Oxfordian News

The Shakespeare Fellowship is pleased to announce the formation of a
new journal investigating the Shakespeare Authorship Issue from an
Oxfordian perspective: Brief Chronicles: The Interdisciplinary Journal of the
Shakespeare Fellowship.

The journal will begin as an annual online publication, with the goal
of appearing semi-annually in both print and electronic formats. The
inaugural issue is planned for summer 2009.

General editor of Brief Chronicles is Roger Stritmatter, PhD,
Associate Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at
Coppin State University in Maryland. Stritmatter holds an MA in Anthropology
from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Comparative
Literature from University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with a
specialization in Early Modern Studies.

Managing editor is Gary Goldstein, formerly Editor of The Elizabethan
Review, a peer-reviewed history and literary journal which appeared
semi-annually from 1993 through 1999. Goldstein holds an MA in Media
Studies from New York University.

We hereby invite submissions of research articles, essays and reviews
for possible publication in the journal, which will employ a
double-blind peer review process. All submissions must conform to the
Chicago Manual of Style.

A peer-reviewed interdisciplinary publication, Brief Chronicles is
overseen by an Editorial Board comprised of academics with terminal
degrees and distinguished records of scholarship and teaching. The
journal will focus on the authorship of the Shakespeare canon from
the Oxfordian perspective, publishing research-based notes, articles and
monographs, as well as essays and reviews of books, theater
performances and movies based on the drama and literature of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean periods.

More generally, the journal solicits relevant materials that shed
critical light on the Shakespeare canon and its authorship, on
theories and problems in the study of Early Modern authorship and literary
creativity, and on related questions of early modern literary
culture, aesthetics, bibliography, psychology, law, biography, and history.
Contributions that utilize an interdisciplinary methodology that
draws on the conventions and data of more than one relevant humanities
discipline to produce original, carefully reasoned and readable
insights, are especially welcome.

The Editorial Board of Brief Chronicles comprises the following
members:

Dr. Michael Delahoyde, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor in
the Department of English, Washington State University. Dr. Delahoyde
is the former editor of the Rocky Mountain Review of Languages and
Literature, the quarterly journal of the Rocky Mountain Modern
Language Association.

Dr. Warren Hope, PhD. An award winning poet and scholar, Dr. Hope is
an instructor in English at the University of the Sciences in
Philadelphia and at Montgomery County Community College. He is the
co-author, with Kim Holston, of /The Shakespeare Controversy: An
Analysis of the Claimants to Authorship, and Their Champions and
Detractors /(McFarland, 1992).

Dr. Sky Gilbert, PhD, a noted popular entertainer, novelist, poet and
filmaker, received his PhD in Theater Studies from the University of
Toronto. Currently he holds the University Chair in Creative Writing
and Theater Studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.

Mr. Tom Regnier, JD. Mr. Regnier teaches at the University of Miami
School of Law as Professor of Law and Literary Studies (including a
“Shakespeare and the Law” course). He serves as a Florida public
defender and recently argued a case before the Florida Supreme Court.

Dr. Sarah Smith, PhD, has written multiple best-selling and
award-winning novels including Chasing Shakespeares (Atria 2003). Dr.
Smith received her BA and PhD degrees from Harvard University,
studied at the University of London as a Fulbright scholar and in London and
Paris on a Harvard fellowship, and has also held an Andrew W. Mellon
Fellowship in the Humanities. She taught at Tufts University for
several years and continues to teach fiction writing.

Dr. Richard Waugaman, MD, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,
Georgetown University School of Medicine; Training Analyst Emeritus,
Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. A regular contributor to
numerous psychoanalytical journals, Dr. Waugaman is a Reader at the
Folger Shakespeare Library specializing in the psychology and history of
pseudonymity.

Signed,

Roger Stritmatter
General Editor

Gary Goldstein
Managing Editor

Some pictures from the festivities in Harvard Square this past weekend. First, the Morris Dancers:

They brought along a Jester, a charming pet, and something to whack people with :

As my friend said, "If it ain’t Baroque, don’t fix it."

Elsewhere in the Square, the Renaissonics laid down the funky Elizabethan jam.

The audience certainly seemed to enjoy the dance grooves:

Celebrate Shakespeare Day!
Saturday, August 2, 2008

Performances and workshops from 2pm - 6pm on Boston Common, with As You Like It at 8pm.

Celebrate Shakespeare Day is a free event presented by Citi Performing Arts Center’s Education Department.
 
Throughout July, community partner organizations in Cambridge, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain and the South End held workshops where participants discovered how enjoyable the world of theatre can be.  Through performing art skills building including theater games, ensemble building, and original scene development, participants became familiar with the story line and universal themes of As You Like It.  On Saturday, August 2nd, representatives from each neighborhood along with area theatre companies such as Huntington Theatre, will perform a showcase on the Boston Common as part of Celebrate Shakespeare Day.
 

Celebrate Shakespeare Day includes fun for all ages, interests and activity levels.  All are welcome to an afternoon
of free workshops, readings, and interactive games and activities culminating in an evening performance of
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s As You Like It at 8pm at the Parkman Bandstand. Try your hand at
Shakespearaoke, die your most dramatic death, explore Elizabethan dance, use your best Shakespearean insult,
or simply watch our performances and enjoy a visit to the Town Square.

Community Partner Performances:
Community Art Center
DotWell ATLAS
Jamaica Plain KidsArts
SCI Dorchester
Spontaneous Celebrations
United South End Settlements

Don’t Miss As You Like It
Parkman Bandstand, Boston Common, Boston
Tuesdays-Saturdays @ 8pm, Sundays @ 7pm
Through August 3, 2008

Also at Forest Park, Springfield!
August 8-10, 2008
Friday-Sunday @ 7:30pm

Shakespeare in the Square Event Schedule

 

Friday, 8/1/08

5:00pm - 7:30pm:         CommonwealthMorris Men and Orion Sword Dancers perform around Harvard Square.           

6:00pm - 6:45pm          Shakespeare SLAMS - American Repertory Theatre’s A.R.T. Institute.

7:15pm - 9:45pm          Loves Labour’s Lost - Actor’s Shakespeare Project.           

 

Saturday, 8/2/08

2:45pm - 4:15pm          Renaissonics Performance.

4:30pm - 5:15pm          Shakespeare SLAMS - American Repertory Theatre’s A.R.T. Institute

7:30pm - 10:00am        Loves Labour’s Lost - Actor’s Shakespeare Project

 

Sunday, 8/3/08

1:30pm - 3:30pm          CommonwealthMorris Men around Harvard Square

3:00pm - 5:30pm          Loves Labour’s Lost - Actor’s Shakespeare Project

5:00pm - 7:00pm        OrionSword Dancers around Harvard Square

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm        Tapestry and Tom Zajack Trio performs

7:45pm - 8:30pm          Shakespeare SLAMS - American Repertory Theatre’s A.R.T. Institute

 

Shakespeare in the Square Restaurant and Shopping Events from August 1^st through the 3^rd, please see www.harvardsquare.com for special menus and offers.

 

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS: American Repertory Theatre Performs Shakespeare Slams! Shakespeare Slams is a modern-day, plugged-in Shakespearian mash-up featuring 18 performers from the American Repertory Theatre’s A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training in a multidisciplinary, electric, energetic approach to the Bard’s verse.  Marrying Shakespeare with a wide range of contemporary music, movement, and culture, Shakespeare Slams seeks to bring the lives of Shakespeare’s characters to a diverse 21st century audience. When: Friday, August 1st 6:00 pm, Saturday, August 2nd 4:30 pm, Sunday, August 3rd at 7:45 pm.      WHERE: Winthrop Park (corner of JFK and Mount Auburn Street). PRICE: Free!   Actors’ Shakespeare Project Presents Love’s Labour’s Lost: Actors’ Shakespeare Project will present an encore presentation of their highly successful interpretation of Love’s Labour’s Lost in conjunction with the Harvard Square Business Associations’ Shakespeare in the Square.  This production is directed by Benjamin Evett and features Steven Berkhimer*, Marianna Bassham*, Jason Bowen, Khalil Flemming, Sarah Newhouse*, and Michael Forden Walker*   Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is a sweet and hilarious dance of courtship.  Four young lords swear an oath to give up the company of women for three years and devote themselves to study.  Soon after, the Princess of France arrives with her three friends and the four lords are instantly smitten.  The women decide to torment the men, and boy, are they easy marks!  In ASP’s rendition of this classic comedy, six actors play sixteen roles-dancing back and forth between male and female, pursuer and pursued!   WHEN: Friday August 1st at 7:15pm, Saturday 2nd at 7:30pm and Sunday 3rd at 3:00 pm WHERE: Winthrop Park (corner of JFK and Mount Auburn Street). PRICE: Free!   PREVIOUS REVIEWS: "…big-hearted, brimming with wit, and tinged with the quiet but sure knowledge that laughter doesn’t last forever." -Louise Kennedy,Boston Globe   "This tiny company has huge heart, endless imagination, and gumption to burn. You can’t help but walk away from their raucously presented, but tightly organized, interpretation of Love’s Labour’s Lost already anticipating the glories their fourth season" -Killian Melloy, Boston Herald (EDGE)     REVELS REPRESENTS at SHAKESPEARE IN THE SQUARE The area immediately around Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre was filled with musicians, jugglers, dancers and other disreputable street performers. Revels is proud to represent the earthy  side of Shakespeare in the Square, and under the leadership of the disgruntled former Shakespeare employee and Morris dancer, Will Kemp, will provide entertainment for the groundlings. Expect lusty music from Tom Zajac and friends, fine singing from Tapestry with Doug Freundlich, instrumental fireworks from Renaissonics, as well as Morris and Sword dancing and expert heckling of the actors. -8   About our Distinguished Local Performing Companies: The AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATRE  (A.R.T.), one of the country’s most celebrated resident theatres and the winner of numerous awards, including the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize, was recently named the third best theatre in the country by Timemagazine.  Over its twenty-eight-year history the A.R.T. has welcomed Major American and international theatre artists whose singular visions generate and define the theatre’s work, presenting a varied repertoire that includes new plays, progressive productions of classical texts, and collaborations between artists from many disciplines.  The Company has performed throughout the country, and worldwide in twenty-one cities in sixteen countries on four continents. The A.R.T. recently inaugurated its second stage at Zero Arrow Theatre, also in Harvard Square.   The A.R.T. INSITITUE FOR ADVANCED THEATRE TRAINING was established in 1987 by the A.R.T. as a training ground for the professional American theatre. In 1998, the Institute began an exclusive collaboration with the Moscow Art Theatre(MXAT) School. The union of the two schools has created an historic program that provides unparalleled opportunities for training and growth. Upon graduation, students receive a Certificate of Achievement from the A.R.T. at Harvard University and a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree from the MXAT School. Institute students have toured their productions throughout Europe, performing inRussia, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland.     ACTOR’S SHAKESPEARE PROJECT: The Actors’ Shakespeare Project was founded in 2004 by Benjamin Evett and actor-colleagues with the intention of creating a resident acting company in Boston that would produce Shakespeare in intimate, stripped-down productions that celebrate the relationships between actors, audience and text. Since then ASP has produced 13 plays in venues all over Boston and Cambridge to critical acclaim and the company’s productions have been honored with three Elliot Norton awards. In 2006, Ed Siegel of the Boston Globe wrote, "This is Shakespeare the way it’s supposed to be performed. The troupe plays to the crowd hilariously, speaks Elizabethan verse beautifully, and posits a smart interpretation of the play. Actors’ Shakespeare Project has to be listed as a local treasure." Jeremy McCarter of New York Magazine called ASP’s King Lear "A triumph of classical acting" and in spring 2008, The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout called ASP "one of America’s finest Shakespeare troupes."   For More information: www.actorsshakespeareproject.org  or 617-547-1982 *Member, Actors’ Equity Association   REVELS: Now, in its 38th year of performances, Revels is a non-profit performing arts company producing Music Theater, recordings and educational materials. At the heart of each Revels production are the singers, actors, dancers, and storytellers who preserve the arts and traditions of their own cultures. Through its respect for the customs of many cultures, Revels has created its own traditions. Widely known for the annual Christmas Revels, our organization celebrates the cycles of life and the seasons through the arts.  Revels’ productions of Spring Sing, RiverSing, and SummersDay Revels bring together a community of professional actors, musicians, designers, and directors, along with a volunteer chorus of children and adults.  Celebration is at the core of Revels and audience participation is an organic consequence of that impulse.   For More information: http://www.revels.org or 617- 972-8300 9

 

This will be the first of several reports on "Shakespeare in the Blogosphere." There are so many new comments on the authorship question popping up all over the blogosphere that it’s impossible to do justice to them in one brief account.

Let’s start with the most intelligently polemical of recent authorship commentary.

NPR inspired Bardiac, self described as a "feminist, female Shakespearean," to take up the baton on behalf of orthodox Shaksperotics (to use Gary Taylor’s amusing term for the study of Shakespeare by the Pros). All of the usual arguments seem to be rehearsed by Bardiac, whose acquaintance with the authorship question (as distinct from her undoubted but more generic expertise in her field of professional specialization) seems to be of about seven minutes’ duration.

Bardiac examines at  length all the reasons why the anti-Stratfordians are wrong (and class snobs too boot!) and the authorship question is nonsense. It is hardly newsworthy to attempt a detailed rebuttal to the many misconceptions on which Bardiac’s analysis is based. She seems to be unaware, for example, that Oxfordians have for decades written about Francis Meres (Charlton Ogburn begins his 1984 Mysterious William Shakespeare by acknowledging and commenting on the significance of Meres’ publication!) and the other sources of traditional attribution that she cites as definitive.

That someone writing under the name of "Shakespeare" was by 1598 well known enough in London to inspire commentary such as that found in Meres’ Palladis Tamia or, somewhat later, in C.W.’s Polimanteia, is hardly surprising but is certainly not probative of the real question of who this literary figure actually was.

Consider, as Bardiac does not, the possible interpretations of  Mere’s testimony. Either the orthodox story is true, or Meres may have known the real author and chosen to go along with the charade, or he may have been in the dark beyond having seen the name on the two narrative poems and having hearsay knowledge of other works written by the same author, and therefore may have unwittingly perpetuated a falsehood.

In no way, in other words, does Meres’ testimony go to the heart of the anti-Stratfordian critique or invalidate the anti-Stratfordian perspective.

While it may require very little intellectual energy to reply that the later two scenarios invoke a "conspiracy" theory, serious students of the Elizabethan age — who know that it was an age of conspiracies of all sorts, as reflected in part by the prominence of the  conspiracy theme in Shakespeare’s plays and in part by the historical record itself — will not be readily deflected by such an essentially ad hominem response.

Thus, while it is heartening to see someone of Bardiac’s obvious intelligence, capability, and professional training entering into the authorship fray, one can only hope that at some point she’ll make a more sustained effort to inform herself about the actual merits of the Oxfordian case (as presented, for example, in its classic form by J.Thomas Looney, or more recently by Charlton Ogburn or Mark Anderson), rather than shadowboxing with NPR’s seven-minute synopsis (however elegant) of thousands of pages of testimony and analysis.

More Anon.

National Public Radio, one of the bastions of cultural literacy in the United States, has weighed in on the authorship question. Longtime NPR producer Renee Montagne has distilled the essence of the authorship question, including the vexing issues of social class, privilege, and democracy, that haunt the subject, into three brief and informative seven minute radio segments. The first segment, based on Nigel Cliff’s  book The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama and Death in 19th-Century America, covers the infamous May, 1849 Astor Place Riot, the deadliest class riot in United States history.

Strange as it may sound, in the days before television, Shakespeare was popular entertainment. Manhattan’s Bowery theatre, catering to working class immigrants, nourished the career of the century’s quintessential American interpreter of Shakespeare for the masses, Edwin Forrest. When Forest’s English rival William Charles Macready arrived in Mantattan to perform Macbeth after having conspired to ruin Forest’s own European tour, Forrest’s working class fans took to the streets - and to pelting Macready with foul kitchen waste during his performance - in protest.

Before it was over, of the 20,000 rioters, 25 were dead and at least 38 injured when the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard opened fire after the rioters refused an order to disperse. Details. The NPR segment is an intriguing window into the authorship question, for it highlights the passion that even today, although generally in a more rarified form, swirls about the bard and the interpretation of his work.

Many Americans are deeply committed to a populist bard remade in the Edwin Forrest mold. At the same time, it is difficult not to sympathize with the social injustices symbolized, for the Astor place rioters, by Macready’s more nuanced and aristocratic Shakespeare. The other two NPR segments will be more familiar to regular readers of Fellowship News: In the segment on The Case Against Orthdoxy Montagne covers the usual objections to the traditional view of Shakespeare, and the concluding segment of the show features Mark Anderson, Charles Beauclerk, and Daniel Wright speaking on  The Case for Oxford .

Update - 4th Annual Joint SOS/SF Conference Scheduled for 2008

The 4th Annual joint SOS/SF Conference will be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, NY Thursday to Sunday, October 9-12 (Columbus Day Weekend). Please note the change of venue from any prior announcements you may have seen. The Crowne Plaza is located at 66 Hale Avenue in White Plains. The closest airports are Westchester County Airport in White Plains (8 miles) and LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, NY (35 miles). There is a complimentary shuttle to the hotel from Westchester County Airport and a shuttle bus from LaGuardia is about $60 one-way.

There are a limited number of guest rooms being held at the Crowne Plaza at a discounted rate of $169/night (plus tax) until 9/18/08. (usual rate $279). Reservations can be made at www.crowneplaza.com/whiteplainsny or by calling 1-800-2-CROWNE or 914-682-0050. Mention group code SAC (Shakespeare Authorship Conference) to get the discount.

Further details as to the conference agenda, other events, registration information, travel information, and a list of alternative nearby lodging will be forthcoming as soon as it is available.

http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/news.html

The 4th Annual Joint SOS/SF Conference will be held at the Tarrytown Hampton Inn (Westchester County, NY) Thursday to Sunday, October 9-12 (Columbus Day Weekend). The hotel is located at 200 Tarrytown Rd, Elmsford, NY. The closest airports are Westchester County Airport in White Plains, NY (about 10 miles away) and LaGuardia Airport in Flushing, NY (about 26 miles away). Currently there are 30 guest rooms being held at the discounted rate of $159/night until 9/8/08.

Further details as to the conference agenda, other events, registration information, travel information, and a list of alternate nearby lodging are forthcoming.

Anyone interested in presenting a paper should send a title and abstract to either John Hamill (hamillx@pacbell.net) or Bonner Cutting (bonnermiller@gmail.com)�

A delightful new video peformance by Keir Cutler, Ph. D., dramatizes Mark Twain’s classic anti-Stratfordian satire.

According to Cutler’s own website, the video brings alive " Mark Twain’s hilarious (1909) debunking of the myth that William Shakespeare wrote the works of Shakespeare. Listing the handful of established facts of Shakespeare’s life, Twain ridicules the fantasy that an uneducated youth could have wandered into London and, with virtually none of the necessary skills, become the greatest author in English literature."

A "magnificent, witty performance!" - Winnipeg Sun

"Marshalls startling facts into an elegant and often tenacious argument that floats on a current of delicious irony."

- Montreal Gazette

Mark Anderson, author of the best-selling Shakespeare by Another Name, is again touring to promote his book and debate all-c0mers from the orthodox camp. Anderson will be in Houston (March 13-15), New York (March 27), Boston/Concord (May 30-June 1) and Las Vegas (July 11).
The final stop on this spring-summer tour is a debate (at Bally’s Casino!) on the Shakespeare authorship question, where Anderson will take on Alan Nelson of U.C. Berkeley (arguing for the Stratfordian theory) and William Rubenstein of the University College of Wales (arguing that Elizabethan courtier Henry Neville was the Bard). The verbal tussle will be part of the "great debates" series at the weekend-long Freedom Fest conference.

The March 25 issue of London Times Online carries notice of of a new book, Shakespeare in Venice, co-written by Shaul Bassi, a lecturer at Venice University, and Alberto Toso Fei:"Most scholars believe that what Shakespeare knew about Venice must have been the fruit of wide reading and his contact with Italians," says Mr. Bassi. "But the local references - implicit as well as explicit - are so numerous they point to an alternative hypothesis: what if he did come here after all?"

According to London Times Rome correspondent Richard Owen, about a third of Shakespeare’s works are based in Italy or make specific references to events and locations in Italy. However, "there is no concrete evidence that Shakespeare ever left England, and the most widely accepted theory is that he gleaned background information from Italian travellers and merchants, including Venetians, whose glass and other products were highly prized in Elizabethan England. "

Here at the Shakespeare Fellowship, we predict that the new book by Bassi and Fei is bound to incite further interest in the authorship question. Although there is no reason to believe that the bard of Avon ever left his native England, it is well known that de Vere toured Tuscany in 1575-76, and well attested tradition records that he was fond enough of Venice — then the most cosmopolitan city in the world — to build himself a house there.

John Aubrey probably exaggerates when he has the Earl remaining in Venice for seven years in humiliation after breaking wind in the presence of Elizabeth I, but it seems likely that he spent considerable time there during the decades after his 1575 junket.

Dr. Richard Waugaman, a noted Washington D.C. Psychoanalyst and member of the Shakespeare Fellowship, has landed a brief authorship article in the current issue of the online Princeton Alumni Weekly.

"I believe there are many sources of the skepticism, apathy, and even hostility I have encountered on my authorship quest," writes Waugaman.

We trust experts, and we should - usually. But literary studies lack a reliable methodology to evaluate….authorship claims. We assume that it’s difference in science. But recall that Wegener had accumulated overwhelming evidence for his theory of continental drift by 1915. He was a mere geographer, though, not a geologist. Geologists - the specialists in that field - argued that there was no known conceivable explanation of how continental drift could have occurred, so they ridiculed Wegener’s theory. But, by the mid-1960s, new information about plate tectonics provided the missing pieces of explanatory theory, and geologists now fully accept Wegener’s 1915 proposal.

The situation is analogous when it comes to de Vere as Shakespeare. We have abundant evidence that he was regarded by his contemporaries as the best of the Elizabethan courtier poets; that a few of his contemporaries knew he wrote anonymously; that he sponsored theatrical companies most of his life; and that he was regarded as one of the best Elizabethan authors of comedies. There are hundreds of connections between the content of the plays and poems of Shakespeare and the documented facts of de Vere’s life.

We note that Michael Egan today announced his resignation as editor of The Oxfordian. We commend his decision; we wish him well in all future endeavors; we hope he will continue to keep an open mind on the Shakespeare authorship question; and we hope to have the pleasure of his company at future conferences.

The Shakespeare Fellowship Board of Trustees

My, my, its been too long since we were able to update this news file, and much has naturally transpired in authorship land since last September. Fortunately, Mark Anderson has been more diligent, so if you want to fill in some of the gaps, try Mark’s blog.

Meanwhile, a 2/16 Wall Street Journal, by Frances Taliaferro, covering two new orthodox biographies by Bill Bryson and Charles Nicholl, got us to to sit up and take notice. Taliaferro starts with a predictable quote from Bryson:

"For most of us ordinary folk, the authorship wars are irrelevant.. and ‘Shakespeare’ means interchangeably the man and his works." Think about it. I tried to, but I failed to grasp what the hell that means. As best as I can figure it out, it means "We are ducking the issue. We won’t take a stand that could prove us wrong in the future. We won’t fall for those nutty conspiracy theories. But we’ll put the name ‘Shakespeare’ in quotation marks, so if it turns out to be someone else we can say ‘Yes, we knew it all along.’"

Sound about right?

Time magazine has just published the best article yet on the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition’s Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Are we having fun yet?

Since the BBC broke the story on international news about the signing of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt by Sir Derek Jacobi and Professor William Leahy on September 11, the fire and brimstone issuing from world headquarters of the Shakespeares-R-Us coalition has not ceased.

Today the otherwise civil and professional Lynda Hurst, writing in the Toronto Star, blasted Shakespeare heretics as participants in "the literary equivalent of the flat earth society, an irksome conspiracy theory that refuses to go away despite evidence to the contrary."

Apparently Ms. Hurst is an adherent of psychoanalysis, as well as a wannabe intellectual historian: "What really lies at the bottom of the controversy," writes the the Star correspondent without skipping a beat, "is this: Anti-Stratfordians do not believe the son of an illiterate glove maker…could possible have acquired the knowledge….that occurs in the plays."

Right. We’ve also never heard of Charles Chaplin or Robert Burns.

According to the presumably informed opinion of Ms. Hurst, Dr. Leahy "is shortly to risk academic scorn, if not suicide, for openly convening the first-ever graduate course on the subject at London’s Brunel University."

But the Sun reporter’s own astoundingly prejudicial statements were nothing compared to the erudition of Antoni Cimolino, the new general director of Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare festival: "You have to take a stupid pill to think [Shakespeare] didn’t write the works. It’s a very detailed conspiracy constructed out of ‘airy nothing.’"

The liberties of being a Star reporter are a wonder to behold. Hurst, whose qualifications as a Shakespearean scholar are unknown to the Shakespeare Fellowship, was particularly incensed that Oxfordians do not accept the standard chronology of the authorship of the works: "The problematic fact that Oxford died in 1604," sneers Ms. Hurst, "before the appearance of Shakespeare’s career topping King Lear and Macbeth would seem to constitute a largish fly in the ointment. But no. ‘Death doesn’t stop these people,’ says [Professor] Leggatt. Oxford, it’s been said, could have written the works then popped them into a bottom drawer for post-mortem publication. ‘And Marlow didn’t die either,’ Leggatt laughs."

Given the way that final paragraph is constructed, so as to make it appear that the critical statement is a quote, but without any quotation marks around it, we aren’t sure whether it is Professor Leggatt, or his earnest interlocutor, the ostensible journalist, who needs to take a remedial course in the rules of evidence and review the long-term disadvantages of habitually substituting straw men for real debate.

Here are the facts which were too onerous or inconvenient for Ms. Hurst’s Star readers. At least three Shakespearean plays - All’s Well That End’s Well, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens, have no performance or publication history until 1623 when they appeared in print for the first time in the First Folio. By all available evidence, the author — whoever he was — in effect "popped them into a bottom drawer for post-mortem publication." So, if you strip away the ideological irony of The Star’s formulation, you’re left with the spectacle of someone trying to make fun of something that is demonstrably, on its face, true.

Way to go, Ms. Hurst.

This, of course, doesn’t prove that Oxford wrote the works. It does prove that the very same logic being used by the Toronto Star to perpetuate public ridicule of Dr. Leahy, Sir Derek, and the other by-now over a thousand signatories of the Declaration, proves that the real author must have lived until after 1623 and therefore can’t have been the bloke from Stratford, who died before these plays were mentioned by anyone, let alone acted or published. We realize, of course, that traditional Shakespeareans are unaccustomed to being held accountable for their own logic. But that’s no excuse to lie in public.

The most fitting conclusion to this little report comes in the words of Tyrone Guthrie, the actor-producer who founded the Ontario Shakespeare Festival, of which the charming and informed Mr. Cimolino is the latest of many directors: "There is a theory, advanced by reputable scholars, seriously and, in my opinion, plausibly, that Shakespeare merely lent his name as a cover for the literary activities of another person." Stupid pills, indeed.

The Toronto Star should be ashamed of itself for pandering to the anti-intellectual emoting of such ironically uninformed "informants."

Like we said, policing a paradigm shift can be an exhausting job. Just as the Shakespearean establishment was about to heave a big sigh of relief that only 8 percent of its card carrying members were secret heretics, a bad case of the dreaded disease, Deveritis, has been detected at the Colorado Shakespeare festival. Denver Post critic Bob Bows, in a review of All’s Well that Ends Well, identifies the author as one "Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, whose entire life is detailed in the canon."

"Once de Vere’s life is illuminated," continues Bows, "we see that this play is filled with biographical details, beginning with Bertram’s petulant refusal to consummate his forced marriage to Helena, continuing with ’step-sister’ Helena’s budding confusion over her relationship with Bertram, moving forward with Bertram’s profligate behavior throughout, climaxing in the famous ‘bed trick,’ and culminating with the resurrection of Helena. "

While we’re on the subject of de Vere in the theatre world, check out this Oregon Shakespeare Festival bio of leading many James Newcomb, "an avowed Oxfordian," not to mention one of the most talented new Shakespearean actors on the American scene.

The Shakespeare Fellowship is in the news again, this time in the form of a Boston Globe interview with the new SF President, Alex McNeil. McNeil is an attorney, court administrator, and television historian, author of the 1,251 page book, Total Television (Penguin, 1996). "Nobody likes to be challenged about core beliefs," says McNeil, 59, who lives in Newton. "But if you try to keep an open mind about it, you find that what is known about Shakespeare of Stratford doesn’t fit with what we should expect of the author of the plays."

"If you start reading the plays, and connecting the dots," continues McNeil, "you conclude that all roads lead to Oxford," he says. "And it’s only with great difficulty that you can surmise those roads lead to the Stratford man."

Don Aucoin’s Globe story notes that McNeil’s dedication to the authorship question "might surprise those who know him only as a mild-mannered TV historian." But when it comes to the authorship question, McNeil is no shrinking violet. He is especially bothered by the prevailing ignorance of the Oxford case in academic circles. "Oxfordians are getting kind of tired of being marginalized," he declares. "The standard reaction in academic circles is ‘These people are nuts. Case closed.’ . . . We’re tired of being pushed around."

Things are heating up in authorship land. Professor Anne Barton, the distinguished Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge known (among other things) for her illuminating introductions to several plays in the Riverside edition of the Collected Works (my personal favorite being the one to Measure for Measure), leads off her March 29 review of Ron Rosenbaum’s The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups with a quote from Logan Pearsall Smith’s, On Reading Shakespeare. The quote is along the lines of, “aren’t those silly anti-Stratfordians a riot?” Here’s how Barton makes use of Smith’s quote:

the cries of the distracted inhabitants sometimes reach us from the dark realm of Shakespearean interpretation. We hear the bleating of idiot adorers and the eternal swish of their whitewash brushes; we hear the squeals of the idealists…; the war-cries of the Foli-olators and Disintegrators as they rush upon each other and even wilder battle cries than these (for it is impossible to exaggerate their strangeness) will reach our ears. For listen!

Smith then reminded his readers of the cries emitted by the followers of “no less than five ghostly resurrected Elizabethan Earls”; of those heard from the supporters of Derby, Oxford, Rutland, and other claimants to be the true author of the man from Stratford’s plays; of the Pembrokians and Southamptonians quarreling vociferously over the identity of the young man addressed in the Sonnets; and finally, “as the wind shifts, we hear the ululations of those vaster herds of Baconian believers, as they plunge squeaking down the Gadarene slope of their delusion.”

It couldn’t it be more obvious, could it? To Smith the anti-Stratfordians are buffoons and ignorami, “idiot adorers” and ulutating pigs preparing mass suicide by leaping of the cliff of reason in the sea of Galilee. If not contempt, they at least deserve our pity. But wait! What, you may ask, does Smith have to say about the orthodox Shakespearean establishment for which Professor Barton is here functioning as public apologist? Listen:

Can these things be? [i.e., the deification of Shakespeare]. Or are we imposed upon, hocussed, and bamboozled, the dupes of a gigantic Brockenspectre of make-believe and mist, and victims as Tolstoy so impressively maintained, of a great collective hallucination, one of those crazes and epidemic manias, like the belief in witches or in the approaching end of the world, by which whole nations and whole ages have often been obsessed? Even the high priests of this established Shakespeare worship seem to betray, now and then, an uneasy consciousness of something equivocal about the object of their devotion; of things to be hushed up, and the need of whitewash.

(7)

Hmm… “an uneasy consciousness of…things to be hushed up, and the need of whitewash.” Now, there’s a phrase to ponder. One doesn’t even need a classical education to understand the symbolism.

Wouldn’t Smith be surprised to learn how his own words would one day be used to tint up the latest batch of whitewash? Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. He strikes us as someone quite capable of maintaining his intellectual independence, and not a bit naive about the real world. Certainly, contrary to the impression the casual reader of Barton’s review might leave with, Smith was no apologist for the orthodox view of authorship.

While committed representatives of the orthodox view of Shakespearean authorship cling to the dogmatic mantra that “authorship does not exist,” the world is changing around them. Not one, but two new Master’s Programs in Shakespearean authorship studies have been announced in recent weeks, one in England at London’s Brunel University, and the other at Concordia University, long the sponsor of the annual Authorship Studies Conference, in Portland, Ore. For further details on the Brunel Program, please visit the Brunel website.

When New York Times culture desk editor William Niederkorn, who has written for the Times on Shakespearean topics including the authorship question at least since 2002, initiated an online survey for academicians to measure their views on authorship last month, some of the respondents were practically apoplectic that anyone would bother to ask them about a subject they know doesn’t exist. Now that the results are out, the professors can heave a sigh of relief. Or can they? The survey of 265 professors who teach Shakespeare in English departments of public and private four years colleges and universities, selected randomly, reveals that 82% say that there is no reason to question the traditional account of authorship. Only 11% say there is “possibly good reason” to question authorship, while a measly 6% say there is good reason to do so. Sounds like a slam dunk for the “stubborn bear, authority,” doesn’t it?

But wait. It wasn’t that many years ago when, according to Caltech Professor Jenijoy La Belle, in her 1993 “Happy Birthday William” column in the Los Angeles Times, assured us that 99.99% of all Shakespearean professors knew that anyone who questioned Shakespeare’s authorship was a “noodle” — a word apparently used in some English departments to signify an “errant addle-patted miscreant.” If Labelle’s statistic is valid (and, after all, as a reputable Shakespearean scholar, she must have known what she was talking about, right?), that means that the decline in support for the traditional view of authorship within English departments is nothing short of precipitous. Alternatively, hiring committees have for over a decade done a pisspoor job of keeping the loonies out of the institutions.

Claremont, California, April 23, 2007 - Today, on the 391 st anniversary of the death of Stratford’s Mr. William “Shakspere,” generally regarded as the author of the works of William “Shakespeare,” a new organization, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC)  posted on its website the names of 132 signers of its Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare. The signatures were gathered just in the last two weeks on the group’s website. The SAC says it plans to continue operating the website, gathering and posting names of signatories, through April 23, 2016, the 400 th anniversary of the death of Mr. William “Shakspere” of Stratford.

The list includes, most notably, prominent Shakespearean actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, former artistic director at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, plus Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, a Shakespeare lover who is widely regarded by his peers as perhaps the world’s leading expert on creativity and genius. Simonton reveres Shakespeare, but can’t accept the traditional attribution to the man from Stratford. Also named on the list is Charles Champlin, former Arts Critic Emeritus at the Los Angeles Times.

The 132 declaration signers include 34 current or former college and university faculty members, 34 people with various types of doctoral degrees, and another 31 people with various master’s degrees. “This is a man bites dog story,” said SAC chairman John Shahan, principal author of the declaration. “Orthodox Shakespeare scholars would have the public believe that only deranged people in isolated fringe groups question the identity of William Shakespeare. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Are we having fund yet?

Charles Beauclerk, the descendent of both Edward de Vere and Nell Gwynne who during the 1990s provoked considerable interest in the Oxfordian theory on his U.S. speaking tour, has thrown his hat back into the ring. During the years since Beauclerk’s U.S. tour, he completed a critically acclaimed biography of Gwyn, Nell Gwyne: Mistress to a Queene (2005 Grove Atlantic): "Nell Gwyn is Charles Beauclerk’s literary debut and it has about it a humanity, empathy and freshness of which his subject would undoubtedly approve… His grasp of Restoration literature and culture is impressive and there is nothing he doesn’t know about the politics," raved the Sunday Telegraph. Having won critical accolades for his 2005 biography of Gwynne Beauclerk is now working on a new book about de Vere.

A new organization, spearheaded by Southern California Shakespeare skeptics John Shahan, Virginia Renner (former head of Reader Services at the prestigious Huntington Library), and many others, has launched a “declaration of reasonable doubt” signature pledge drive. The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition kicked off the drive at UCLA’s Geffen playhouse April 14, and plans to gather thousands of signatures in support of its statement of skepticism over the traditional view of Shakespearean authorship: ” We have nothing against the man from Stratford-on-Avon,” announced the group, “but we doubt that he was the author of the works. Our goal is to legitimize the issue in academia so students, teachers and professors can feel free to pursue it. This is necessary because the issue is widely viewed as settled in academia and is treated as a taboo subject. We believe that an open-minded examination of the evidence shows that the issue should be taken seriously. Your signature on the declaration will help us make the case that there is reasonable doubt about the author.”

Mark Anderson, author of the acclaimed Gotham Books title, “Shakespeare” By Another Name, recently reprinted in paperback, has been invited to lecture on the authorship question at Tamkang University, outside of Taipei. Anderson’s three lectures will focus on Edward de Vere, the authorship question, and the evidence for de Vere’s authorship contained in his book. As Anderson’s blog suggests, the Taipei bookings are a hint of the potentially explosive interest in the authorship question, worldwide: “If Shakespeare is an extraordinarily popular author around the world (as he most certainly is), then ultimately the Shakespeare authorship problem and the Oxfordian solution to it will also command a global reach.”