Startling news? Well...

For a bit of fun, head over to Shakespeare Geek (the link is on the right side, the first one under Interesting Blogs) and click on the title. Look for the first post for today (April 1), titled "Actual Shakespeare Letters Found?!" and read it. Be sure to click on the link provided at the end of the blog entry to see what is really going on. Just remember what day this is.

I don't want to spoil the surprise, but after you finish you will agree with me when I say that people in the past have gone to a lot of trouble to supply ANYTHING that could link William of Stratford to the author of the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Yes, Stratfordians would give their eye teeth (what does that expression mean anyway?) to be able to have even a millionth of what we Oxfordians have to link our candidate. The only recourse Stratfordians (like James Shapiro) have is to deny that the plays and sonnets can be autobiographical in any way or that they can tell us anything about what the writer read and knew about, even if they contradict themselves while doing it (again like Shapiro). It's kind of pathetic in its way.

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Note on the William Henry Ireland forgeries: Doug Stewart has written a novel about the Ireland scandal, The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly due out this month from DaCapo Press.

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Waugaman named Oxfordian of the Year 2021

by Linda Theil Waugaman taking his first selfie in his home office in Potomac Maryland The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship named Richard Waugaman, MD, Oxfordian of the Year 2021 at their annual conference on October 9, 2021. Waugaman is a clinical professor of psychiatry on the faculty of Georgetown University, a training and supervising analyst emeritus with the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, and is in private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Potomac, Maryland. For over a decade Waugaman has published extensively on the topic of Shakespeare authorship including work in journals outside the normal reach of the subject such as Psychoanalytic Quarterly , the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Studies , and Contemporary Psychoanalysis . He has presented on the topic before such diverse venues as the International Psychoanalytic Congress, the New Directions Conference, the Shakespeare Association of America, the American Shakespeare Center, and the Cosmos Club in ...

What's a popp'rin' pear?

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said. “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.” She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...

Dudley nails it to the door

Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...

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