sonnet 76 describes his “invention” or special language that restricts his topic to “all one, ever the same” while “dressing old words new” (exchanging one word for another to mean the same thing, the way Elizabeth is not only Beauty but also Heaven, Fortune, Nature, Moon, etc.) to create the illusion of variety while unfolding the story.  (All One, Ever the Same) is a combination of Southampton’s motto One for All, All for One and Queen Elizabeth’s famous motto Ever the Same, with Ever echoing Edward Vere or E. Ver):

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.      
Sonnet 76, lines 5-12

In Sonnet 77 he dedicates “this book” to Southampton as “thy book”:

And of this book this learning mayst thou taste…

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book

Sonnet 77, lines 4, 13-14

These two verses create an “entranceway” into the Monument; and to repeat, their positioning divides the hundred-sonnet central sequence exactly the way kositsky-Stritmatter describe their wish:

27——————–76 77——————–126
    (50 sonnets)                     (50 sonnets)

Moreover the hundred-sonnet central sequence is divided into exactly ten segments of ten sonnets each, equivalent to distinctly separate chapters of a novel or nonfiction book of ten chapters of equal size…

To be continued…