Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman announced today that the eighth annual Shakespeare Authorship Conference, jointly sponsored by the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare-Oxford Society, will be held October 18-21, 2012 at the Old Town Pasadena Courtyard by Marriott in Pasadena, California where they have secured a block of rooms and conference facilities. For reservations, call 888-236-2427
Showerman said:
Proposals for conference papers are now being accepted. The sponsoring organizations are both dedicated to academic excellence, and guidelines for presentation of papers for the joint conferences are available on-line or from the members of the program committee: Bonner Cutting, John Hamill, or Earl Showerman (addresses below). First-time presenters should consult the guidelines before submitting a proposal. Paper proposals should be accompanied by an abstract of not more than 250 words and a brief biography.
The conference committee will be sending out updates as our program comes together. The Pasadena theatre company, A Noise Within will have a fall program in production during the authorship conference. Last fall the company produced Twelfth Night and this spring Antony and Cleopatra will be in production. Their fall schedule will be released by June 1 at which time a group order will be secured, if the production contributes to the goals of the conference.
Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman reported on the 2011 Shakespeare Fellowship/Shakespeare Oxford Society Joint Conference to be held Oct. 13-16, 2011 at the Washington Court Hotel in Washington, DC. Showerman said:
The program committee for the 2011 joint authorship conference in Washington, DC is still accepting paper proposals. The newly-minted conference registration forms for the Shakespeare Fellowship and Shakespeare Oxford Society are attached (below). The conference will take place October 13-16 at the Washington Court Hotel and a block of rooms have been set aside at a discounted rate. Hotel contact information is on the registration forms. The program will include a tour of the Folger Shakespeare Library with a viewing of Oxford’s Geneva Bible, and a possible trip to a local Cineplex for a group viewing of Anonymous. Speakers who have already made proposals or signaled their intent to speak include Mark Anderson, Roger Stritmatter, Bonner Cutting, Gerit Quealy, Richard Waugaman, Ron Hess, Barbara Burris, Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, Tom Hunter, Tom Townsend, Albert Burgstahler and myself. Please contact me, Bonner Cutting, or John Hamill if you have a proposal to submit. Here are the conference speaker guidelines: http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/conference2011/
The Ashland Conference starts on Thurs of this week. It’s not too late to sign up! The following Hamlet in Ashland article was in today’s Star:
Fest out west reminds us what Hamlet can be
September 10, 2010
Richard Ouzounian
Dan Donohue finds every laugh as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Hamlet.
ASHLAND, ORE.—“There is a world elsewhere.”
That line of Shakespeare’s from Coriolanus kept echoing through my head during a recent visit to this attractive town where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary season.
Back in Ontario, we tend to think of our own Stratford Shakespeare Festival as the king of the hill and, in most ways, it is.
Although it’s only finishing its 58th season, it certainly leads the field numerically in all other ways, presenting 654 performances to 509,195 people on a budget of $58.8 million during the 2009 season.
Oregon, on the other hand, presented 784 shows to 410,034 audience members on a budget of $25.5 million (Cdn.).
Artistically, as well, it’s more than mere provincial pride that leads me to say that under Des McAnuff and Antoni Cimolino, particularly this season, Stratford consistently presents the best work of its kind on the continent.
But, but, but.
When the chips are down, I have to say that the production of Hamlet at the OSF that I recently attended was, all in all, the finest piece of theatre I’ve seen this year…
"The man that has no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils,
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted: mark the music.”
Lida McGirr will present "Margaret’s Wars," a brief study covering successive stages of Margaret’s career throughout the three Henry VI’s and Richard III as she takes on each of the archetypal roles Jung later described for the life cycle of a woman as virgin, wife, mother, wise old woman. Scenes from each of the scripts will be read and/or acted out, to chronicle these changes: i. Margaret & Suffolk, ii. a scene with Henry and Margaret, iii. scene where her son is killed, iv. either the prophecy scene in Richard III or the scene with Margaret, Elizabeth and the Duchess towards the end of Richard III.
SATURDAY MORNING:
"Absent thee from felicity awhile/And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/To tell my story"
-Hamlet - 5.2: 350
9:00 –10:30: Presentation & Conversation:
An Uncommon Noble Tells All:
Oxord’s Seventeenth Earl talks with Lady Mary (Sydney) Wroth in 1604 about his life and what he feared would be forgotten about himself, his queen, his family, his writings and his times.
Joe Eldredge: Architect, Author, Editor, Critic, Poet
10:30 – 11:00: Break
11:00-12:30: Presentation & Conversation:
“Who Are You?”
Over the years the traditional identification of “William Shakespeare” with a gentleman from Stratford-upon-Avon has been extensively questioned. Often the work draws upon intensely personal details of the writer and those about him, a potential source of embarrassment if the writer’s identity were revealed. Such could well be the case for the most prominent alternate identity of “William Shakespeare” – Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.
Richard Desper: retired scientist and independent scholar of Shakespeare authorship.
12:30 – 2:30: Lunch in Concord
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
“Sweets to the Sweet.”
-Hamlet Act V, Scene 1
2:30 – 4:00: Presentation & Conversation:
"Shakespeare’s Women: Why Do They Have to Die?"
In Hamlet, King Lear and Othello we witness the moving, tragic deaths of Ophelia, Cordelia, and Desdemona. Why do these young women have to die and the heroes outlive them in each play? Is there an inspirational archetype that can increase our understanding of these events?
Robert Horner: (Yale B.A.) has taught high school English and theatre for many years. Lives in the City of Brotherly Love and lectures on American literature and esoteric studies, as well as the work of the Bard.
4:00-4:30: Break
4:30-6:00:
"Shake-speare’s Treason"
New York actor-writer Hank Whittemore will present "Shake-speare’s Treason," an Oxfordian interpretation of the Sonnets. His story is that the sonnets, those exquisite little mysteries, have finally fallen into place when read m as being written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, to Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton, and Queen Elizabeth.
His production (with Ted Story, a New York writer-director) argues that Oxford not only wrote the plays of Shakespeare, a claim most literary experts reject, but that Southampton is the "fair youth" and Elizabeth the "dark lady" of the sonnets, and Southampton de Vere’s son by Elizabeth. Which is why the sonnets were suppressed when they were published in 1609. He has also written "The Monument", a 900 page analysis of the Sonnets and their place in Elizabethan history.
6:00-8:00: Dinner
SATURDAY EVENING
"All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players"
Jaques - As You Like It
8:00 into the Wee Hours: Evening Fest
Music, Merriment, Verse, Dance & Good Spirits
Friends and lovers of Shakespeare are invited step up and present their favorite sonnets, speeches, melodies, scenes from the plays, and related gems in celebration of the 400th anniversary of blessed bard’s Genius. SUNDAY MORNING:
"The purest treasure mortal times afford, is spotless reputation: That away, Men are but loam and painted clay."
-Thomas Mowbray, Richard II
9:00 – 10:30: Presentation & Conversation
Richard II: The Art and the Politics
Richard II gives us an opportunity to experience Shakespeare’s awareness of what is at work in political intrigue in a form that can only compel awe at the play’s combination of insight into humanity and dramatic and poetic mastery. Characters act upon suspicions or impulses aroused by what has been said and done by other characters in ways that, with no clear or intentional villain in sight, bear massive historical consequences for the destiny of the English people.
Charles Boyle: author, actor, and director
John Stirling Walker: poet and librettist
10:30 – 11:00: Break
11:00 – 12:30: Presentation & Conversation:
“Shakespeare/DeVere: The Monetary Backdrop”
The virtually unrecognized thread of monetary history and the economic ferment of the Elizabethan era provide a backdrop against which the life and works of the celebrated English bard (Edward DeVere?) were played out. The dramas sound with a moral timbre that is not merely behavioral, legal, or economically self-interested, but allegorical; a temporal tale of the Gods. Is this the elixir they hold for this “post-modern” era, soon to metamorphose (dare I “prophesy”) into a post-commercial age?
Richard Kotlarz: inquirer of the Economic/Social Order
12:30 - 2:30: Lunch in Concord
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on/ and our little life is rounded with a sleep"
Three Shakespeare Songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
David Conte asserts that Ralph Vaughan Williams’s "Three Shakespeare Songs" represent a supreme achievement in the repertoire of twentieth-century choral composition. More-over, the songs brilliantly fulfill the original pedagogical purpose: provide a challenging and grateful work for choral singers, using texts of the highest literary and spiritual quality. David Conte will illuminate how the unique character, color and structure of Shakespeare’s language inform one composer’s musical choices regarding melody, harmony, rhythm and meter, and form as expressed in these songs.
David Conte: Professor of Composition, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, & Award-Winning Composer. David’s recent performances and commissions include: a piece composed from President Obama’s victory speech and performed at the inauguration; “Homecoming” in honor of the 40th Anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., performed by Chanticleer at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; and “Lincoln” commissioned for Concord’s Bicentennial Celebration of Lincoln’s birth.
Shakespeare in a Tarnhelm.
The “tarnhelm” was the golden helmet in Wagner’s Ring Cycle that allowed its wearer to assume any form or even become invisible; so it has been for several centuries with composers donning an interpretive tarnhelm to twist some of the great works of Shakespeare to assume a new form – along the way, some were so changed as to become nearly invisible. Brian Luedloff explores the evolution of Shakespeare’s work through the operatic form, including masterworks and rarely-performed and unknown works. Is the Shakespearean text illuminated or obscured by the element of song? How do character arcs differ in the transition to the operatic form? Discussion will include amusing anecdotes of hits and misses throughout the centuries as composers try their hand at adapting the work of the Bard of Avon.
Brian Luedloff: Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Opera Theatre for the University of Northern Colorado. He has directed operas across the country and served on the staging staff of San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Houston Grand Opera. He received his MFA in Directing from Boston University where he held a Directing Fellowship in the School of Theatre Arts and taught and directed in the Opera Institute."
ONE AND ALL ARE WELCOME
Contributions, as your fortunes allow, are invited to cover our costs, as we look ahead to the “Third Annual Concord Shakespeare Conference-Festival.”
Friday evening, May 29, at 7:00 p.m., Hank Whittemore will perform his one-man play, Shakespeare’s Treason, at the First Parish of Watertown, Unitarian Universalist, in Watertown, MA. There will be a discussion and reception after the performance.
On Saturday, May 30, 9:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., we’ll hear presentations at the Watertown Free Public Library, also in Watertown Square. Below is a listing of our presenters and a description of their talks.
Cost: We are suggesting a donation of $10 for the Friday evening play, free to students. The Saturday event is free. Last year’s lunch was a huge hit with the group and we would like to provide lunch on Saturday at the library. If the weather is pleasant, attendees may have their lunch as a picnic in a nearby park. We are suggesting a donation of $20 for attending both Friday and Saturday events, (or $10 for either day) to offset the cost of lunch and other refreshments that will be provided throughout the weekend. You may make a donation by cash or check on the day of the event.
Registration: If you plan to attend, please RSVP by email: info@shakespearesymposium.org or telephone: 617-955-3198.
Saturday, May 30, 2009 at the Watertown Free Public Library: The program will start at 9:30 a.m. with coffee, and the first talk will begin at 10 a.m. Lunch will be 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. We will end by 4:30 p.m. There are restaurants in Watertown Square within walking distance of the library. People may like to go out to dinner in groups afterwards.
Alex McNeil, President of the Shakespeare Fellowship will be Master of Ceremonies for Saturday’s event. He will also lead us in a Shakespearean game after lunch.
10 - 11 a.m. Bonner Miller Cutting, "Shakespeare’s’ Will Considered Too Curiously"
When the Last Will and Testament of William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is his "notorious bequest” of his second best bed to his wife. In this presentation, Will’s will is compared with other wills of the era, and it becomes clear that there is more to lament in this document than a single unfortunate word choice.
11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. Mark Anderson, "Overjoyed, Over Him, Overbury: The New ‘Cobbe Portrait of Shakespeare’ and what it means for the authorship question" Mark will discuss his research and recent events regarding the Cobbe portrait.
12:15 - 1:30 p.m. Lunch
1:30 - 2 p.m. - Oxfordian Shakespeare game with Alex McNeil
2:00 - 3 p.m. Marie Merkel, "Raising the Dead: Ben Jonson & The Tempest."
"Mysteriously, it seems an inaugural work…", Harold Bloom
According to most scholars, The Tempest capitalizes on hot news of the day: the 1609 Wreck of the Sea-Venture, in the Bermudas. Since the earl of Oxford died in 1604, the burden of proof has been on his supporters, either to discredit the play’s many echoes of the Bermuda shipwreck, or to find a new author. Mysteriously, The Tempest just happens to be Shakespeare’s most Jonsonian play.
3:15 - 4:15 p.m. Bill Boyle, "Shakespeare and the Succession Crisis of the 1590s"
The succession crisis of the 1590s was a result of Queen Elizabeth’s refusal to name a successor, or even to allow discussion about the succession. Yet Shakespeare’s Richard II is accepted by most scholars as a comment on Elizabeth’s weaknesses and an implicit "thumbs up" to any potential Bolingbroke-like usurpers to the throne (e.g., the Earl of Essex). How deeply involved was Shakespeare in commenting on the succession crisis? What other works of his and others —such as Willobie His Avisa— may have shared the succession agenda of Richard II?
Biographies of our presenters:
Mark Anderson is a journalist who devoted more than a decade to researching the life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. The resulting book, “Shakespeare” by Another Name, is recognized as a major document of the Shakespeare authorship discussion. Mark has published articles on de Vere in Harper’s Magazine, The Boston Globe, and on PBS.org, and has lectured worldwide on the authorship issue.
Bill Boyle is a graduate of Lake Forest College (BA, English, 1967); SUNY-Albany (Mastersin Library Science, 1973). He presently works as a cataloger at the Social Law Library (Boston, MA). Bill has been active in the Oxfordian movement for 30 years and was editor of two society newsletters about Shakespeare and the authorship issue (1995-2005). He founded several websites in the 1990s: Shakespeare Oxford Society (1995), and: The Ever Reader (1998). Bill has presented papers at the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference (Portland, OR) and the conferences of the Shakespeare Oxford Society and the Shakespeare Fellowship over the past ten years. On the Internet he is presently maintaining a new website and blog, The Shakespeare Adventure, www.shakespeareadventure.com, a Shakespeare library with an online catalog, New England Shakespeare Oxford Library, www.shakespeareoxfordlibrary.org, and is working on a Shakespeare Authorship Resources online database, to be announced later this year.
Bonner Miller Cutting has studied the authorship of the Shakespeare Canon for several decades. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Fellowship and is the President of the Lone Star Shakespeare Roundtable in Houston, Texas. Mrs. Cutting has recently presented papers at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, the 2008 conference on authorship studies held in White Plains, New York, and the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable in Los Angeles. A Louisiana, native, Mrs. Cutting holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Tulane University and a Masters of Music Degree from McNeese State University in Lake Charles, LA.
Alex McNeil received his B.A. from Yale University and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. A non-practicing attorney, he is the Court Administrator of the Massachusetts Appeals Court in Boston. Alex became interested in the Shakespeare Authorship question after seeing the 1989 PBS Frontline program on the subject. He was one of the founding trustees of the Shakespeare Fellowship, and currently serves as its president. He is the author of Total Television, a reference book on TV programming, and can be heard on the radio as the Friday host of "Lost and Found" on WMBR-FM (88.1, Cambridge MA), a program spotlighting lesser-known pop and soul music of the 60s and 70s.
Marie Merkel’s poems have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly and The New Republic. She is the author of The First Mousetrap: Titus Andronicus and the Tudor Massacre of the Howards, a full-length study of the play’s links with Howard family history, and the dramatic methods used to conceal this politically explosive story.
Hank Whittemore began researching the life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford in 1987. Since then he has been involved in organizations such as the Shakespeare Oxford Society, the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference, the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable and the Shakespeare Fellowship. In the winter of 1998-1999, after more than a decade of studying the Sonnets in relation to Oxford’s life, he discovered that the numbered verses comprise an elegant "monument" to preserve a political diary for posterity…
At the center of the structure, Edward de Vere explains his "invention" or special language (akin to the language of DNA) that determines the entire form and content of the sonnet sequence. The result is the "living record" of Henry Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton in relation to the ever-waning life, reign and dynasty of Queen Elizabeth I of England — a genuine historical document in which Oxford tells why and how he saved Southampton’s life by agreeing to bury the truth of his own life: "Your name from hence immortal life shall have, though I (once gone) to all the world must die."
The Monument demonstrates this discovery as it applies to each line of the 154 sonnets, while placing the entire sequence within a specific framework of historical circumstance and chronology. Also see: http://www.shakespearesmonument.com/
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.
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)�
We are delighted to announce that our two pro-Shakespeare organizations will sponsor our first-ever joint conference in Ashland, OR, September 29-October 2, 2005.
We believe the venue in Ashland — home of the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) — offers a perfect location for our joint conference. The conference will bring together a wide spectrum of speakers and participants to explore the exciting and important issues surrounding the authorship of the plays and poems of William Shakespeare.
We ask all Shakespeare lovers who are interested in the authorship question to mark their calendars for September 29-October 2, 2005. We believe this joint conference will prove to be a milestone event in celebrating the immortal works of Shakespeare, while opening many eyes with regard to the identity of the true author.
We hope to see all lovers of Shakespeare at our joint conference in Ashland.
To register for the joint Ashland Conference please see details here.
Two Dutch Psychologists have organized the first ever Dutch conference on the authorship question, scheduled for July 8-10 to occur in Utrecht Holland: “WHO WAS ‘SHAKESPEARE’ ?- The Man Behind the Mask -”
The Conference Call for Papers reads as: ‘Shakespeare’, voted Man of the Millennium, was the greatest literary genius known to the world; yet what is known of the life of William is strangely divorced from the poems and plays. William was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 and died there in 1616. He was involved in many business transactions, but these offer no insight into the plays.
This yawning gulf between the person and the works has led many to question whether William of Stratford was in fact the real author. Robert McCrum, literary editor of The Observer, cites six questions about the authorship that have perplexed scholars for years:
�How could a provincial actor from Stratford gain such an
intimate knowledge of court life (and medicine, botany, the law, the sea and aristocratic pursuits such as hunting and falconry)?
�How could he know so much of classical authors?
�How could he write compromising love sonnets to his social
superior, the powerful Earl of Southampton?
�How could he know so much of Italy and Italian literature?
�How could he leave not a single book or manuscript in his will?
�Why was there no notice of such a writer’s death in 1616?
Many, including Bismarck, Disraeli, Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and John Gielgud, have doubted the traditional biography of the Bard. After noting his genius, his learning and his outlook, they have decided that the Bard cannot have been William of Stratford.
Shakespeare’ was almost certainly a pseudonym for the real writer of genius. We should look for the author elsewhere in the Elizabethan world.
The First Dutch Conference on the Authorship Question aims to bring together historians, social scientists, literary and theatre people, actors, students in these fields, Shakespeare admirers in general, and all others interested to discuss the authorship question. The conference program consists of lectures by invited speakers, parallel sessions for participants to present their papers, an (optional) excursion and a social program.
Conference participants are requested to submit an abstract of 250-450 words before March 1st to conference organizers Jan Scheffer or Sandra Schruijer. After reviewing and editing conference papers will be published.
The conference will be held in the city of Utrecht, The Netherlands, which is 40 km away from Schiphol airport. There are various nice, centrally located hotels in Utrecht, varying in price.
For further information on the conference please contact:
Jan Scheffer, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at the Pieter Baan Centre, Utrecht (jhs@worldonline.nl) or
Sandra Schruijer, professor of organizational psychology at Tilburg University (schruijer@yahoo.com)
Congratulations to Dr. Scheffer and Dr. Schruijer for organizing what we are sure will be a historic event!
