Book by Peter Moore for Sale by Shakespeare Fellowship
Hamburg, Germany, January 26, 2010… German publisher Verlag Laugwitz is pleased to announce publication of The Lame Storyteller, Poor and Despised, the collected Shakespeare papers of literary historian Peter Moore (1949-2007), which previously appeared in peer reviewed journals in the US, England, Holland and France from 1993 to 2006.
Among Moore’s discoveries are the following:
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The Shakespeare plays were written from 1585 to 1604 and not 1590 to 1613, as commonly supposed
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The Rival Poet of the Sonnets was Robert Deveraux, Earl of Essex and the Fair Youth was Henry Wriostheley, Earl of Southampton
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Shakespeare’s share of Two Noble Kinsmen was written the last year of Elizabeth’s life—and ended with her death.
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The dramatist attacked in Ben Jonson’s “On Poet Ape” was Thomas Dekker and not William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare used the Bible’s two-witness rule involving murder in designing Hamlet’s inner dynamic
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Shakespeare adapted the Earl of Surrey’s Psalm 8 as well as Piers Plowman in writing Hamlet’s soliloquies
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Shakespeare set Christian and pagan philosophies against each other in King Lear and mediated the debate through the concept of nature
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Shakespeare used ancient and modern notions of time and Epicureanism in devising Macbeth’s structure
“Peter became one of the most brilliant scholars of the Elizabethan period late in life,” noted Dr. Uwe Laugwitz. “He was not an academic—he did not receive a doctorate, nor did he teach Shakespeare. What is special about his insights into Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Age is that they derive from a most intriguing background—military officer, legislative aide, and education official, with degrees in engineering and economics.
“I would compare his contributions in the field of Shakespeare studies to that of Lessing’s,” added Dr. Laugwitz, referring to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the German philosopher, critic and dramatist who championed Shakespeare to German audiences in the 18th Century. “Peter’s method is like Lessing’s: disassembling the false constructions of established authorities and trying to gain new ideas from his critical work by merging objective historical analysis with a keen literary sensibility. The combination of his intellectual power and classical temperament are the means by which Peter Moore aligns with Gotthold Lessing, both generating transformative insights into Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period.”
“What makes Peter Moore’s work of lasting value to scholars, theater professionals and the general public is his ability to delineate Shakespeare’s original intent in his most important works,” said Gary Goldstein, editor of the posthumous collection of nearly thirty papers. “The first half of the book focuses on the Sonnets, Hamlet, King Lear, MacbethOthello; the second half investigates the chronology of the plays and the controversial authorship issue of the Shakespeare canon, with Moore deconstructing the traditional case of Shakespeare from Stratford, then laying out new evidence that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays.”
Peter Moore studied engineering at Cornell University and University of Maryland, where he graduated with a BS in Civil Engineering, and later earned a MS in Economics at the University of Maryland. He served as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, became a legislative aide to US Senator John East from North Carolina, an official in the Georgia State Department of Education, and a director at a national non-profit organization dedicated to dealing with troubled youth.
Dr. Laugwitz has co-published with Robert Detobel the Neues Shake-speare Journal since 1997, Walter Klier’s The Shakespeare Case (2004); the play Edward III (1998); and the drama Woodstock in 2006 in its first German edition. In 2005 he published Kurt Kreiler’s translation of Edward de Vere’s poetry in the first German edition. Forthcoming is a German edition of the anonymous Elizabethan play, Arden of Faversham. Dr. Laugwitz received his doctorate in German Literature from the University of Hamburg.
Gary Goldstein was former editor and publisher of The Elizabethan Review, a peer-reviewed history journal which appeared from 1993 to 1999 in print and from 1997 to 2001 on the Internet (www.elizabethanreview. com). He served on the editorial board of The Oxfordian from 2004-2007 and currently is managing editor of Brief Chronicles: The Inter-Disciplinary Journal of the Shakespeare Fellowship (www.briefchronicles.com).
The Lame Storyteller is available throughout North America for $20 through the Shakespeare Fellowship at www.shakespearefellowship.org)
Contact: Gary Goldstein, garygoldstein1@bellsouth.net