Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Dear Oberon,   Can it be that our next meeting--in one week on Thursday July 28--is almost upon us?   The drama will continue!   We will hear from our own Gang of Four, also known as the Oberon Executive Committee, about our developing plans for the blockbuster Oxfordian movie directed by Roland Emmerich which will be out this fall.   We will continue to explore the amazing details of  The Merchant of Venice.   And we will be hearing as usual about the exploits, discoveries and accomplishments of our members as well as the latest news from the world of Shakespeare especially as it relates to authorship.   Looking forward, as always, to seeing all of you there.   Your faithful Chair, Tom Oberon meets on the fourth Thursday of the month at 6:45 p.m. in meeting room A, upstairs at the at the  Farmington Community Library , 32737 W. 12 Mile Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48334. Future meetings: July 28, August 25, ...

Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre , headed by Director Dan Wright, PhD, announced this week  that Anonymous director Roland Emmerich will receive the center's  Vero Nihil Verius Award of Artistic Excellence at its annual conference September 6-9, 2011 . Emmerich's film will be shown Sept. 7, 2011 in downtown Portland, Oregon as part of the conference activities. An a la carte fee structure is available for the conference. Anonymous is currently scheduled for general release in the USA on October 28, 2011.  Emmerich's award may appear ironic since Edward de Vere's Latin motto,  vero nihil verius, can be translated, "nothing truer than truth", and Emmerich does not claim his film purports to be the truth. Emmerich and Anonymous screenwriter John Orloff are quoted in a 2010 interview for Timeout.com :  . . . 'Anonymous’ posits the idea that Oxford was not only the author known as William Shakespeare but the illegitimate son of Elizabeth. M...

Oberon chair R. Thomas Hunter, PhD recalled Borders Books 1971 birth in Ann Arbor in the wake of today's news of liquidation of the entire bookstore chain. Hunter's essay appeared earlier today in Nina Green's Phaeton email list, and is reproduced here with Hunter's permission: Although we had received our degrees, my wife, Rosey, and I were still very much involved in Ann Arbor when Borders opened its first store. It boggles my mind how that very informal attempt at creating a store became the builder of hundreds of stores and the employer of many thousands. As I recall, it was nothing exceptional. Bookstores aplenty already populated the Ann Arbor landscape. My favorite was on South University because of its exceptional selection of used books which always seemed to have the book I needed at a very reasonable price. That store, of course, is long gone. I do recall what I especially liked about the Borders stores. It was a simple idea: seating scattered randomly ...

Gary Goldstein resigned from the Shakespeare Fellowship board of directors and from the fellowship i n protest against the board's  decision to rescind their June 15, 2011 statement titled, " The Shakespeare Fellowship commends Roland Emmerich for directing the film, Anonymous , but stresses that this production's 'Prince Tudor' narratives are not essential to the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the writer 'Shakespeare'"   Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman said yesterday about the board's action, " W hile a number of trustees still support the language on the posted statement, the board moved unanimously to withhold the statement on  Anonymous  and to remove it from the Fellowship website until a later date when members of the board have actually seen a preview of the film."  In a letter submitted yesterday to  Nina Green's   Phaeton  email list, Goldstein reported his objection to Showerman's characterizati...

Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman issued a statement today repudiating the fellowship's statement made June 15, 2011 titled: "The Shakespeare Fellowship commends Roland Emmerich for directing the film, Anonymous , but stresses that this production's 'Prince Tudor' narratives are not essential to the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the writer 'Shakespeare'" .  Showerman said today: The trustees of the Shakespeare Fellowship met last evening to reconsider the motion passed last month concerning the  statement posted on the Fellowship website regarding Roland Emmerich’s upcoming film, Anonymous.  While a number of trustees still support the language on the posted statement, the board moved unanimously to withhold the statement on  Anonymous  and to remove it from the Fellowship website until a later date when members of the board have actually seen a preview of the film. Several board members have offered amendments to the stateme...

A most pleasant surprise awaited Rosey and me under the Interlochen pine trees this Sunday afternoon (July 10) at the Harvey Theater: the academy’s production of The Merchant of Venice. The concept of the presentation, the superb acting, and the informed—or instinctive—directing made this production more satisfying in recent memory than those we had seen at Stratford, Ontario, and at Ashland, Oregon, which have both come to be recognized among the top rank of Shakespeare houses. The day didn’t start off so sweetly, as the promotional material got it all wrong, wrong enough for me to consider not to bother driving the 40 miles to see it. First of all, the blurb for the play in the "2011 Summer Arts Festival" brochure states that the loan contract was “steeped in prejudice and demanding an infamous ‘pound of flesh.’" This is totally wrong in every detail, since the loan was offered by Shylock to Antonio without interest as between friends and countrymen. Shylock was...

Author Peter McIntosh, University of Tasmania professor of history Michael Bennett and Rodney Croome at Hobart Bookshop launch of McIntosh's Who Wrote Shakespeare's Sonnets?  May 26, 2011 in Hobart, Tasmania. Photo credit: Martin Fieldhouse, Madhouse Photography Tasmanian Peter McIntosh, PhD, who spoke at the Shakespeare Authorship Conference at Concordia College in 2009 recently launched his book Who Wrote Shakespeare's Sonnets?  published by Ginninderra Press , Port Adelaide, Australia. McIntosh's new book develops the ideas first presented in a 2003 book on the topic of Elizabeth I as author of Shakespeare's Sonnets titled  Shakespeare’s Sonnets – An Elizabethan Love Story ( Otakou Press) . Speaking of his approach to this study, McIntosh said: Like many people I was introduced to Shakespeare’s works at school, but became interested in the  Sonnets much later after noting that although they are almost certainly biographical they bear no relations...

Authorship researcher and Oberon founding member Barbara Burris sent the following open letter to the Shakespeare Fellowship Board on June 23, 2011. In this letter Burris responds to the board's June 14, 2011 statement titled:  "SF board re: Prince Tudor: The Shakespeare Fellowship commends Roland Emmerich for directing the film, Anonymous, but stresses that this production’s 'Prince Tudor' narratives are not essential to the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the writer 'Shakespeare.'"  We reprint Burris' letter below with her permission: Open Letter to the Shakespeare Fellowship Board It should be of great concern to all fair-minded members of the Shakespeare Fellowship that the board of the SF has followed in the footsteps of the De Vere Society board’s proclamation of true faith and dogma regarding the Prince Tudor theory in all its forms. Many reasonable and influential persons from the earliest beginnings of the Oxford movement have given...

Richard M. Waugaman, MD, previewed his upcoming review of Anonymity in Early Modern England by J.W. Starner and B.H. Traister this week on Amazon.com. The entire review will appear in upcoming editions of the interdisciplinary journal of authorship studies,  Brief Chronicles , and the Shakespeare Fellowship newsletter, Shakespeare Matters. Waugaman's five-star review on Amazon.com, "The Beginning of the End for the Stratfordian Legend" , focuses on the chapter written by Bruce Danner, PhD titled, "The Anonymous Shakespeare: Heresy, Authorship, and the Anxiety of Orthodoxy". Danner is an English professor whose upcoming book, Edmund Spencer's War on Lord Burghley , will be published September 27, 2011 by McMillan. An abstract and first chapter of Danner's book may be read on his weblog . Waugaman surmises in his review that Danner may be on the road to his own intellectual emancipation from Stratfordian dogma. Waugaman will post the entire review on...