Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Say wha', Jimmy?

2012-01-24T05:51:00.000-08:00

Not only does I-don't-approve-of-speculative-biography author James Shapiro approve Graham Holderness' imaginative biography, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare (Continuum Books, 2011), but he has recently also praised Germaine Greer's 2008 biographic speculation, Shakespeare's Wife. In a short article titled "Fact and fiction don't blend well in biographies" that appeared in the January 23, 2012 edition of Hindustan Times writer Antara Das reported:

Shapiro is less dismissive of [Greer]‘s attempt to add substance to the somewhat sketchy portrait of Shakespeare’s wife (in the book of the same name). “Greer does bring her own preoccupations, concluding that Shakespeare died of venereal disease for which there is no evidence. But she did manage to shift perspectives and liberate Shakespeare from a clutch of mainly male biographers,” he says. In the end, the bravery of her attempt outshines the flaws of her book. Contesting the authorship of Shakespeare’s work is a phenomenon not more than 150 years old. But if one is patient, Shakespeare is bound to “emerge as a figure of the moment, responsible to the moment”.

" . . . emerge as a figure of the moment, responsible to the moment"? Fiddle-dee-dee, Jimmy, what the heck does that mean?

Resources:
http://books.hindustantimes.com/?p=7017&preview=true
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/12/holderness-says-all-this-is-changing.html

Redford Theatre runs Forbidden Planet today and tomorrow

2012-01-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

Leslie Nielson in 1956 Forbidden Planet

Richard Joyrich reported that the Redford Theatre will be showing 1956's Forbidden Planet, starring Leslie Nielson, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and introducing Robby the Robot today at 8 PM and Saturday at 2 PM and 8 PM. Richard said:

There is usually a thirty minute organ "overture" before the movie there and a 30 minute organ "intermission" as well. As some of you may know (and others might be pleased to learn) this movie was inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest and has many parallel characters. It is considered one of the best science fiction movies of the 1950s. I hope you will consider taking advantage of this opportunity to see this movie on the big screen (it is, of course, available on DVD). I promise you that you will not be disappointed.

And for those of you who don't live in southeast Michigan, check out the available Shakespeare films discussed by Jeff Heinrich in yesterday's Montreal Gazette, "DVD Blu-ray and download: Handy viewing guide to Shakespeare on film" Heinrich gives a shout-out to the release of Roland Emmerich's Anonymous on DVD February 7, 2012.

Finally, if you don’t buy this whole Shakespeare thing and seriously think someone else wrote all those wonderful plays, check out Anonymous. Roland Emmerich and John Orloff’s fiction premiered at the Toronto Film Fest in September and is coming to Sony DVD and Blu-ray on Feb. 7. The real Shakespeare? Apparently he was an Oxford earl named Edward de Vere.

Reader, if you have a favorite Shakespeare or Shakespeare derived film, add to our list by posting a comment below. I'll start with the 1999 Taming of the Shrew deriviative, Ten Things I Hate about You, with Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger.

Note: Don't forget tomorrow (January 21) at 1 p.m. is the simulcast of the Met's Shakespeare derived opera Enchanted Isle.

Resources:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Here+handy+viewing+guide+Shakespeare+works+film/6020646/story.html
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/
http://www.redfordtheatre.com/

Klein says Marche's case is weak

2012-01-16T16:13:00.000-08:00

Stephen Marche's vicious, NYT Magazine review of Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, earned brickbats from an atypical source last fall. On Nov. 16, 2011 the weblog Organizations and Markets ran a post titled "Shakespeare and Epistemology" in which economist Peter G. Klein chastised Marche for his hubris in excoriating the anti-Stratfordian viewpoint.

"I don’t know anything about the issue other than what I’ve read in recent commentaries, but Marche’s case, in the piece linked above, is surprisingly weak," Klein wrote. He elaborated:

some Shakespeare products are dated after de Vere died, which only proves that de Vere couldn’t have written those;
the doubters are snobs who don’t believe a poor country boy could have written such beautiful verse, which could be true, but hardly establishes that the country boy did in fact write them;
and other circumstantial bits and ex cathedra pronouncements.

But his major criticism was for Stratfordians' intractable certitude, which Klein says is epistemologically unsound.

How can we possibly know with 100% certainty who authored every one of the literary works attributed to Shakespeare? Heck, we don’t know who really writes the stuff published under names like “Doris Kearns Goodwin” and “Stephen Ambrose,” and those appeared in the last few years, not the 17th century. There’s even a lively controversy about what Adam Smith wrote and what he copied. Intellectual historians are frequently reinterpreting and revising, and few cows are sacred. Regarding Shakespearean authorship, then, shouldn’t we expect a little Popperian or Hayekian humility?

Recently, Klein explained to us his reference to Popper and Hayek:

On humility, I was referring the reader to prior posts on Organizations and Markets on Popper's and Hayek's methodological views. Both Popper (the philosopher of science) and Hayek (the economist) emphasized fallibility, skepticism, the conjectural nature of scientific knowledge, etc. Popper regarded as scientific only those propositions that are "falsifiable"; Hayek's [1974] Nobel Prize lecture was titled "The Pretense of Knowledge."

Klein said Organization and Markets is a business/economics blog focused on organization theory, entrepreneurship, and management. "The authors and most readers are social scientists, but we touch occasionally on literature, society, culture, etcetera, as they relate to our core themes."

As for how Shakespeare relates to those core themes, Klein said, "I’m puzzled by the core epistemological issue: what do we really know about Shakespearean authorship?"

Resources:
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2011/11/16/shakespeare-and-epistemology/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/wouldnt-it-be-cool-if-shakespeare-wasnt-shakespeare.html
http://web.missouri.edu/~kleinp/
http://mises.org/journals/jls/10_2/10_2_5.pdf
http://mises.org/daily/3229

Jefferson Foote publishes Brazil -- electronic version to follow soon

2012-01-12T11:24:00.000-08:00

Robert Brazil’s childhood pal, Jefferson Foote, publishedBrazil’s book, Edward DeVere and the Shakespeare Printers, as an act offriendship. When Foote – a research scientist in Seattle, Washington – learned ofBrazil’s death in 2010, he also learned of Brazil’s interest in the Shakespeareauthorship question.

“I found out he had written this book and he had publishedit as a Kinko copy (in 1999),” Foote said in a telephone interview on January 8.“And I’m not prepared to let this slip away – it is his life’s work and Iwanted to see it preserved.”

Although he had been long out of contact with Robert Brazil,Foote contacted Brazil’s brother, Tony Brazil, and received a copy of thecontents of Brazil’s computer along with permission to publish ShakespearePrinters under the copyright of Brazil’s son and heir Jessie Brazil.

“I had notrouble at all getting approval from the brother and sons,” Foote said. “Theywere delighted that I picked that up.”

Foote also enlisted the aid of Robert Brazil’s friend, LisaDuff -- owner of the audio-book publishing firm, Wetware Media, LLC -- who advisedFoote on the publishing process. He used the Amazon print-on-demand companyCreateSpace as printer of the volume and published under the name of hisSeattle research firm, Cortical Output, LLC. The book was released on Brazil’sbirthday, November 19, 2011, with all profits going to Brazil’s heirs:Jessie Brazil and David Brazil. “We want to keep the price moderate; theirpriority is to get the widest circulation,” Foote said.

Foote expects to release an electronic version ofShakespeare Printers by spring this year. He does not rule out the possibilityof further publication, although he found no other books in preparation amongBrazil’s electronic effects.

“I looked over his disk files that Tony sent. I went overthem almost file-by-file; there are thousands of them. I found variousversions of stuff that’s in the book; the contents of the book is not thatdifferent from the contents in the 1999 version. The thousands of files I sawwere more like primary research data, not manuscript drafts. [Robert Brazil] wrote that this was going tobe the first volume of a multi-volume set, but I didn’t find subsequentvolumes. There were the beginnings, and discussions with people about Oxfordianissues. It may be at some point agenuine Oxfordian scholar could go through these and recognize the significanceof these. That would be a privacy issue, but I think Tony [Brazil] would beamenable.”

Foote and Brazil were childhood friends who attended school togetherin Tarrytown, New York. Foote said theyhad a teacher at Sleepy Hollow High School who was passionate about Shakespeare and an advocate of theOxfordian authorship attribution, but Foote didn’t think this teacher was themain influence on Brazil. Foote himself had no real knowledge about the topicuntil he took on Brazil’s book project last year.

It’s been interesting to me to look into this world. I’m ascientist; so in a way it’s not new. Ideal in a field where every fact is suspect. It was interesting to see the players and thearguments back and forth. I’m developing an impression. It’s so interestingthis controversy. I read all the reviews of [Emmerich’s film] Anonymous andthere were three things that were striking about them:
One was the bombast. Reviewers wouldn't just say 'I disagree'; they wouldsay this [view] of Shakespeare was the greatest affront to intelligence of all time.
Another thing that struck me: they all brought up thissnobbery argument; it’s such a distortion. Nobody ever said 'One's rich; the other's poor so the rich guy must have written it.'
The third thing that struck me about these reviews: there’snothing there. They kind of huff and puff all through the review without saying exactly what's wrong with the Oxfordian postion, then end up saying, 'So-and-so hasthoroughly debunked this," which is a sure sign of someone who couldn't be bothered to do homework.

My impression of the Stratfordiansis pretty bad.They're academics and they come off as a bunch of pompous twits. The Oxfordians come off, to me, as the ones with energy: tracking down leads, finding new evidence, thinking about it, talking about it, maintaining an active discussion. And I understand Robby himself digitized a lot of Elizabethan literary works and made them available on the Internet, free, for anyone, for any purpose.

Foote refers to the Elizabethan Authors website created by Robert Brazil and Barboura Flues that is currently available at elizabethanauthors.org.

When asked about why he took on this remarkable project in his friend’s memory, Foote said, “I’m from a small town and we take care of eachother even after one of us has passed on.”

Foote is researching what became of the material onBrazil’s website earlofoxford.com. He is amenable to hearing from Oxfordians andmay be reached at mailto: jfoote@oz.net.

***

Edward DeVere and the Shakespeare Printers by Robert SeanBrazil, a 244 page paperback, is available for $19.95 on Amazon at:
http://www.amazon.com/Edward-Shakespeare-Printers-Robert-Brazil/dp/1467951552/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325962685&sr=1-1-catcorr

This description of the book is provided on Amazon.com:
Dozens of important books from the Elizabethan era praise Edward de Vere, the17th Earl of Oxford, for his patronage of literature in general, and forencouraging the creation and publication of specific works. In sheer numbers,William Cecil and the Earl of Leicester patronized more books. But"Oxford's Books,” have a robust, hyper-intelligent and even bawdycharacter, a special collection in publishing history because they form thereading matter and the linguistic universe in which "Shake-speare",as poet and wordsmith, resided. The Oxford books are pivotal pieces of theliterary Renaissance in England, and these books are found reflected in the themesand language of the Shakespeare plays. Could de Vere have been the true authorof Shakespeare's plays and poetry, using the man from Stratford as a front? Inthe first half of this volume, Robert Brazil gives a lucid explanation of theShakespeare/ Oxford authorship question. In the second half, Brazil adds hisown findings to this complex and contentious playing field. Through associationwith specific printers and publishers, Brazil links de Vere to the men who firstprinted "Shakespeare.” These printers and sellers turn out to be keysuppliers of works classified as Shakespeare apocrypha, as well as works thatShakespeare drew upon, the so called "Sources of Shakespeare,” whichinclude everything from Holinshed's chronicles, to translations, anonymousplays, poetry, and editions of the Psalms. Following the existing paper trail,Brazil additionally shows that "Shake-speare" edited his own books,for improved published editions, but only from 1598 to 1604. After 1604, the year of de Vere's death, access totexts and to the original editor was permanently interrupted.

A portion of Edward de Vere and the Shakespeare Printers is readable on the Amazon site; the acknowledgments in the book read:
"Thanks to my friends and family who have supported this endeavor with encouragementand bemusement: The Right Reverend David Z. Brazil, The Right Honorable Dr.Percy Brazil, Jessie Brazil, Lisa Duff. And many thanks to my far-flung fellowresearchers and correspondents: Mick Clarke, Barboura Flues, Nina Green, AndyHannas, Roger Stritmatter, and Dr. Jack Shuttleworth." Signed Robert SeanBrazil, 2010

***

Resources:
http://www.amazon.com/Edward-Shakespeare-Printers-Robert-Brazil/dp/1467951552/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325962685&sr=1-1-catcorr
http://www.washingtonlifescience.com/industry/directory?companyid=9479
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jefferson-foote/13/412/22
http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/edcetera/2008/04/a_scientist_writes_about_innov.html
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2009/05/04/arrowsmith-challenges-scientific-establishment-with-new-approach-for-brain-cancer/
http://wetwaremedia.com/
http://elizabethanauthors.org/
http://elizabethanauthors.org/memorial.htm
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2010/08/brazil-tribute-online.html

Tom Townsend announces Jan. 23, 2012 Oberon meeting

2012-01-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

And Happy New Year.

We have a finalized the meeting date, time and place for the first Oberon Meeting of the new year. It will be Monday, January 23 in meeting room 3 at the Bloomfield Township Public Library. The meeting time is 6:45 to 8:30 PM. The address for the Bloomfield Township Public Library is 1099 Lone Pine Road, Bloomfield Township MI 48302 (phone: 248-642-5800). It is actually at the intersection of Lone Pine Road and Telegraph Road.

When you enter the library you can walk straight in for a couple of yards. You will see stairs on the right. If you go down the stairs and through the door you will see a modest conference room on the right. This is our meeting room! (There are elevators somewhere but I’m not sure where at this point!).

In this first meeting of the new year we have several things to talk about. However the main focus is to hear from everyone: What Shakespeare subjects would you like to discuss this year in our group? We’ll accumulate ideas and put together a non-binding “calendar” of subjects to discuss in the new year. –This is one possibility, I’m sure there are others.

Thanks.

Tom Townsend, Treasurer

Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Goldstein resigns as BC managing editor

2011-12-30T13:28:00.000-08:00

With the publication of the Shakespeare Fellowship online journal, Brief Chronicles Vol. 3, Managing Editor Gary Goldstein resigned, citing philosophical differences with Brief Chronicles General Editor Roger Stritmatter. Goldstein's resignation follows his resignation from the Shakespeare Fellowship board of directors in July 2011 in protest against the board's decision to rescind their statement against the Prince Tudor aspects of Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film Anonymous. Goldstein's position against the so-called Prince Tudor theory of Shakespeare authorship also played a part in his decision to leave his position with Brief Chronicles. [Content withdrawn.] Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman said the board is in the process of selecting a new managing editor and they would make an announcement when they had an agreement. He said that he hoped the announcement would be made soon.

Resources:
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/07/goldstein-resigns-in-protest-against-sf.html
http://www.briefchronicles.com/ojs/index.php/bc/issue/current/showToc

Malim book published by McFarland

2011-12-30T10:54:00.000-08:00

DeVere Society Secretary Richard Malim has announced the publication of his book The Earl ofOxford and the Making of “Shakespeare”: The Literary Life of Edward De Vere in Context by McFarland. The book is currently available.

McFarland said:

The identity of Shakespeare, the most important poet and dramatist in the English language, has been debated for centuries. This historical work investigates the role of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, establishing him as most likely the author of Shakespeare’s literary oeuvre. Topics include the historical background of English literature from 1530 through 1575, major contemporary transitions in the theatre, and a linguistically rich examination of Oxford’s life and the events leading to his literary prominence. The sonnets, Oxford’s early poetry, juvenile "pre-Shakespeare" plays, and his acting career are of particular interest. An appendix examines the role of the historical William Shakespeare and how he became associated with Oxford’s work.

Note: More information, including an excerpt from his book, is available from Malim by contacting him at mailto:malim@btinternet.com. A substantial discount is available to DeVere Society members who contact him directly.

Sony's Pascal has no regrets about Anonymous

2011-12-29T07:50:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's article in the LA Times about why film companies have made several recent box office bombs -- Roland Emmerich's Anonymous among them -- Patrick Goldstein opines films of doubtful appeal were made on the strength of an established relationship between the artist and the corporation. While this is hardly an earthshaking notion, Goldstein gives some perspective on the issue. He said of Sony studio co-chairman Amy Pascal:

Pascal hedged her bets financially with “Anonymous,” which was co-financed by Relativity Media. But she says she has no regrets. “I believed in what Roland wanted to do. He had something fresh and entertaining to say, which is all you can ask for from a filmmaker.”

For the full article, read "Why so many Hollywood relationship movies are box-office duds" in the LA Times' 24 Frames blog.

Tempest-inspired Enchanted Island at the Met & simulcast

2011-12-28T12:53:00.001-08:00

Metropolitan Opera's production of the new work Enchanted Island based on Shakespeare's Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream will debut New Year's Eve and run through January 30 with a simulcast performance scheduled for 1 p.m. January 21, 2012.

From the Met:

January 21, 2012, 12:55 pm ET
U.S. Encore: February 8, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encore: March 3, 2012 at 1 pm local time
March 26, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time

In one extraordinary new work, lovers of Baroque opera have it all: the world’s best singers, glorious music of the Baroque masters, and a story drawn from Shakespeare. In The Enchanted Island, the lovers from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are shipwrecked on his other-worldly island of The Tempest. Inspired by the musical pastiches and masques of the 18th century, the work showcases arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, and others, and a new libretto devised and written by Jeremy Sams. Eminent conductor William Christie leads an all-star cast with David Daniels (Prospero) and Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax) as the formidable foes, Plácido Domingo as Neptune, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, and Luca Pisaroni as Caliban. Lisette Oropesa and Anthony Roth Costanzo play Miranda and Ferdinand. The dazzling production is directed and designed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch (Satyagraha and the Met’s 125 anniversary gala).

Approximate running time: 3 hours, 35 minutes

Click HERE to find participating theaters that are showing the Jan. 21, 2012 simulcast of Enchanted Island.

This program note of Jeremy Sams describing how he wrote the libretto for The Enchanted Island was first published online and in the Met's Playbill in December 2011:

Looking back over this one it’s hard to recall which came first—the words, the music, the story, the cast…? All those factors influenced each of the others at some time or other. The one thing certain is that the original idea came from Peter Gelb. "Imagine," he said, "taking the hidden gems from a century of music, and turning them into one opera. Oh, and it has to be in English." That was the genesis, and like the best of them it culminated (for me at least) in revelations. I embarked on a very eclectic listening regime. I knew my Handel—at least I thought I did, but I now started listening to everything in growing amazement. I was reminded of what George Bernard Shaw wrote about a revelatory Beethoven performance, "I did with my ears what I do with my eyes when they stare." The operas, more than 40 of them, are stuffed with wonders. The oratorios are every bit as dramatic. Most revelatory to me was the Handel of the early Italian cantatas, and of youthful masterpieces like The Triumph of Time and The Resurrection, where we see an already fully-formed genius spreading his wings. Handel is above all a theater man to his fingertips. Even the Coronation Anthems (I allowed myself a ridiculously famous one—but Domingo’s entrance seemed to demand it) are every bit as theatrical as his magical operas.

After Handel came Vivaldi, who, thanks to some remarkable recent recordings, is now very much on the operatic map. If he perhaps can’t match Handel’s range (who can?), he has an aching lyricism and above all a kinetic energy, a virile oomph unrivaled by any of his contemporaries. He weighs in with nine arias in The Enchanted Island. I could have included 20 more.

The other main strand of my listening was the French Baroque. Here again we find a host of theater folk. Not just Lully and Charpentier (neither of whom made the cut), but above all Rameau. Rameau is simply astonishing. Rarely does old music sound so modern. As eccentric as Berlioz, he came to opera even later in his life than Janáček and wrote the best ballet music before Tchaikovsky, some may say before Stravinsky. My Act II "dream ballet" (Enchanted Island is indebted here, as often elsewhere, to Broadway precedent) is mostly Rameau. Rameau’s operas themselves are direct descendants of a weird and wonderful school of French cantatas (notably by Leclair), in which sorceresses and incantations abound, and it was becoming increasingly clear that my story was going to need both.

So, to the story. My thinking was, simply put, that a new take on old music needs a new take on an old story. It’s hard (at least for me) to think of stories without thinking of Shakespeare—and it was listening to Purcell that first brought The Tempest to mind. Dryden’s version, with music by Purcell, was indeed called The Enchanted Island, a title too good to miss. Dryden, though, had spotted that a desert island is going, by definition, to be slightly devoid of love interest, and love is what fuels the aria-making machine that is Baroque opera. Someone falls in love… Aria. Someone looks on… Jealousy Aria. Someone is deceived… Aria of Rage. Love drives the bus. Dryden’s addition of a boy-mad sister to Miranda wasn’t too inspiring. But his fleshing out of the sorceress Sycorax—Caliban’s mother and Ariel’s former mistress—was too good not to steal. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine her seduced, spurned, and then banished by Prospero to the dark side of the island. He steals her land, her son, her servant, her heart—all useful motives for revenge, and the Revenge Aria (we have a cracker in Act I), not to mention reconciliation and the Forgiveness Aria (ditto in Act II). Still, the lack of a love interest remained. The aria machine was demanding more fuel. My back-up choice of Shakespeare play was always A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mostly for its four intertwining lovers, with their four voice types (they re-appear, you’ll notice, in Così fan tutte, in The Gondoliers, even, mutatis mutandis, in Sondheim’s Follies). I was getting character envy. So I thought, let’s mix them up and see where the story takes us. Lysander and Demetrius are maybe accompanying their wives on a post-play honeymoon cruise, when they get caught up in Ariel’s tempest. Why did he zap the wrong ship? Because Sycorax corrupted the spell. Maybe she then tries to ensure the future of her island by helping Helena to fall for Caliban. Miranda, aided by the increasingly incompetent Ariel (most Puck-like in his haplessness) can fall in love, with equal fervor, with Demetrius and Lysander. Lest things get too complicated, I could hide Hermia in a cave until Act II. It was sort of writing itself.

Which brings me to casting. As soon as I thought of The Tempest I was hearing voices. Prospero—numinous, shamanic—could only be a countertenor. Spritely Ariel, a coloratura soprano. Caliban, a bass. Sycorax, a dramatic mezzo. Miranda, a lyric soprano. At the same time, the Met was planning the season, and their wish list was remarkably congruent with my needs. David Daniels, Danielle de Niese, Luca Pisaroni, Joyce DiDonato, and Lisette Oropesa were free and interested, and I was starting to feel like a greedy kid in a candy store.

Then came Plácido Domingo. Peter invited him to join the production and asked if I could create a role for him. Could I? Thus the role of Neptune was born. And very handy he proved for plot purposes. A god (Domingo has, amazingly, never played one) can always galvanize events, and put wrongs to right. I always wanted the characters to go on a journey, and Neptune is no exception. He starts depressed and irritable—his powers are waning, his oceans polluted—but he rediscovers his mojo, as it were, and intervenes in the affairs of men. His is the climax of Act I, an astonishing Handel scena (from Tamerlano) that segues into some epic helden-Rameau.

By now music and story were informing each other. A ravishing sleep aria from Vivaldi’s Tito Manlio demanded to be included, so I wrote a sleep scene to justify it. Similarly, the artists, now cast, had music they very much wanted to sing. (Interestingly, Vivaldi was high on everyone’s list of preferences.) I was only too happy to bend the story to lead to the preferred arias. By this stage, also, missing jigsaw pieces, all dictated by the story, were being identified. I would contact our maestro, William Christie, and Yale’s Ellen Rosand (fount of knowledge on all things Baroque) and ask questions like, "Is there a fast trio for baritone, tenor, and soprano, in which the woman is impervious to male wooing?" (Yes, in Handel’s Susanna). Is there a mixed quartet that might sound like two couples waking up? (Yes again, in Vivaldi’s La Verità in Cimento.) Does anyone know a Baroque sextet? (No, so I fashioned one out of an early Handel quartet.) And so it continued…

…until the present day. Our director Phelim McDermott workshopped the piece last year, Broadway style, to see if it would stand up. It was surprisingly firm on its feet, but far from finished. Numbers were abandoned, others replaced, as I began to apply final coats of paint—to make sure that contrasting numbers flowed into each other and, most importantly, that the music should seem a symptom of the story rather than a cause. That work is, at the time of this writing, continuing. Staging necessarily has its musical implications. Each of the roles is written for the artists who are creating them, and it is a luxury to have the input of a room full of world-class talent. And to watch sets, lights, orchestra, chorus, costumes, everything, arriving at the feast.

I still feel like that greedy kid in the candy store—and I’m getting fatter daily. —Jeremy Sams

This program note was first published online and in the Met's Playbill in December 2011.

McIntosh proposes Sarmiento as source of Tempest

2011-12-27T03:44:00.000-08:00

Tasmanian Peter McIntosh, PhD, has published an article titled "Storms, Shipwrecks, and South America: from Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's Voyages to Shakespeare's The Tempest" in the journal Colonial Latin American Review, Volume 20, Issue 3, 2011. The publication was released for retrieval online Dec. 13, 2011 by the Taylor & Francis Group.

McIntosh is the author of Who Wrote Shakespeare's Sonnets (Ginninderra Press, 2011) that McIntosh says presents " . . . the evidence for Queen Elizabeth's authorship of Shakespeare's sonnets." His article for the Colonial Latin American Review proposes Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's journals as the source material for Shakespeare's The Tempest. McIntosh provided an abstract of the article for our readers:

The parallels between Shakespeare’s storm scene in The Tempest and the 1609 Bermuda shipwreck described by Sylvester Jourdain (1610), William Strachey (1610?) and by the Council of Virginia (1610) are of the general nature expected in accounts of sailing disasters, but there is little correspondence of detail, and this lack of correspondence extends to other details in the play. Historical and literary researchers, beginning with Malone in 1808 and Luce in 1901, appear to have overstated similarities between the description of the storm and the natural features of the island in the Bermuda accounts and The Tempest. There is no evidence for the circulation of the most detailed of the Bermuda accounts (Strachey’s) before 1611 and several lines of evidence, including Strachey’s own writings in 1612, indicate that his account was not written or in circulation by this date.

When the descriptions of the storm and the island in The Tempest are compared to the text of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa’s journals covering his voyages to the Strait of Magellan in the 1580s, numerous detailed parallels are evident; it is considered unlikely that these parallels have occurred by chance. There is also documentary evidence for Sarmiento’s account circulating in London in 1586, the year Sarmiento was captured and received at the English court.

Although McIntosh's candidate differs from the 1555 source proposed by Roger Stritmatter, PhD and Lynne Kositsky in their forthcoming book A Movable Feast: Sources, Chronology and Design of Shakespeare's Tempest, both assailants to Strachey disarm the standard chronology of the Stratfordians.

Personal Background: Dr Peter McIntosh has a PhD in Geology from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has worked in publishing in Holland and New Zealand and as a geologist in New Zealand and Australia and has written over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Apart from geology and Shakespeare his interests are sailing, bushwalking and social chess.

Resources:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10609164.2011.624332
http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/non-fiction.html
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/07/peter-mcintosh-who-wrote-shakespeares.html
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/aboutThisJournal?journalCode=ccla20
http://shakespearestempest.com/

Kindle options

2011-12-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare authorship researchers are beginning to embrace the publishing options available through e-publishing. Several important anti-Strat books have been recently released for Kindle and other e-readers:

http://www.amazon.com/Hamlet-Scottish-Succession-ebook/dp/B006Q3YQT6/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324856144&sr=1-7
Hamlet and the Scottish Succession by Lilian Winstanley ( edited by Mark Alexander
Publisher Text.com, Dec. 2011
$0.99

http://www.amazon.com/I-Come-Bury-Shaksper-ebook/dp/B006KAMQ10/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324937916&sr=1-1
I Come to Bury Shakespeare by Steve McClarran
Publisher Stephen Steinberg, Dec 2011
$9.99

http://www.amazon.com/Apocryphal-William-Shakespeare-Authorship-ebook/dp/B006CRCGXY/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1324938080&sr=1-1-spell
The Apocraphal William Shakespeare by Sabrina Feldman
Dog Ear Publishing, Nov. 2011 (also in paperback)
$9.99

http://store.untreedreads.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68_8_107&products_id=231
Shakespeare by Another Name, Second Edition by Mark Anderson
Publisher Untreed Reads, 2011
$7.99

http://www.archive.org/details/wheeloffire001890mbp
Wheel of Fire by G. Wilson Knight (Shakespeare interpretation - Stratfordian)
Published by Oxford University Press (1930)
FREE download for e-readers from Internet Archive

Even if you don't own a Kindle, you can read Kindle formatted books on your computer by downloading the Kindle software free from Amazon.com. Mark Anderson recommended this Dec. 26, 2011article on the blog Open Culture: the best free cultural and educational media on the web for information about using your Kindle and other e-readers.

Update 01/03/12: Hank Whittemore announced yesterday that a Kindle edition of The Monument, his book on the sonnets, is now available. Check his post at:
http://hankwhittemore.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/happy-new-year-2012-from-the-monument-and-shakesepeares-son-and-his-sonnets/

Update 01/15/12: Mark Alexander has published several out-of-print Shakespeare authorship books as well as his Shakespeare's Knowledge of Law as Kindle editions. See the list under Mark Andre Alexander's name on Amazon.

Kositsky and Stritmatter's Tempest book to be published by McFarland

2011-12-25T04:47:00.000-08:00

In a holiday present for all anti-Strats, Lynne Kositsky announced in a Christmas Eve post on her blog: McFarland accepts our book, A Movable Feast!

Kositsky and her research partner Roger Stritmatter, PhD have found a publisher for their research on dating Shakespeare's Tempest, a work titled A Movable Feast: Sources, Chronology and Design of Shakespeare’s Tempest. Kositsky said:

Contrary to longstanding belief, the play’s New World imagery is derived not from William Strachey’s account of a 1609 shipwreck in Bermuda, but from Richard Eden’s 1555 Decades of the New World. The book will include detailed point-by-point rebuttals to two newly published critiques of our work: one by Alden Vaughan (2008) in Shakespeare Quarterly and another by Tom Reedy (2010) in Review of English Studies, showing how their misplaced confidence in traditional authority has led to misinterpretations of the evidence of the date and influence of Strachey’s manuscript.

Grats, guys!

York University Shakespeare authorship conference convenes April 7, 2012 in Toronto

2011-12-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

Professor Don Rubin of the Department of Theater, York University will convene a one-day conference on the Shakespeare authorship question from 11 a.m. - 5 p.m., April 7, 2012 at York University in downtown Toronto. The event is open to the public and the cost will be modest, according to Rubin. A preliminary list of events includes:

Shakespeare By Another Name author author Mark Anderson as keynote speaker,
Keir Cutler presenting "Is Shakespeare Dead?",
a panel discussion chaired by Rubin,
and Lamberto Tassinari author of John Florio: the Man Who Was Shakespeare.
Rubin plans on including representatives from the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario and others.

The Toronto conference is the culmination of a new, one-semester, three-credit, seminar for fourth-year students offered by the York University Department of Theater titled "Shakespeare: The Authorship Question". The class begins in January 2012.

When asked about his motivation for offering a class on the Shakespeare authorship, Rubin said:

As to why we are doing this, I can only say that as an academic, as a theatre critic and as an active theatre editor, I really didn't take the authorship question seriously until I read Mark Anderson's book a few years ago. I was deeply impressed by his research and his arguments.

When I began looking into these issues on my own, I could only wonder why my own teachers never dealt with it at all. Even if one remains skeptical, the fact is that the mystery alone is certainly worthy of academic consideration. I felt that my own students deserved an opportunity to at least understand the primary positions. It took some arguing with colleagues but the course was finally approved on a one-shot basis. With a little luck, it will be offered on a regular basis in future. It will all depend on how it goes this first year. For the record, the course filled up within days of being open and I have a waiting list to get in. There's obviously interest and that's key.

For more information on the April 7, 2012 York University conference on the Shakespeare authorship question contact Professor Don Rubin at mailto:drubin@yorku.ca.

Holderness says: All this is changing.

2011-12-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

In his blog entry titled "Queering Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes" posted yesterday on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Blogging Shakespeare site, University of Hertfordshire professor Graham Holderness discussed his view of biography as revealed in his new book, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare. Holderness said:

Since there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare did in actuality enjoy and suffer a gay relationship with the Earl of Southampton, or with any other man, it seems legitimate for a fictional commentary to take the form of invention, and to operate by parallelism and contrast rather than by historical narrative. ‘The Adventure of Shakespeare’s Ring’ in Nine Lives of William Shakespeare finds Holmes and Watson, pursuing the theft of ‘Shakespeare’s ring’ from Stratford’s Birthplace Museum, drawn into the gay milieu of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and thence provoked into an acknowledgement of their own homosexual attachment . . .

Holderness' Nine Lives . . . was released December 8 by Continuum Books as part of their Shakespeare Now! series of short books that "engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays" according to the publisher. The series is edited by Ewan Fernie of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham and Simon Palfrey of the University of Oxford, UK.

In an October 27, 2011 post titled "Nine Lives of William Shakespeare" on Blogging Shakespeare, Holderness said:

It is now evident that that the supremely confident scholarship of Lee, Chambers and Schoenbaum was unconsciously shaped by a shadow: the “Shakespeare Authorship Problem” that began, from the middle of the 19^th century, to question the capacity of “the Stratford Man” to produce those works, and to attribute them to Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford, or a host of other Renaissance illuminati. Mainstream Shakespeare biography generally declined to engage with these initiatives, treating them as at best eccentric, and at worst insane. But these maverick amateur intellectuals were raising questions of great interest and importance, questions avoided by the biographical establishment – which is why so many great minds (Hawthorne, Emerson, Mark Twain, Henry James, Freud) were interested, or even persuaded, by the anti-Stratfordian case. What is the relationship between art and the artist’s life? Is drama autobiographical? Why are there gaps and inconsistencies in the Shakespeare life-story? Why is it that unlike other comparable national poets, Dante or Cervantes or Goethe, Shakespeare’s life seems somehow not to fit with his works?

All this is changing. Now a “New Biography” of Shakespeare is at last beginning to emerge, one that is prepared to address all the questions and anxieties suppressed by the mainstream biographical tradition. New evidence from archaeology is reorienting our view of Shakespeare’s Stratford life. Scholars are beginning to chart the history of Shakespeare biography, and to disclose its unconscious ideological assumptions. Since Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World, “conjecture” and “speculation” have acquired a new positive status. Critics are looking again at biographical fictions, and considering them as evidence alongside the facts.

Holderness is also the author of Shakespeare and Venice (Ashgate, 2009). In a September 6, 2011 post on Blogging Shakespeare titled "Shakespeare out of Venice" Holderness said:

I am convinced that Shakespeare never did visit Venice, but relied (as Lewes Lewkenor did) for his knowledge and opinion on books, pictures, maps, reports, rumours and conversations. But I too still like to believe that somewhere, in that enchanted land that lies between his Venetian plays, the inherited mythology of Venice, and the modern reader, there is a Shakespeare who somehow found his way there. A Shakespeare who lay back on the cushions of a gondola, rowed by a Saracen Moor, and trailed his hand in the water of the Grand Canal; who marvelled at the splendour of the palaces and the thronging business of the Rialto; who watched the Jews in their red and yellow hats hurrying in and out of the Ghetto, and marvelled at the beauty of the Jewish women; who followed music and laughter down dark and narrow passages in a city composed, like Calvino’s invisible cities, of desire and fear . . .

In a panel discussion on the topic of Shakespeare biography at the Nov. 28, 2009 conference on Shakespeare biography titled "Shakepeare: from Rowe to Shapiro" held at The Globe in London, Holderness said:

If you were to construct a biography which ticked all the boxes – if you were to read Shakespeare’s plays and infer a biography from it – it wouldn’t be Rowe’s, it would actually be the Earl of Oxford’s.

He clarified this statement in a public letter that appeared in Michael Prescott's Blog on March 5, 2010 under the title "Graham Holderness clarifies his position". In this letter, Holderness said:

My name is Graham Holderness, and my position on the Shakespeare Authorship Question is that I am interested in reasonable doubt, but not in alternative certainty."

Holderness also addressed the issue of Shakespeare's biography in the journal Critical Survey Vol 21, No. 3 Winter 2009 edition titled "Shakespeare and 'the personal story'" where he comments in the introductory article co-written with Katherine Scheil:

Shakespeare scholars since Edmund Malone have tried to construct a biography based on the historical evidence, and to explore links between the man and his works. There is of course massively more information about the latter than the former, but the two are notoriously difficult to connect.

So does the fact that Holderness is offering this viewpoint on the ultra-Stratfordian Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website represent a change in the approach to the Shakespeare authorship question? I think it does.

Oddly enough, James Shapiro, who excoriated imaginative biography in his 2010 book on the Shakespeare authorship, Contested Will, had this to say about Nine Lives . . .:

Required reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare’s life or in how literary biography gets written. There’s no better place to turn for distinguishing facts and traditions from more imaginative accounts of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. Graham Holderness is a terrific guide and a talented writer.’

Curiouser and curiouser.

***
Continuum Books re Nine Lives of William Shakespeare by Graham Holderness:

We know relatively little about Shakespeare’s life, and yet it continues to fascinate us. This new biography of Shakespeare identifies and expounds the many possible ‘lives’ that can reasonably be drawn around the basic facts, traditions and literary remains of his legacy. Graham Holderness takes a hard and fresh look at the facts, the traditions, and the possible relations between a life and the works that life created. He offers nine possible short ‘lives’ of Shakespeare, each based on specific facts and traditions, drawn from the documentary record and from biographical interpretation and each supported by a body of critical and biographical work. Each section includes a critical essay detailing the biographical facts and showing how they have been interpreted, paired with a fictional narrative based on those facts. The fictional narratives use various styles, short stories, bogus historical documents, magic-realist fables. Each engages with the key facts, traditions and interpretative consensus, and creates an imaginary space in which the dry bones of historical record can be made to live.

Nine Lives . . . Table of Contents:

Introduction \ 1. LIFE ONE: Shakespeare the Writer: Story: ‘The Shakespeare Code’\ 2. LIFE TWO: Shakespeare the Player: Memoir: ‘Master Shakespeare’s Instructions to the Actors’\ 3. LIFE THREE: Shakespeare the Businessman: Story: ‘Best for Winter’ \ 4. LIFE FOUR: Shakespeare in Love: ‘Husband, I come’: Memoir: ‘Shakespeare’s Ring: First Circle’ \ 5. LIFE FIVE: Shakespeare in Love: ‘Fair Friend’: Story: ‘The Adventure of Shakespeare’s Ring’ \ 6. LIFE SIX: Shakespeare in Love: ‘A Female Evil’: Story: ‘Full Circle’ \ 7. LIFE SEVEN: Shakespeare the Butcher Boy: Memoir: ‘Some further account of the life &c. of Mr William Shakespear’ \ 8. LIFE EIGHT: Shakespeare the Catholic: Story: ‘He dyed a papist’ \ 9. LIFE NINE: Shakespeare’s Face: Fable: ‘An Account of a Voyage to Bardolo’ \ Index

Update 12/22/11:
Read a preview of Nine Lives of William Shakespeare as described in Holderness' review of Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, on the Continuum Books blog December 2, 2011:

. . . [See] my chapter on 'Shakespeare the Writer', available from Continuum as a free preview, and the accompanying story 'The Shakespeare Code'. The chapter presents Shakespeare, from the historical record, as very much as an engaged, collaborative, participatory writer for the stage. He belongs to the boards and the streets, not the study. The story, which is specifically about 'stolen documents, secret codes, buried treasure', is just as fantastic as Anonymous, with no resemblance to any persons living or dead. But it suggests a very different view of Shakespeare's writing. It's a fable that explores these issues not literally but symbolically, as do Shakespeare's own plays. It hooks into real historical facts, but is also more concerned - as was Shakespeare himself - to think with and beyond them, than to regard them as restrictions on the liberty of the imagination.

Resources:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2010/03/graham-holderness-clarifies-his-position.html
http://www.continuumbooks.com/series/detail.aspx?SeriesId=2084
http://bloggingshakespeare.com/nine-lives-of-william-shakespearehttp://bloggingshakespeare.com/shakespeare-out-of-venice
http://bloggingshakespeare.com/queering-shakespeare-and-sherlock-holmeshttp://web-apps.herts.ac.uk/uhweb/about-us/profiles/profiles_home.cfm?profile=D9F0F25F-9A60-016B-467EB617493F060A
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/holderness-creed/
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2007/11/shakespeare-now.htmlhttp://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&title_id=8501&edition_id=11575&calcTitle=1&lang=cy-GB
http://cipg.codemantra.us/UI_TRANSACTIONS/Marketing/UI_Marketing.aspx?ID=JTNinelives2&ISBN=9781441151858&sts=b
http://continuumliterarystudies.typepad.com/continuum-literary-studie/2011/12/guest-post-graham-holderness-on-anonymous.html

Waugh currently favors anti-Strat position

2011-12-19T11:37:00.000-08:00

English author and composer Alexander Waugh named Tony Pointon's The Man Who Was Never Shakespeare (Parapress, 2011) as one of his favorite reads of 2011 in Waugh's reply to a Wall Street Journal article published December 17. With dry humor, Waugh said that he has vacillated in his response to the Shakespeare authorship controversy, and added:

Mr. Pointon's book sets out to prove that "William Shakspere" (an illiterate player and tradesman from Stratford) never wrote the poems and plays credited to the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." The book's strength is that it doesn't attempt to peddle any of Mr. Pointon's own theories as to who actually did write them. His evidence is clear and compelling. So I am currently on Mr. Pointon's side against the Stratfordians, enjoying my gullibility and looking forward to re-reversing my views many more times in the coming years.

In the article titled "Twelve Months of Reading", the WSJ asked 50 luminaries to nominate their favorite reads of 2011; Waugh -- author of The House of Wittgenstein (Doubleday, 2009) -- nominated Pointon's anti-Stratfordian book along with Sophie Ratcliffe's P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters and Tim Bonyhady's Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900.

Resources:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204466004577102800650505034.html?mod=WSJ_Books_LS_Books_8
http://www.parapress.co.uk/books/man_never_shakespeare.html

McClarran's I Come to Bury Shaksper

2011-12-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

A year ago in December 2010, when weOberons gathered for our annual holiday feast at Tom and Rosey Hunter’shouse, Tom was filled with enthusiasm for an unpublished work that he had justread, Steve McClarran’s I Come to Bury Shaksper, now available for the Kindleat Amazon.

Upon receiving McClarran’s manuscript inNovember 2010, Tom had told the author, with characteristic warmth and humor: “We will be getting together with thefamily to celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow. I have a feeling that I willbe huddled up in a corner with your book. Just hope I don't get gravy allover it. Will report back as soon as I have something substantive to sayor as soon as I think I have something substantive to say, whichever occursfirst.”

Within days, he reported to McClarran:

“I have been waiting for the let down, andit hasn't come. The book gets better and better as it goes. The probingjabs have become body blows, and I hear air whooshing out of the Stratfordianpunching bag. . . . Will try to find time to be more detailed. I just hope thatthis great work doesn't get put aside and benefit no one except now perhaps me .. . and anyone else to whom you have shown it. I hope it getspublished in some form soon because I want it to be there for me to refer to.”

When Tom told us about this work, we allwanted to read it, so we were delighted to hear that McClarran recently published his work as an eBook with Kindle.

“Putting the book on Amazon-Kindle is easyexcept for the main document upload,” McClarran said. “It's all done onthe computer. You never deal with a person. Well, actually the upload is easy,it's getting the document ready for the upload that was a challenge. I spent atleast 100 hours modifying the Word document so it would reformat properly tohtml and Kindle.”

I Come to Bury Shaksper: A Deconstruction of the Fable of the Stratfordian Shake-speare and the Supporting Scholarship bySteve McClarran was released December 9, 2011. Although our dear friend TomHunter is no longer with us, we have received the benefit of his encouragementof McClarran’s work.

McClarran describes I Come to Bury Shaksper:

This is the story of what is perhaps thegreatest failure in the annals of scholarship, of institutionalizedself-deception, vested interest, and corrupt methodology. This book is a frontal attack on the absurdfoundational assumptions and made-up facts that serve as the foundation ofShaksper’s biography ‘as Shakespeare’, in what is known as the Stratfordian Tradition, on the failureof mainstream scholars to apply the science of psychology and basic commonsense to the problems of Shakespeare’s creative development and aspirations, onthe myth of the dating of Shakespeare’s works, the so-called Standard Chronology, and the outrageous fictionthat the Stratford grammar school was a world-class center of classicallearning. This book is aimed at those who arerelatively unfamiliar with Shakespeare and the Shakespeare authorship question, but it also a challenge to thedefenders of the Stratfordian Tradition to deal with fundamental questions theyhave been avoiding for more than two centuries.

About the Author: Steve McClarran is anindependent scholar who has spent more than ten years studying the Shakespeareauthorship question. His professionalbackground is in management and organizational analysis with the US Army(Federal employee, retired). A native ofCalifornia, the author currently lives in Germany.

Note: Order I Come to Bury Shaksper to read on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android by downloading Amazon's free Kindle software.

New Podcast Series

2011-12-13T18:14:00.000-08:00

I have just learned of a very nice new website which will, in time, be a series of podcasts on different aspects of the Shakespeare Authorship Question. The site is called The Shakespeare Underground and may be reached here: theshakespeareunderground.com

The site is being put together by Jennifer Newton, who was at the recent SOS/SF Joint Authorship Conference in Washington, DC.

So far there are two podcasts available: Where There's a Will (Bonner Miller Cutting on the will of Shakspere of Stratford) and The Law in Hamlet (with Thomas Regnier).

The podcasts are basically interviews with these two well-spoken individuals by Jennifer Newton and are very well done. Bonner's interview is about one hour long and Thomas's interview is about 90 minutes.

I recommend these podcasts very highly and I will be periodically checking the site for updates and more podcasts. The site mentions an upcoming podcast with Earl Showerman on the French Court in Shakespeare, but does not mention when it will be available.

Who's reading Roe?

2011-12-13T06:56:00.000-08:00

Well, somebody's been talking about Richard Roe's Shakespeare Guide to Italy (Harper Perennial, Nov. 8, 2011) because last night (Dec. 12, 2011) on Charlie Rose, Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Michael Boyd inadvertently revealed that Roe's book was on his mind.

Boyd appeared as a guest in Rose's "Why Shakespeare?" series where he happily held forth on the nature of all things Shakespearean. During a discussion of how he chose which Shakespeare plays to direct, Rose asked Boyd if he had to be older to tackle directing King Lear and Boyd responded in the negative.

"Young people can imagine," Boyd said. "Just as an Englishman could imagine Italy in the English Renaissance."

That was it -- no other discussion of imagination or Englishmen or Italy or the Renaissance, not to mention Italian references in Shakespeare or any bedamned books about any such thing.

I cannot imagine that Boyd had read Roe's book; if he had, he might not have been so cavalier in banishing those Italian canals to the realm of pure imagination. But, it sure seemed as if he might have been talking about it.

Should you, dear reader, not be as sanguine as Boyd, you may read two new reviews of Roe's Shakespeare Guide to Italy by
William Neiderkorn in the Dec. 2011 issue of The Brooklyn Rail
John Christian Plummer in the Dec. 10 post of Mark Anderson's Shakespeare by Another Name blog
UPDATE 12/15/11: Francesca V. Mignosa in a Dec. 15, 2011 post on her eponymous blog
UPDATE 1/15/12: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/158596-THE-BOOK-SHELF-Broadway-Musical-MVPs-Funny-Girl-Sex-Drugs-Rock-n-Roll-Musicals-Wicked-and-More/pg2

And if you are so moved, order hard copy of Shakespeare Guide to Italy which is available in Kindle format from Amazon, and can also be ordered to be read on your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry or Android by downloading Amazon's free Kindle software.

Resources:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12032
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/books/beyond-the-previously-known-bard
http://shakespearebyanothername.blogspot.com/2011/12/guest-post-how-did-man-who-didnt-go-to.html
http://www.rsc.org.uk/about-us/our-work/michael-boyd-artistic-director.aspx
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/10/roes-shakespeare-guide-to-italy-out.htm

Holiday fellowship

2011-12-05T02:36:00.001-08:00

A dozen Oberon members gathered in the garden room at Hogan's restaurant on Twelve Mile last evening for our annual holiday get-together. Richard Joyrich toasted Oberons present and absent. We spoke of beads, books, grand-babies, work, travel, Anonymous, the SAC rebuttal to SBT, and where and when we will meet in the future now that the Farmington Hills Community Library is not available to us. Rosey Hunter spoke of support by friends and family and we felt the loss of our dear friend, Tom, so very much. Tom Townsend shared that he is preparing a version of his and Tom Hunter's joint paper on Romeo and Juliet -- that he delivered at the 2011 SOS/SF conference -- for a future edition of The Oxfordian. We are grateful to Tom Townsend and Richard Joyrich for making the arrangements to allow us to share fellowship on a rainy night in Michigan and we all wish our readers the joys of conviviality this holiday season.

SAC takes a chunk out of SBT

2011-11-17T06:40:00.001-08:00

The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition announced today that the SAC and twelve anti-Stratfordian groups have endorsed a rebuttal to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's "Sixty Minutes with Shakespeare" initiative launched to counter interest in the Shakespeare authorship question generated by Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous. Oberon Shakespeare Study Group vice-chair and Shakespeare Oxford Society President Richard Joyrich, MD is among the anti-Stratfordian scholars who participated in the SAC project. Joyrich authored the anti-Stratfordian rebuttal to the SBT's Question 18: What was Shakespeare's social status?, originally answered for the Stratfordians by SBT Representative Trustee from the University of London, Rene Weis:

William Shakespeare was the son of a successful yeoman glover who had served a term as mayor of Stratfordupon-Avon. Through his mother Mary Arden, Shakespeare may have been related to the ancient Arden family of Park Hall. In 1596 the Shakespeares successfully applied for a coat-of-arms, which formally gentrified the family. From now on William Shakespeare, player and London playwright, was Master Shakespeare. He was mocked for his apparent pretentiousness by his friend Ben Jonson.Shakespeare was socially ambitious, hence his purchase, a year after the coat-of-arms, of New Place, a large mansion house in Stratford. It seems that he, who was only ever a lodger in London, was keen to be lord of the manor in his home town. Throughout his life he astutely invested in land, tithes, and property; and he did not remit debts. Shakespeare’s evident concern with money and status may have its roots in his father’s long struggle with debt which confined John Shakespeare to his family home at a time when his teenage son was living there.

Doubter response by Richard Joyrich, MD:

René Weis’s assessment of “Shakespeare’s” social status (meaning the Stratford man’s) is mostly correct, except in saying he was a “London playwright.” It’s not clear he was. The problem is that the author’s social status appears very different from Shakspere’s. All but one of the plays (Merry Wives of Windsor) is set among the uppermost nobility. It’s hard to imagine how Shakspere could have understood the upper classes so well. Weis speculates about Shakspere’s father’s “long struggle with debt which confined John Shakespeare to his family home at a time when his teenage son was living there.” In fact, we do not know for sure that Shakspere and his father lived together when the former was a teen. All we have for the first 28 years of his life are a few church records. Shakspere may have been motivated by his father’s situation, but nothing supports this. If Shakspere was “socially ambitious,” and succeeded in his ambitions in London, why did he retire to Stratford at the end of his career, rather than remain in London in the company of some former social superiors who now welcomed him as their social equal? Surely that was a big come-down in status for the lead dramatist of the “King’s Men.” Why did he never own a home in London, or settle into retirement among the many high-status people who would have found it fascinating to have him as their friend? Further, why did he evidently not keep in touch with any of them, so when it came time to make out his will he remembered none of his fellow writers, or any prominent person other than his three fellow actors, not even his alleged patron the Earl of Southampton?

A complete list of rebuttals to the SBT's 60 questions can be viewed on the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition website at: https://doubtaboutwill.org/pdfs/sbt_rebuttal.pdf

Historian Dash enters the Shakespeare fray

2011-11-13T23:56:00.001-08:00

Historian Mike Dash made the case for "William Shakespeare, Gangster" on his weblog, A Blast from the Past, and on the Past Imperfect weblog of Smithsonian.com November 7, 2011. Dash discussed the dearth of historical data on William Shakespeare and, with evidence described in Leslie Hotson's 1931 book Shakespeare Versus Shallow, made a case for Shakespeare as a thug. Dash concluded:

That Will Shakespeare was somehow involved in the low-life rackets of Southwark seems, from Hotson’s evidence, reasonably certain. Whether he remained involved in them past 1597, though, it is impossible to say. He certainly combined his activities as one of Langley’s henchmen with the gentler work of writing plays, and by 1597 was able to spend £60—a large sum for the day—on purchasing the New Place, Stratford, a mansion with extensive gardens that was the second-largest house in his home town. It is tempting to speculate, however, whether the profits that paid for such an opulent residence came from Will’s writing–or from a sideline as strong-arm man to an extortionist.

Anti-Strats have long bemoaned the absence of historians from the Shakespeare authorship discussion; Dash shows in this commentary the benefits of a little non-literary light on the topic of William Shakespeare.

Anderson's SBAN now available in e-book format

2011-11-13T23:02:00.001-08:00

Journalist Mark Anderson announced on his SBAN weblog yesterday that the e-book edition of his iconic Shakespeare by Another Name (Gotham Books/Penguin Group USA, 2005) is now available on the Internet from e-publisher Untreed Reads and other bookesellers. According to Anderson's post, the new edition includes:

SBAN's cover featuring a new bust of Edward de Vere supervised by Ben August and sculpted by Paula Slater (as chronicled on this blog).
An introductory chapter called "The Argument" that succinctly encapsulates the case for Edward de Vere as "Shakespeare" and addresses arguments against the Oxfordian camp put forward in James Shapiro's recent bookContested Will.
A new images section
A new appendix addressing the recent media frenzy over the "Cobbe Portrait of Shakespeare"
A new appendix concerning the movie Anonymous and the questions it raises over the "Prince Tudor" hypotheses -- i.e. concerning claims of one or more secret heirs to the throne born to Queen (or Princess) Elizabeth
A new appendix delving in to just a few of the many treasures published in Richard Paul Roe's new magnum opus Shakespeare's Guide to Italy

Anderson's book has become the entry point for readers newly interested in the Shakespeare authorship question because of its high interest and readability.

Waugaman reviews Anonymous

2011-11-13T06:45:00.001-08:00

Georgetown University professor of psychology Richard Waugaman, MD, reviewed Rolland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous, for Roger Stritmatter's Shake-Speare's Bible weblog yesterday in an essay titled "Not unanimous on Anonymous". Waugaman's knowledge of the authorship issue, his insight into the forces contributing to the controversy, and his lucid writing style make reading his essay a necessary pleasure. Waugaman said:

Psychoanalysts are in a unique position to elucidate the psychology of literary anonymity and pseudonymity. The evidence suggests that keeping one’s authorship secret helps promote what Keat’s called Shakespeare’s “negative capability”—keeping his own identity in the background as he created hundreds of utterly convincing characters.. . .When I am told that Oxfordians are simply unable to admit they’re wrong, I point out that every Oxfordian I know started as a Stratfordian, until they looked into the matter more deeply. So it doesn’t look as though we’re the ones incapable of admitting we’re wrong. Oxfordians are told we do not know how to evaluate the historical evidence. In reality, all the recent evidence about the ubiquity of anonymity and pseudonymity in Elizabethan authorship is mostly getting ignored by the Shakespeare specialists.

Links to Waugaman's list of published articles on the topic of the Shakespeare authorship controversy are available on his weblog, The Oxfreudian, at http://www.oxfreudian.com/.

German press responds to Emmerich's Anonymous

2011-11-12T08:41:00.001-08:00

Hanno Wember of the Shake-speare Today website reports from Germany that major media in Germany has responded to Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous:

Filmrelease was Thursday [in Germany]. All major German (Austrian / Swiss) newspapers, magazines,many broadcast and TV-stations and an uncounted number of smaller mediarespond to the film [Anonymous]. Among them Frankfurter Allgemeine, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Rundschau, Die Welt, Neue Zuricher Zeitung, Financial Times Deutschland, Berliner Zeitung, Berliner Morgenpost, Der Tagespiegel, Salzburger Nachrichten, Wiener Zeitung, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Focus, Stern, SWr, NDr, RTL . . . -- many withfull-page articles, some even twice or thrice this week. During thelast week we have posted 30 links on our webpage, but this is only one third oreven less of the full number: http://shake-speare-today.de/index.57.0.1.html. The vastmajority welcomed the film, taking the authorship question seriously, only few remainedcritical, and very few hostile. “Der Tagespiegel” offered the headline “Fakespeare lebt” (Fakespeare lives) and “BILD”, the most popular tabloidnewspaper in Germany [wrote]: “Ein Historien-Thriller enträtselt das größte Geheimnis derWelt-Literatur" (A historicalthriller unraveling the greatest mystery of the world literature). http://www.bild.de/unterhaltung/kino/roland-emmerich/bild-bei-den-dreharbeiten-20784512.bild.html

Wember added that an interesting interview with Vanessa Redgrave appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau titled “Du must große Fehler machen” (You must make great mistakes.) at http://www.fr-online.de/leute/schauspielerin-vanessa-redgrave--du-musst-grosse-fehler-machen-,9548600,11136716.html. Here is a short quote translation from Wember:

Q:You have played many great Shakespeareanroles. Does it not bother youif in a film like "Anonymous" his authorship is in question?
V.R:I find this question fascinating. Even before I learned that another person might have written these plays, Iwas irritated by some points in the biography of Shakespeare….
Q:You can follow this theory, then?V.R: Ihave not read all studies on thesubject. But I have to say that the professors who insist on the authorship of William Shakespeare,are very narrowminded. And I like now even unbiased, open-minded people. A film like "Anonymous" opens up all sorts ofideas, and healso deepens ourlove for these pieces. So I find it very exiting…. (emphasis mine, HW.)

Editor's note: Click on the "ENGLISH" tab on the Shake-speare Today website for a generic translation of the page.

Interview Magazine Nov. 2011: Hilary Roe on the Bard of Verona

2011-11-09T09:59:00.000-08:00

In the November 2011 edition of Interview Magazine, Royal Young talks to Hilary Roe Metternich about her father's book The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels by John Paul Roe. The Shakespeare Guide to Italy was released this week by Harper Perennial. In the Interview article titled "Hilary Roe on the Bard of Verona", Young opens the door to Roe's life and work:

Though Richard Paul Roe passed away in 2010, in a Shakespearean twist, his daughter Hilary Roe Metternich, a Greek and Roman scholar, helped him publish it posthumously. We spoke with Hilary about her father's own complex persona, from studying chemistry to flying bombers over Naples to cracking Shakespeare, why he had his doubts, and how he set out to prove them.

Young asked Metternich about her position on the topic of the Shakespeare authorship. She replied with a laugh:

Well, of course, I am going to agree with my father. The person who wrote these plays had to have seen Italy with their own eyes. Now you've got some facts on the ground, that are going to create a little bit of trouble out there in Shakespeare land.

The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels by John Paul Roe is available in softcover and ebook formats at Amazon and other booksellers. I ordered a softcover because, having seen the privately published edition I wanted full access to the abundant and fascinating illustrations, but I may order a Kindle version, too, for ease of access to Roe's clear and engaging research and commentary.

More information, see:
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2011/10/roes-shakespeare-guide-to-italy-out.html
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2010/09/richard-paul-roe-named-oxfordian-of.html
http://oberonshakespearestudygroup.blogspot.com/2010/12/richard-paul-roe-passed-away-today-in.html

Resources:
http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/hilary-roe-richard-the-shakespeare-guide-to-italy#_
http://www.harpercollins.com/books/The-Shakespeare-Guide-to-Italy-Richard-Paul-Roe?isbn=9780062074263&HCHP=TB_The+Shakespeare+Guide+to+Italy

Joyrich invites Oberons to Nov. 10, 2011 meeting

2011-11-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Dear Oberon,

It's time for another Oberon meeting! Yes, I know that we just had one two weeks ago, but it must be so. The meeting will be this coming Thursday at the Farmington Hills Library on 12 Mile Road at 6:45 PM.

This will be the final time we will be meeting at this location (unless someone who lives or works in Farmington Hills will step up and commit to being present at EVERY meeting), so don't miss your chance to participate in a historic occasion (it will be like the last game at Tiger Stadium, well, maybe not).

Tom Townsend will be reprising the excellent presentation he did at the recent Joint Conference in Washington, DC on Romeo and Juliet. Trust me, after seeing this presentation you will never look at this play the same way again.

We will discuss our plans for meeting in the future (now that we are temporarily homeless). I will, of course, keep all of you informed of any decisions (although it would be better if you were actually THERE at the meeting to hear them).

We may also have time to discuss our recent jaunt to the Michigan International Book Fair and the opening of the movie Anonymous and recent reactions to it.

All this and more! (maybe).

Put it on your calendar RIGHT NOW. Thursday, November 10, 2011, 6:45 PM, Farmington Hills Library

See you there!

Richard Joyrich

Oberon Vice-chair

Christopher Paul's review of Beauclerk now in German

2011-11-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

Christopher Paul reports that his review of Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom by Charles Beauclerk has been translated into German by the Neue Shake-speare Gesellschaft (New Shake-speare Society) for the current edition of the NEW SHAKE-SPEARE JOURNAL: Christopher Paul, "Shakespeares verlorenes Königreich," NEUES SHAKE-SPEARE JOURNAL New Series 2 (2011), 13-31. The German-language review is available on-line in PDF format at http://shake-speare-today.de/front_content.php?idart=568.

Paul's original English version of the review was published in Brief Chronicles II (2010, Print Edition), 244-57, available on the Brief Chronicles website (http://www.briefchronicles.com/ojs/index.php/bc/index.php) at http://www.briefchronicles.com/ojs/index.php/bc/article/view/73.

From the review:

The underlying theme of Beauclerk’s book is based upon two separate Prince Tudor (PT) theories, over which Oxfordians are deeply divided. PT1 posits that the 3rd Earl of Southampton was a changeling begotten by the 17th Earl of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth. PT2 posits that Oxford was a changeling begotten by Princess Elizabeth and Lord Thomas Seymour and incorporates PT1, thereby postulating … well, you do the math. Some PT theorists only believe PT1, others PT2. Still others are adamant that neither theory is correct, and the contention has created a rift that has alienated Oxfordians into opposing camps.
. . .

It is unfortunate that, knowing his history only too well, he plays it so fast and loose. Few of his readers will be deeply knowledgeable about the Tudor era, and those not repulsed with the
premise of Oedipal incest are likely to be lured in, ignorant of the devils in the details, and readily possessed by the skillfully written (notwithstanding purple-patched) PT2 narrative.

Commentary on Beauclerk's book and Paul's review is available at:
The Elizabethan Review: http://www.elizabethanreview.com/tudor.html.

"SHAKESPEARE" BY ANOTHER NAME: http://shakespearebyanothername.blogspot.com/2011/08/anonymous-questions-did-queen-elizabeth.html.
The De Vere Society: http://www.deveresociety.co.uk/News%26Events-26.html.

SARC schedules "The Anonymous Colloquium" for January 28 & 29, 2012

2011-10-31T04:44:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre (SARC) Director Dan Wright, PhD announced that SARC and Portland Center Stage will host "The Anonymous Colloquium" on January 28 and 29, 2012 at the Gerding Theatre at the Armory in downtown Portland, Oregon. Wright said that the purpose of the colloquium is to ". . . discuss approaches to teaching the Shakespeare authorship question with the aid of [Roland Emmerich's film] Anonymous and to develop a curriculum that the SARC will publish for use in schools, colleges and universities across the USA and around the world."

Wright described the goals of the colloquium to readers of the SARC electronic mailing list:

We are going to use teacher-inspired and student-informed ideas to create options for schools, universities and lay forums to use so they can utilize [Roland Emmerich's film] Anonymous, in whole or in part, in teaching situations that are adaptable not only to audiences but to time, place and perspective as well.

Sony's corporate product* may be an option for some who want a ready-made product with application to what they assess their particular or limited needs to be, but we think that it's not the best (or should be the only choice) . . . for presenters who may be restricted by time, scope and audience and who will need alternatives that address varied situations and exigencies.

We want to see supplemental materials used in forums that allow for such variables, including the use of other films such as Shakespeare in Love and perhaps some of the forthcoming films and books that propose to supplement the attention drawn to the [Shakespeare authorship question] by Anonymous, as well as rival theories, theoreticians and candidates that do not include the Earl of Oxford as the most likely candidate for Shake-speare.

(* Note: Wright refers here to the high school and college Shakespeare authorship curricula based on Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, and developed for Sony by Young Minds Inspired educational resource.)

The cost of "The Anonymous Colloquium is $100; register online at http://www.authorshipstudies.org/conference/colloquium.cfm

Roe's Shakespeare Guide to Italy out next week

2011-10-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Richard Paul Roe's book, The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels, (Harper Collins, 2011) goes on sale November 8, 2011 at Amazon and other bookstores. The book is sold in trade paperback and ebook formats. A starred review in Library Journal said:

A fascinating look at a largely untouched aspect of Shakespeare's identity and influences. Recommended for Shakespeare enthusiasts and scholars as well as travelers looking for a new perspective, this is also particularly intriguing as a companion to specific plays.

Twenty years of meticulous research at the sites of Shakespeare plays in Italy make this posthumously published work of particular interest to those interested in the Shakespeare authorship question. According to the publisher:

Using the text from Shakespeare's ten "Italian Plays" as his only compass, Roe determined the exact locations of nearly every scene in Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado about Nothing, The Tempest, and the remaining dramas set in Italy. His chronicle of travel, analysis, and discovery paints with unprecedented clarity a picture of what the Bard must have experienced before penning his plays. Equal parts literary detective story and vivid travelogue -- containing copious annotations and more than 150 maps, photographs, and paintings -- The Shakespeare Guide to Italy is a unique, compelling, and deeply provocative journey that will forever change our understanding of how to read the Bard . . . and irrevocably alter our vision of who William Shakespeare really was.

. . .

In addition to executing a private legal practice for more than 40 years, Richard Paul Roe undertook a lifelong study of Shakespeare's Italian plays. A recipient of degrees in English literature and European history from the University of California at Berkeley, as well as a juris doctor summa cum laude from from the Southwestern University School of Law, he lived in Pasadena, California, until his death in 2010.

More information available at Harper Collins Publishers.

Chiljan introduces Shakespeare Suppressed

2011-10-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

Former Shakespeare Oxford Society trustee Katherine Chiljan will discuss her new Shakespeare authorship book, Shakespeare Suppressed: The Uncensored Truth about Shakespeare and His Works (Faire Editions, 2011) at two Contra Costa County libraries in California next week. She will appear from 6-8 p.m. November 3, 2011 at the Walnut Creek Library, and will present a slide talk at 7 p.m. November 8, 2011 at the Danville Library.

Oxfordian Hank Whittemore said in his discussion of Chiljan's book, "Shakespeare Suppressed by Katherine Chiljan -- new revelations about the Earl of Essex, King James and the Earl of Southampton", "Katherine Chiljan has written a new Oxfordian/authorship book that wipes out the Stratford man forever. I suggest it represents a new landmark book that belongs on our shelves."

More info at: http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_19216356

Wilson's Last Will . . . debuts Nov. 27, 2011 at the Globe

2011-10-30T05:53:00.001-07:00

Director Laura Wilson's anti-Stratfordian Shakespeare authorship film, Last Will., &Testament, will debut November 27, 2011 at Shakespeare's Globe in London. The Shakespearean Authorship Trust and Brunel University will host this advance screening of the documentary from First Folio Pictures, Inc., directed by SAT trustee Lisa Wilson, who consulted on the set of Roland Emmerich's 2011 Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous.
According to the SAT website:

Last Will. & Testament is a 90-minute film that explores the evolution of the authorship question since Shakespeare’s time, with particular reference to William Shakspere of Stratford and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, though other candidates are discussed. Among those defending the orthodox position are Stanley Wells and Jonathan Bate, both of whom were invited to speak at the conference. The documentary is beautifully shot and has exclusive access to footage of Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, . . .

Speakers at the event who are featured in the film include: Diana Price, author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, Professor Roger Stritmatter of Coppin State University in Baltimore, actors Sir Derek Jacobi* and Vanessa Redgrave*, the Chairman of the SAT, Mark Rylance, Dr. William Leahy, Head of the School of Arts at Brunel University, and Charles Beauclerk, author of Shakespeare’s Lost Kingdom. (* subject to availability)

Hudson replies to SBT's "Shakespeare Bites Back"

2011-10-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Dark Lady Players Director John Hudson posted a reply to yesterday's Shakespeare Birthplace Trust publication of "Shakespeare Bites Back" on his Dark Lady Players weblog. SBT Chairman Stanley Wells and education director Paul Edmondson authored the free 40-page e-publication in response to the opening of Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous.

"It's a polemical essay and is bound (we hope) to ruffle a few feathers," Edmondson said. "In this audiobook we speak together about what you might say to anyone that asks you about Shakespeare's authorship."

Hudson said, in his reply:

As a graduate of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, of which Dr. Wells used to be the director, I am disappointed by his failure to meet normal scholarly standards of argument. I am equally disappointed that the Institute’s incoming director, Dr. Paul Edmondson, has joined him in this biased polemic against free academic inquiry.

Read Hudson's complete reply to "Shakespeare Bites Back" at: http://darkladyplayers.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/reply-to-shakespeare-bites-back.pdf

BBC Essex broadcasts from Hedingham

2011-10-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

BBC Essex broadcast their morning radio show live from Castle Hedingham yesterday, the opening day of Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous. The broadcasters spent the morning ". . . asking the question, 'Was Shakespeare really an Essex man called Edward de Vere who grew up in the castle?'" Oberon readers may listen to 180 minutes of the discussion until November 3, 2011 on the BBC Essex website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00kyn44#synopsis

Castle Hedingham is also producing an Edward de Vere exhibition at the castle to run November 7, 8, 9, 2011.

Anonymous opens at selected theaters Oct. 28 in SE Michigan

2011-10-26T08:14:00.000-07:00

Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, about the Shakespeare authorship controversy will open in southeast Michigan theaters on October 28, 2011. SONY representative Stephanie Gonzales said the film will open at the following theaters:
AMC Livonia, Livonia (9:30a, 12:35p, 3:35p, 6:40 p, 9:45p)
Emagine Novi, Novi
Uptown 8, Birmingham
MJR Marketplace Sterling Heights, Sterling Heights
NCG Eastwood Cinemas, Lansing
Goodrich Quality, Ann Arbor (11a, 1:40p, 4:20p, 7p, 9:40p)

According to Moviefone Internet resource: MJR in Sterling Heights, AMC in Livonia and Emagine in Novi will screen a midnight showing of Anonymous at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Oct. 28 (just after midnight tomorrow, Thursday, night)

Gonzales said Anonymous will open next week, November 4, at local Celebration Cinemas and IMAX, Grand Rapids.

Tickets and showtimes, click here

Listing of reviews and commentary on Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous:

Update 09/10/11:
Hollywood Reporter "Anonymous: Toronto Review"
Movieline "Letter from Toronto: Even killer elite can't quite rival Emmerich's Anonymous"
Guardian "Anonymous review: The shock in this expose of the Bard is that it's rather good"
Boise Weekly "Thumbs up for Anonymous . . . "
Oregonian "Concordia University becomes hub of conflict over who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare"

Update 09/12/11:
National Post (Canada) "TIFF Press Conference Diaries: Anonymous . . ."

Update 09/13/11:
Reuters Canada "Roland Emmerich wins over critics with new film"
Sydney Morning Harold "Shakespeare fans will hate Anonymous"
Toronto Star "The young man who would be king"

Update 09/14/11:
Metro US "Joely Richardson talks Anonymous"
RealScreen "Atlantis Films, ZDF probe 'The Shakespeare Enigma'" authorship (Marlowe) documentary directed by Eike Schmitz
ReelZ ". . . new Anonymous preview clips"
The Hindu "The Real William Shakespeare" interview w/Stanley Wells
CBC "Anonymous: A must see . . ."

Update 09/16/11:
Collider "Anonymous review" Matt Goldberg
Time Out Chicago "TIFF 2011: Anonymous . . ."
Variety Reviews "Anonymous"

Update 09/19/11:
Daily Star "Roland Emmerich wins over critics with Shakespeare film"

Update 09/25/11:
London Daily Mail "Shakespeare in love (again) . . . "

Update 09/26/11:
WhatCulture! "TIFF 2011: Emmerich's Anonymous"

Update 09/30/11:
Unseen Films "Anonymous (2011) The New Yorker Film Festival 2011"

Update 10/01/11:
American Cinematographer "Anonymous shot by Anna J. Foerster . . ."

Update 10/2011
Brooklyn Rail "A Binary Star with Anonymous"

Update 10/05/11
ABC News "Annual New Yorker Fest Had a Shakespearean Twist"
USA Today "Roland Emmerich admits award is 'gutsy call'"
Wall Street Journal "Shakespeare Center Celebrates Anonymous director Roland Emmerich"
Los Angeles Times "Anonymous: Hollywood Takes on the Shakespeare Debate"
Examiner: Baltimore "Anonymous divides Shakespeare devotees"

Update 10/09/11
The Telegraph/London "Was William Shakespeare a fraud?"

Update 10/10/11
Michigan Times "Emmerich film sparks debate" (Elizabeth LeBlanc)

Update 10/13/11
On The Box "London Film Festival Interview: Artistic Director Sandra Hebron"

Update 10/14/11
ABC News "Anonymous: New Hollywood Film Shows William Shakespeare as Someone Else"

Update 10/16/11
Daily Beast/Newsweek "The Shakespeare Shakedown"

Update 10/17/11
Moviefone "Was Shakespeare a fraud? 'Anonymous' screenwriter John Orloff sure thinks so"
New York Times "Hollywood dishonors the Bard"

Update 10/18/11
The Australian "Film casts fresh doubt on Shakespeare's authenticity"

Update 10/20/11
Chicago Sun Times "Film asks: Was Shakespeare a Fraud?"
Santa Monica Daily Press "Movie review: the case for Edward de Vere"

Update 10/21/11
ConsortiumNews "Intriguing Shakespeare Author Mystery"

Update 10/22&23/11
New York Times "Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare?"
New York Times "Roland Emmerich's Anonymous seeks to unmask Shakespeare/Brush up your Shakespeare, or Whoever"
The Atlantic "The Anonymous question: Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?"
Orlando Sentinel "Where Rhys Ifans stands on the whole 'Who wrote Shakespeare's plays thing'"
BBC News "Vanessa Redgrave on 'Fakespeare' theory"
San Francisco Chronicle "Ifans takes on real bard in Anonymous" Pam Grady

Update 10/24/11
BBC America "Did Shakespeare really write his plays? A few theories examined"
IndieWIRE/The Playlist "Roland Emmerich's Anonymous still manages to destroy something -- its own authenticity"
New York Magazine "Anonymous Director Roland Emmerich on doubting Shakespeare . . . "
PRI/Studio 360 "Shakespeare by Anonymous"
Digital Spy "Anonymous -- London Film Festival 2011"

Update 10/25/11
The Guardian "Shakespeare film Anonymous has lost plot Stratford says . . ."
Huffington Post "Marshal Fine movie review: Anonymous" full text at http://hollywoodandfine.com/reviews/?p=4366
New York Observer "Anonymous gives the mystery of who wrote Shakespeare's plays a very good name"
The Telegraph "Shakespeare authorship fantacists don't understand how plays actually get written" Allan Massie

Update 10/26/11
Movie Fanatic "Anonymous exclusive: Rafe Spall spills Shakespeare's secrets"
Crave Online "Roland Emmerich on Anonymous"

Playbill "Anonymous: a movie that blows the Bard to bits"

The Independent "Shakespeare movie has lost the plot . . ."
Montreal Gazette "Kier Cutler op-ed: There is method in this madness"
USA Today "Rafe Spall relishes 'idiot Shakespeare' role in Anonymous"
Chicago Sun-Times "Anonymous (review) by Roger Ebert"
Village Voice "Much ado about very little in Anonymous"
The Guardian "Out dam'd conspiracy! Shakespeare was no fraud" Michael Dobson
Cinema Blend "Explaining the concept behind Roland Emmerich's Anonymous" Orloff interview by Katey Rich
Associated Press "Emmerich and Ifans cast doubt on Shakespeare" YouTube, interview

Update 10/27/11
New York Times "Who wrote Shakespeare's plays (letters to the editor)"
Daily Mail "Pretentious, preposterous Anonymous is a Tudor turkey"
Los Angeles Times "Roland Emmerich's Anonymous shakes up Shakespeare scholars"
New York Times "How could a commoner write such great plays?" AO Scott
Slate "Anonymous, a witless movie"
Huffington Post "Q & A with Anonymous director Roland Emmerich . . ."
Chicago Tribune "Elizabethan lit intrigue proves not that intriguing in Anonymous . . . "
New York Times "Who wrote Shakespeare, who cares?"
NPR "Anonymous -- stylish claptrap by any other name" Bob Mandello
Minneapolis Post "Anonymous and Shakespeare: Who really wrote the plays?" Susan Perry
The Guardian "Our film Anonymous asks viewers to think for themselves . . ." John Orloff
Pasadena Star News "Larry Wilson: will of any other name smell as sweet?" (re: SOS VP Colum Gilfillian)
The Guardian "Roland Emmerich: appetite for deconstruction" Damon Wise (extraordinary review/interview)
The Guardian "Anonymous: review" Peter Bradshaw
Slate "Anonymous" Dana Stevens
Huffington Post "Shakespeare authorship question" John Orloff
Associated Press "'Anonymous' Shakespeare film ruffles academic feathers" Jocelyn Noveck
Minneapolis Post "Anonymous and Shakespeare: who really wrote the plays?" Susan Perry (Mark Anderson interview)
USA Today "Who wrote Shakespeare? . . . " Maria Puente (Richard Joyrich quoted)
USA Today "Anonymous doesn't quite live up to Shakespeare's name" Claudia Puig (review)

Update 10/28/11
Globe and Mail "Anonymous, a Shakespearean whodunnit"
Las Angeles Times "Movie review: Anonymous" Betsy Sharkey
New Yorker "Shakespearean actors on the Oxfordian theory" Michael Schulman
Hollywood Reporter "How Roland Emmerich made Anonymous on a Budget" Karsten Kastelan

BBC "Anonymous: Roland Emmerich stirs up Shakespeare debate" Tim Masters
Houston Chronicle "Plenty of poetic license in Anonymous" Amy Biancolli
CNN "Anonymous claims about Shakespeare ignore history" Stanley Wells (inadvertently hilarious)
Boston Herald "Bard flick plays the fool"
Boston Globe "Anonymous movie review" Wesley Morris
Catholic Herald/UK "Anonymous should be ignored by all Shakespeare lovers" Francis Phillips
NPR KUCC/KUOR Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman guest on Patt Morrison show, podcast at http://media.scpr.org/audio/upload/2011/10/28/Shakespeare.mp3
Denver Post "Taking down Shakespeare"
Rolling Stone "Anonymous review" Peter Travers

Update 10/29/11
Stage Mom "Anonymous tales" (Michael Egan speaks at SW Shakespeare Co. fundraiser)

Update 10/31/11
Box Office Magazine "Screenwriter John Orloff . . ." Vizcarrondo (interview)
Box Office Magazine "Anonymous director Roland Emmerich" Vizcarrondo (interview)

Update 11/01/11
New University "Anonymous no longer"
Montreal Gazette "How Shakespeare could write Shakespeare" Holgar Syme (belittling the writer to make the shoe fit)

Update 11/04/11
The Guardian "Shakespeare -- a fraud? Anonymous is ridiculous" James Shapiro

Update 11/07/11
Daily Campus "A famous bard or a famous penname?"
Smithsonian "William Shakespeare - gangster" (bio of Shaxper)

Update 11/08/11
The Telegraph "Was William Shakespeare a Fraud?" (Wells/Beauclerk video debate) Zoe Dare Hall
Globe & Mail "Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?" (Globe & Mail theater critic J. Kelly Nestruck said, "And so, we must insult and belittle the Shakespeare deniers until they get embarrassed and shut the hell up.")

Ongoing: Rotten Tomatoes "Anonymous" (2011)

Kevin Gilvary named Oxfordian of the Year by SF/SOS

2011-10-25T04:24:00.000-07:00

The Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society awarded the 2011 Oxfordian of the Year Award to De Vere Society Vice-chairman Kevin Gilvary in recognition of his work in editing Dating Shakespeare's Plays (Parapress Ltd., 2010) -- a book that reviews the documentary evidence and range of arguments for establishing a date range for Shakespeare's plays.

The award was conferred jointly by the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society at their annual joint conference on October 16, 2011. SOS President Richard Joyrich, presented a plaque to Gilvary at the conference in the Washington Court Hotel, Washington DC.

In accepting the award, Gilvary paid special tribute to Christopher Dams who started the Dating Project over a decade ago with special emphasis on the use of documentary evidence, and to Eddi Jolly, Elizabeth Imlay and the late Philip Johnson for their help in editing the project. He also highlighted major contributions from researchers on both sides of the Atlantic and expressed the wish that such collaboration would long continue into the future.

Joyrich continues as SOS president

2011-10-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

Oberons in SOS leadership
Oberon co-founder Richard Joyrich, MD was elected to his second year as president of the Shakespeare Oxford Society at the society's joint conference with the Shakespeare Fellowship October 13-16 2011. Oberon member Susan Grimes Width has resigned from the SOS board, but will continue her work on the SOS by-law committee. New board members John Hamill and Robin Fox were elected to the SOS board to replace outgoing board members Susan Grimes Width and James (Jaz) Sherwood. In addition to Joyrich as president, SOS officers who were elected at the conference are Vice-president Joan Leon, Treasurer Virginia Hyde, and Membership Chairperson Stuart Green.

SF/SOS joint conference syllabus
The agenda and syllabus for the 2011 SF/SOS join conference held October 13-16, 2011 in Washington DC may be viewed online at: http://shakespearefellowship.org/news/?p=122. The syllabus contains synopses of conference presentations including those of Oberon members Barbara Burris, Ron Halstead, and Thomas Townsend who presented a joint paper prepared by Townsend and the late Oberon chairperson R. Thomas Hunter, PhD. We hope these Oberon members will present their papers to our local group in the coming year.

SF board issues statement about Anonymous
Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman announced that a statement by the SF board about Roland Emmerich's Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous, has been posted on the SF news page at: http://shakespearefellowship.org/news/?p=123.

Shakespeare authorship essay contest 2012
Bonner Cutting announced that the joint Shakespeare Fellowship/Shakespeare Oxford Society essay contest will be held in 2012, with essays submitted in 2011 included among eligible entries for the 2012 contest. The Shakespeare authorship essay contest was extended through 2012 in order to take advantage of the late release of Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous -- a key feature of the contest this year. For rules and information about the contest, see the SF news page at: http://shakespearefellowship.org/news/?p=122

Shake-speare birthplace site -- Hedingham Castle In Essex

2011-10-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hedingham Castle, built in 1140 by the first earl of Oxford Aubrey de Vere, has dipped a tentative toe in the slough of controversy that is the Shakespeare authorship question with a post yesterday on the Hedingham Castle blog titled, "Anonymous . . . that is the question?" The post begins:

With the release of the film “Anonymous” examining the theory that someone else could have written the Shakespeare plays, should in fact tourists be travelling to Hedingham Castle rather than Stratford –upon- Avon each year?

That is a very good question -- a question that up until now has gone unasked by The Hedingham Partnership, a corporation that administers the historic site. The history of Hedingham on the castle's website demurely says only this about the "courtier poet", the seventeenth earl of Oxford Edward de Vere:

In 1561 Queen Elizabeth I aged twenty-eight stayed at Hedinham from August 14 -19th, and Edward, 17th Earl, became one of her favourites and was acclaimed to be the best of the courtier poets.

While the Roland Emmerich film has given Hedingham administrators the courage to mention the ESS word, they are making no controversial claims; the blog entry concludes:

Shakespeare's work has shaped our language, education and society for the past 400 years and will continue to do so, but will we eber uncover the truth. A trip out to Hedingham Castle may well wet (sic) your taste buds for further insight into the conspiracy theory behind the works of Shakespeare.

Well, it's a beginning.

See also:"Ambient offers wider view to Shakespeare tourists"
Resource:
http://www.hedinghamcastle.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/10/anonymous-that-is-the-question/

Goodnight Sweet Prince

2011-10-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

As some of you may have heard, Tom Hunter suffered a massive cardiac event last Friday afternoon while sitting outside of his cottage on the shores of Northern Michigan's Torch Lake, considered one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.

After a (mercifully painless) hospitalization in Traverse City Tom departed this world at around 3 AM this morning.

Although our local group, Oberon, was started in 1999 by Barbara Burris and myself and Tom joined us a little later, he has become (in my opinion at least) the soul of our group. He has served as our Chair for these many years and has kept us on track and helped build Oberon into a well-respected local Oxfordian group (of course I don't want to take away from all the great efforts of many of you).

Tom's death is a great loss for Oberon, as well as for the Oxfordian world in general. Tom has been very active in doing research and has published many papers in Oxfordian newsletters and other media outlets. He has presented many papers at our national conferences. In fact he was scheduled to give half of a presentation at the upcoming conference in two weeks in Washington, DC. Luckily (for Oxfordians) Tom Townsend will be able to present both his own and Tom Hunter's parts of the presentation so that Tom's latest contribution will at least be heard. I only regret the loss of any future great work from Tom.

I can take a little comfort in the fact that Tom was able to see the movie Anonymous at a special preview event last Thursday at the University of Michigan, a movie poised to revitalize interest in the Authorship Question. Again, I'm just sorry that Tom will not be able to directly experience what I feel will be very interesting times ahead for all of us.

My heart and prayers go out to Tom's wife Rosey and his daughter Lisa as well as his large extended family.

Finally, I am comforted with the knowledge that at last Tom knows the truth about the origins of the Shakespeare canon, a truth we should (with Tom's example) continue to pursue for ourselves.

"Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing you to your rest"

Hamlet, Act V

Rest in Peace, Tom.

With great sadness,

Richard Joyrich

R. Thomas Hunter, PhD, will be laid to rest October 8, 2011.
The celebration of Tom's life will begin on Friday, October 7 from 2:00-8:00 pm with visitation at the A.J. Desmond Funeral Home, 2600 Crooks Road, in Troy, Michigan. 248-362-2500.
Services will be held on Saturday, October 8 at 11:00 am at St. Hugo of The Hills, 2215 Opdyke Rd, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. 248-644-5460.
The funeral procession will proceed to the Resurrection Cemetery 18201 Clinton River Road, Clinton Township, Michigan.
Following Tom’s farewell, there will be a luncheon at the Fern Hill Golf Course, 17600 Clinton River Road, directly across from the Resurrection Cemetery.

Please share your tribute to Tom by clicking on the word "comment" below.

Debate Emmerich live online tomorrow

2011-09-27T07:19:00.000-07:00

An "Anonymous Debate live webcast with director Roland Emmerich" was announced on the Anonymous Facebook page at:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=222178577836677.

The announcement said:"Visit our Facebook page Wednesday, 9/28 at 8:00 PM PST and participate in a LIVE debate with Anonymous director Roland Emmerich."

That's 11 p.m. here in Michigan tomorrow, Wednesday, September 28, 2011.

Update 09/28/11:
CinemaBlend says Alan Nelson will debate Emmerich, Orloff and Beauclerk on the Facebook live webcast tonight:

Sony has announced that tomorrow [Wed.] night, at 8:15pm PST [11:15 p.m. EST -- both zones are on DST], Emmerich, executive producer/writer John Orloff and historian Charles Beauclerk are going to stage a live debate against UC Berkeley Professor Alan H. Nelson, the subject being the validity of Shakespeare's work. The whole thing will be broadcast live on the movie's official Facebook page, which you can find HERE. Paired with the announcement is a new TV spot for Anonymous

Video of Emmerich/Nelson debate http://www.nowlive.com/anonymous

Oberons in DC

2011-09-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare Fellowship president Earl Showerman released the schedule for the annual joint conference of the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society October 13-16, 2001 in Washington DC. Four Oberon Shakespeare Society members will present papers to the conference on Friday, October 14.

Oberon chair R. Thomas Hunter, PhD and Oberon treasurer Thomas Townsend will present You Had to Be There: Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet. Tom Hunter said:

We explore what we can learn from this play that Stratfordians have missed when one proceeds on the basis that Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, had something to do with its writing. By means of a close examination of local detail in the play, its euphuistic language, its humanist philosophy and its connections to Edward de Vere, we discover implications for earlier dating of the play and evidence that the playwright must have had personal knowledge of Verona and northern Italy.

Oberon member Ron Halstead will present "A Miracle, a Miracle! -- Shapiro's Defense of the Stratford claim"; and Oberon co-founder Barbara Burris will present "Janssen/Cobbe Portraits".

They will be supported in D.C. by an Oberon contingent including SOS president Richard Joyrich, SOS board member Susan Grimes Width, Oberon safety officer Rosey Hunter, and Oberon members Joy Townsend and Susan Nenadic.

Emmerich brings Anonymous to Ann Arbor Sept. 29, 2011

2011-09-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Sony representative Stephanie Gonzales of Allied Integrated Marketing in Bloomfield Hills confirmed today that Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, will be screened for an audience of University of Michigan English literature and history classes at 7 p.m. September 29 at the State Theater in Ann Arbor.

Emmerich, screenwriter John Orloff, and author Charles Beauclerk will be in Ann Arbor to meet with media representatives and take part in a panel discussion after the Anonymous screening a week from today. University of Michigan associate professor Doug Trevor will also take part in the discussion.

"Sony Pictures asked if I'd serve on a panel to provide an academic perspective on the question of authorship in Shakespeare studies," Trevor said. "I thought my students might enjoy seeing the film so I agreed. . . . I look forward to seeing the film."

A contingent of 18 Oberon members will also attend, courtesy of Karie DiNardo, senior publicist at Sony Pictures Entertainment in Los Angeles.

Kurt Kreiler's Der Mann . . . now in English translation

2011-09-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

Kurt Kreiler made quite a splash in the German press two years ago when his biography of the seventeenth earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, was published as Der Mann der Shakespeare erfand (The Man who Invented Shakespeare). The Shakespeare Oxford Society News page online reported on the coverage including some translations of German reviews. (See list of links at the end of this article.) Kreiler's book is now available in English translation under the title Anonymous Shake-Speare Earl of Oxford: the Man Behind. This English translation of Kreiler's book is available in ebook format from Amazon and other outlets for $9.99.

Richard Malim of the De Vere Society reported on Nina Green's Phaeton email list that Kreiler would be on hand along with Roland Emmerich and a German academic to discuss Emmerich's film about the Shakespeare authorship, Anonymous, when it is screened on October 14, 2011 at the Frankfurt Book Fair. More information about his book is available on Kreiler's English language web page at http://www.anonymous-shakespeare.com.

SOS 2009-10 coverage of Kurt Kreiler's Der Mann . . .

http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/601/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/oxford-in-the-mirror/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/urs-jenny-in-der-spiegel/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/telegraph-reports-on-kreilers-der-mann/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/detobel-translates-krippendorff-comments/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/entire-sueddeutsche-zeitung-article-translated-on-shakespeare-today-website/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/first-negative-response-to-kreilers-der-mann/
http://shakespeareoxfordsociety.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/u-of-bamberg-sponsors-authorship-event/

Oberon meets Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011

2011-09-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

From Oberon Chair R. Thomas Hunter, PhD:

Our Oberon meeting is this coming Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Farmington Library, 32737 W. 12 Mile Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48334, usual time 7 p.m.

We will get the first exciting news about the new blockbuster Oxfordian film Anonymous from Richard Joyrich, fresh from the Concordia Conference and the first (unofficial) showing of the film. Not only did attendees see the film, they had director Roland Emmerich himself leading the discussion and meeting participants and signing autographs. Richard will render his always informed and detailed review of the conference with special attention to Anonymous.

The film has played to skeptical but generally positive reviews. Those who have seen it or even seen just the trailer and clips which have hit the internet know that the film is of high quality and will raise the discussion of authorship to the next level. It won't change any minds but will open the controversy to many who are not yet acquainted with it.

This is a meeting not to miss!

Your faithful chair,

Tom Hunter

Emmerich joins Shapiro for New Yorker Festival interview Sept. 30, 2011

2011-09-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

Actor and author Hank Whittemore reported on his Facebook page that Roland Emmerich will appear along with Contested Will author James Shapiro after a September 30 preview of Emmerich's film, Anonymous. From the New Yorker Festival site:

FRIDAY NIGHT SNEAK PREVIEW Sept. 30. 2011 at New Yorker Film Festival
“Anonymous ”
A special screening of “Anonymous,” inspired by the theory that the works of Shakespeare were written by the Earl of Oxford. After the screening, Larissa MacFarquhar will talk with the film’s director, Roland Emmerich, and the Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro.
Buy Tickets
6 P.M. Directors Guild Theatre
110 West 57th Street ($35)

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/festival/schedule/friday#ixzz1Y1f3p293

Oberon offers Anonymous tour guide

2011-09-12T12:34:00.000-07:00

Roland Emmerich’s film, Anonymous, about theShakespeare authorship controversy is due out October 28. The film trailersprawls across the Internet and movie screens, and enormous posters scream “WasShakespeare a fraud?” in theater lobbies all over the country.

On June 6, Emmerichdebated Shakespeare Birthplace Trust director Stanley Wells in London– challenging Wells’ traditional ascription of the Bard’s literary creation toa man from of Stratford-upon-Avon.

Following hard on the heels of James Shapiro’s defense ofthe status quo, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?-- publishedlast year by Scribner -- Emmerich’s star-scattered, CGI-enhanced,scandal-ridden view of the Elizabethan court promises to ruffle the inkyfeathers of traditionalists who cannot let go of a discredited icon.

If this all sounds too intriguing to ignore, but you need atour-director to guide you through labyrinthine halls filled with Stratfordianand anti-Stratfordian iconography, please allow us to shine a lantern along theechoing stone corridors of ages past.

The Oberon Shakespeare Study Group is a Michigan institutiondedicated to studying the work published under the name William Shakespeare,with particular interest in the question of authorship. Our members are highlyeducated men and women who have dedicated decades to the study of theintriguing puzzle of who wrote Shakespeare. Many have had the results of theirinquiry published and have presented at national conferences on the topic. Allrevere the work of Shakespeare and wish to learn more about the author and hismilieu.

As part of our educational outreach during thisunprecedented period of fascination with the subject of Shakespeareanauthorship, a selection of our membership is available for panel discussions,interviews, and presentations. Our co-founder Richard Joyrich has seen theEmmerich film and is available for discussion. His review of the film isavailable at "Premier of Anonymous".

Please contact us at mailto:<linda.theil@gmail.com> for moreinformation.

Schedule of events re: Roland Emmerich’s Shakespeareauthorship film, Anonymous

September 7, 2011 North American premier of RolandEmmerich’s film Anonymous at Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon (Alsopremiered at Toronto International Film Festival September 9)

September 22, 2011, 6:45 p.m. Farmington CommunityLibrary Oberon Shakespeare Study Group monthly meeting features report andreview of Anonymous premier by Oberon founder and ShakespeareOxford Society President Richard Joyrich, MD

October 13-16, 2011 Washington Court Hotel, Washington DCShakespeare Fellowship/Shakespeare Oxford Society joint annual conference http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/conference2011/

October 27, 2011 6:45 p.m. Farmington Community Library OberonShakespeare Study Group monthly meeting features reports by eight member Oberoncontingent to SF/SOS annual conference in Washington DC

October 28, 2011 Roland Emmerich film Anonymous isscheduled to open in wide release in U.S. theaters.

October 29, 2011, 2 p.m. Laurel Park Place Mall Oberonmembers discuss: "Who's 'Anonymous'? Talk about the Shakespeare authorshipquestion" at the MichiganInternational Book Festival

Plan summer 2012 England trip now

2011-09-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

Tickets go on sale October 10, 2011 for the Royal Shakespeare Company's World Shakespeare Festival to be held April 23 to September 9, 2012 as part of England's Cultural Olympiad.

In a BBC News article dated September 6, "London 2012: Shakespeare Festival leads cultural events" reporter Helen Busby wrote:

Thousands of worldwide performers, both amateur and professional, are involved in the festival. Shows, including those specially commissioned, will take place both in London and across the UK.
The RSC has collaborated in the UK with venues including the Globe, the Almeida Theatre, the Barbican, the British Museum, National Theatre, National Theatre Wales, the Roundhouse and Sage Gateshead. Some of the productions will also be online.
The Globe, on the banks of the London's River Thames, has already announced that it will present all of Shakespeare's plays, staging one production itself with the remaining 36 plays each performed in a different language by a different company from around the world.
. . .
More than 260 amateur groups, with 7,200 performers aged from six to 90, will perform their own interpretations of Shakespeare everywhere from castles, parks and village halls to pubs, churches and a coffin works.
Shakespeare Unlocked is a digital project featuring film excerpts of performances and workshops, with emphasis on 11 to 18-year-olds. It is part of a project between BBC Learning and RSC Education.The festival also has an educational element, with the BBC exploring Shakespeare's role as "chronicler of our national history and identity".

Joyrich called it!

2011-09-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

Oxford and the queen from Roland Emmerich's Anonymous

Mark Anderson, author of "Shakespeare" by Another Name, reported today on his ShakesVere Facebook page that media notice of Roland Emmerich's Anonymous (Was Shakespeare a Fraud?) is heating up with the film's debut at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.

Like Oberon's Richard Joyrich in yesterday's review here, film critic Bill Goodykoontz touted Anonymous as one of ten potential Oscar candidates at the Toronto International Film Festival this week.

"And if you want to get a jump on the Oscars race, obviously that's an option. Here are 10 movies that seem to have a pretty good chance at securing Oscar nominations in major categories," Goodykoontz said at AZ Central and other media outlets Wednesday. "Anonymous -- 'Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?' is a popular parlor-game question for English majors from way back (I know, as I was one, and I'm plenty old). Roland Emmerich's film suggests it was the Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) wielding the quill. Excellent advance buzz for this."

Rhys Ifans as Oxford joins an impressive list of leading men in new films at the festival, including including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Viggo Mortensen. And Stephen Rea on Philly.com asks, "Is Anonymous this year's The King's Speech?

Roland Emmerich was interviewed today on MTV where he commented on his film making process:

I never claimed to be a big Shakespeare scholar or anything. I've watched every movie that was made about his plays, which is a good way to get into William Shakespeare's plays, because most of the time, the plays themselves — you get the highest grade of talent and I did that. I said to myself, "I'm not a theater director." What we did was we looked for a theater director, and found one in Tamara Harvey, who's very young but has worked under Mark Rylance at [Shakespeare's Globe in London]. We had long discussions with Mark and some Shakespeare actors in London, and we tried to approach it like that. For me, it was very important to get the plays right and the work right. I wanted to glorify William Shakespeare; I didn't want to destroy him.

Anonymous will also appear at the British Film Institute London Film Festival where it will be shown October 25, 26, 27. The festival's artistic director Sandra Hebron said:

The story is a cinematic gift, replete with suspicion, snobbery, duplicity and self-advancement, and Emmerich tackles it with gusto. London is recreated as a city of extremes, from vermin-infested backstreets and dubious taverns to the splendour of the royal court, where back-stabbing, vanity and corruption span the class divide. Involved in the intrigue is an epic cast of characters, including Ben Jonson and other notable theatre figures of the period, as well as the Queen of England (Vanessa Redgrave, outstanding), her ambitious advisers and the Earl himself (Rhys Ifans, all creative yearning and camp sensibility). Whether you fall into the Oxfordian camp or don't much care, the whole is rollicking good fun, and the recreated performances at the Rose Theatre are a delight, reminding us that whoever they came from, Shakespeare's writings are a gift to us all.

Resources:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/shakesvere/?id=10150385139924529
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110909/ENT02/109090329/Oscar-hopefuls-Toronto
http://www.azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/2011/09/06/20110906toronto-film-festival-goodykoontz.html
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1670489/anonymous-movie-shakespeare.jhtml
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/onmovies/129517488.html
http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/1626

Update 09/10/11:
Hollywood Reporter "Anonymous: Toronto Review"
Movieline "Letter from Toronto: Even killer elite can't quite rival Emmerich's Anonymous"
Guardian "Anonymous review: The shock in this expose of the Bard is that it's rather good"
Boise Weekly "Thumbs up for Anonymous . . . "
Oregonian "Concordia University becomes hub of conflict over who wrote the plays of William Shakespeare"

Update 09/12/11:
National Post (Canada) "TIFF Press Conference Diaries: Anonymous . . ."

Update 09/13/11:
Reuters Canada "Roland Emmerich wins over critics with new film"
Sydney Morning Harold "Shakespeare fans will hate Anonymous"
Toronto Star "The young man who would be king"

Update 09/14/11:
Metro US "Joely Richardson talks Anonymous"
RealScreen "Atlantis Films, ZDF probe 'The Shakespeare Enigma'" authorship (Marlowe) documentary directed by Eike Schmitz
ReelZ ". . . new Anonymous preview clips"
The Hindu "The Real William Shakespeare" interview w/Stanley Wells
CBC "Anonymous: A must see . . ."

Update 09/16/11:
Collider "Anonymous review" Matt Goldberg
Time Out Chicago "TIFF 2011: Anonymous . . ."
Variety Reviews "Anonymous"

Update 09/19/11:
Daily Star "Roland Emmerich wins over critics with Shakespeare film"

Update 09/25/11:
London Daily Mail "Shakespeare in love (again) . . . "

Update 09/26/11:
WhatCulture! "TIFF 2011: Emmerich's Anonymous"

Update 09/30/11:
Unseen Films "Anonymous (2011) The New Yorker Film Festival 2011"

Update 10/01/11:
American Cinematographer "Anonymous shot by Anna J. Foerster . . ."

Update 10/2011
Brooklyn Rail "A Binary Star with Anonymous"

Update 10/05/11
ABC News "Annual New Yorker Fest Had a Shakespearean Twist"
USA Today "Roland Emmerich admits award is 'gutsy call'"
Wall Street Journal "Shakespeare Center Celebrates Anonymous director Roland Emmerich"
Los Angeles Times "Anonymous: Hollywood Takes on the Shakespeare Debate"
Examiner: Baltimore "Anonymous divides Shakespeare devotees"

Update 10/09/11
The Telegraph/London "Was William Shakespeare a fraud?"

Update 10/10/11
Michigan Times "Emmerich film sparks debate"

Update 10/13/11
On The Box "London Film Festival Interview: Artistic Director Sandra Hebron"

Update 10/14/11
ABC News "Anonymous: New Hollywood Film Shows William Shakespeare as Someone Else"

Update 10/16/11
Daily Beast/Newsweek "The Shakespeare Shakedown"

Update 10/17/11
Moviefone "Was Shakespeare a fraud? 'Anonymous' screenwriter John Orloff sure thinks so"
New York Times "Hollywood dishonors the Bard"

Update 10/18/11
The Australian "Film casts fresh doubt on Shakespeare's authenticity"

Update 10/20/11
Chicago Sun Times "Film asks: Was Shakespeare a Fraud?"
Santa Monica Daily Press "Movie review: the case for Edward de Vere"

Update 10/21/11
ConsortiumNews "Intriguing Shakespeare Author Mystery"

Update 10/22&23/11
New York Times "Wouldn't It Be Cool if Shakespeare Wasn't Shakespeare?"
New York Times "Roland Emmerich's Anonymous seeks to unmask Shakespeare/Brush up your Shakespeare, or Whoever"
The Atlantic "The Anonymous question: Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?"
Orlando Sentinel "Where Rhys Ifans stands on the whole 'Who wrote Shakespeare's plays thing'"
BBC News "Vanessa Redgrave on 'Fakespeare' theory"

Update 10/24/11
BBC America "Did Shakespeare really write his plays? A few theories examined"
IndieWIRE/The Playlist "Roland Emmerich's Anonymous still manages to destroy something -- its own authenticity"
New York Magazine "Anonymous Director Roland Emmerich on doubting Shakespeare . . . "
PRI/Studio 360 "Shakespeare by Anonymous"
Digital Spy "Anonymous -- London Film Festival 2011"

Update 10/25/11
The Guardian "Shakespeare film Anonymous has lost plot Stratford says . . ."
Huffington Post "Marshal Fine movie review: Anonymous" full text at http://hollywoodandfine.com/reviews/?p=4366
New York Observer "Anonymous gives the mystery of who wrote Shakespeare's plays a very good name"

Update 10/26/11
Movie Fanatic "Anonymous exclusive: Rafe Spall spills Shakespeare's secrets"
Crave Online "Roland Emmerich on Anonymous"

Playbill "Anonymous: a movie that blows the Bard to bits"

Ongoing: Rotten Tomatoes "Anonymous" (2011)

The Premiere of Anonymous

2011-09-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Yes it has finally happened! The movie Anonymous has had its World Premiere on Wednesday, September 7 during the 15th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon. (Actually the "official" premiere will be next Sunday at the Toronto Film Festival). I was very happy to be able to represent the Oberon Group at this auspicious occasion.

Over 200 people (some of them Conference Registrants and others Concordia students or having other associations with the University) packed the Auditorium at the Portland Art Museum.

There was an introduction of the film by the director, Roland Emmerich (yes, he was there in person) and then the movie began in front of a hushed, but excited crowd.

I will say that the movie is quite fantastic. The acting and cinematography are among the best I've seen. Can you say "Oscar material"? I can.

As we have been led to believe from prior rumors and the movie trailer (some of what is in the trailer is not actually in the move though), the movie does concentrate heavily on the Essex Rebellion and the idea that the Earl of Southampton is the bastard son of Elizabeth and Edward de Vere. There is also the idea that de Vere himself was a son of Elizabeth, but it is not given any real importance. It is almost a throwaway point near the end of the movie. There are a few surprises as well which I won't spoil for you now. The characterizations of Edward de Vere as a man with a "tortured soul" and William Shakespeare as an almost incompetent illiterate actor without much of a conscience are first-rate.

I think you will all love it. I also think that the movie will on the whole be a good thing for the Oxfordian movement. Certainly, Stratfordians will have a field day nitpicking all of the liberties that Emmerich has taken with history and "received wisdom", but they will not be able to stop people from finding this a great story and wanting to know more about it. That's where all of us come in. I hope we will be ready for it.

Yes, there are quite a few "historical inaccuracies" in the movie which were taken in order to "tell the story" (see some remarks by Emmerich later in this post). We must all realize that this movie IS a story (the movie even begins with Derek Jacobi addressing a large faceless audience in a theater and briefly recounting the "accepted" story of Shakespeare from Stratford and then saying, "But let me tell you another story, a darker story..." as the modern theater dissolves and we find ourselves in London in 1599 or thereabouts).

I'm reminded of the liberties taken with history in the movie Shakespeare in Love. But then the traditional scholars did not find much to complain about. After all, this story worked in their favor, "fleshing out" Shakespeare and offering a possible solution to the appalling lack of any personality or substance to the accepted Shakespeare of Stratford.

Anonymous is a whole different "kettle of fish". This movie, while still offering only ONE possible story about the creation of the plays written under the name of Shakespeare (or more commonly Shake-Speare), flies in the face of "received wisdom" and will be a real problem for the "Establishment". To paraphrase James Shapiro during his recent presentation in Stratford, Ontario (see prior blog entries for more information): Emmerich has been previously known as a director of disaster movies and this one (Anonymous) will also be a disaster.

After the movie was over (it's about two hours long) there was a panel discussion with Roland Emmerich, Professors Daniel Wright (English Department) and Joel Davis (History Department) of Concordia University, and Hank Whittemore (author of The Monument).

Of course, Emmerich's remarks were the most interesting. He admitted that he was drawn to make this movie because he knew it would make a great story. Only later did he realize that he was stepping into a "hot bed" of controversy among Oxfordians, not to mention the "orthodox" academics. He knows that he was playing with history, but defended it in much the same way Shakespeare would have defended his own use of history: We can only offer our own interpretation of history in order to tell the story that we want to tell. In his words, "Life is messy. Film is more organized".

Emmerich admits that he didn't know much about the Authorship Question when he began working on the movie, but he has since been "converted" to Oxfordianism (to use the religious language that has sprung up around this issue). Some of the actors in the movie (such as Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave) also admitted to Emmerich that they were now very interested in the issue while other actors "just didn't care". Of course, the movie does have Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, both already confirmed Antistratfordians.

The movie is scheduled for general release on October 28, although there may be other opportunities to see it earlier. I'm sure that everyone will want to see it as soon as possible.

By the way, that is Emmerich himself in the picture above alongside yours truly. He is signing two copies of the official theater poster for the movie which Linda Theil was able to obtain (somehow) and which I brought to Portland for this purpose.

A new chapter in our quest to more fully understand Shakespeare has begun.

Warren creates index of Oxfordian newsletter and journal articles

2011-09-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sailors in the Shakespeare authorship sloop are anindependent crew used to charting their own course, but even among thisnotoriously self-confident coterie, James Warren astounds uswith his initiative.

The Sacramento native has lived overseas for thepast 20 years, most recently in Pakistan and Vietnam, serving as a Foreign ServiceOfficer with the U.S. Department of State. When he became interested in the Shakespeare authorship mystery, he created a tool that he needed for his research. Warren explains:

Ibecame aware of the authorship issue about five years ago, and since thenfocused on acquiring and reading many books on it and Edward de Vere. Ihadn’t paid much attention to the (Shakespeare Oxford Society and ShakespeareFellowship websites. . . . However, after joining the SOS and SF earlier thisyear, in March I learned about the SOS newsletter, SF’s ShakespeareMatters, The Oxfordian, Brief Chronicles and other publications all atthe same time, and was almost overwhelmed by the wealth of information onEdward de Vere. I began the index as a way of keeping all that informationand the names of researchers clear in my mind. Nowtitled An Index to Oxfordian Newsletters and Journals, the indexcontains titles, authors, volume and page numbers, and dates of all articlesin ShakespeareMatters, Brief Chronicles, The Oxfordian and The Elizabethan Review, aswell as all articles since 1997 in The Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter andselected articles from the De Vere Society Newsletter (from alist provided by Ramon Jiménez). Italso includes all articles in the five anthologies prepared by Paul Altrocchiand Hank Whittemore.
Thefirst section of the publication contains the complete list of articles sortedthree ways – by author-title, author-date, and date.
PartII includes complete indexes of each of the above-mentioned publications.
Afinal section contains a complete list of all book and movie reviews, as wellas a list of remembrances of noted Oxfordians. [See below for completedetails.]
Iplan to hand out a limited number of copies of the current version at theAnnual Shakespeare Authorship Research Conference at Concordia University thisweek. ButI am in the process of substantially enlarging it to include back issues of theSOS newsletter and several other publications. The completed version willbe available through the New England Shakespeare Oxford Library operated byBill Boyle. More information is available at: http://www.shakespeareoxfordlibrary.org/NESOL_Fundraiser.html.

The other publications I am indexing now are: the Edward de Vere Newsletter that Nina Green produced, and the Spear-Shaker Review [edited by Stephanie J. Caruana]. I'm also adding the Shakespeare Oxford Society newslettersfrom 1965-95, and will also index the newsletter of the De Vere Society inLondon.
And yes, there will be annual updates. It's unclear at the moment if the index will be available inelectronic and/or ebook format. I had initially envisioned creating a websiteso that anyone could access it anytime, but haven't yet taught myself how to dothat. Another complication is that [Bill Boyle’s] Forever Press isinterested in publishing it in print form, and details need to be worked out,hopefully when I see folks this week at Concordia University.

Bill Boyle said:

[Jim Warren]shared his work with me earlier this summer, letting me know that I could makeuse of it in building the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR)catalog. My first reaction was "Wow!" My second reaction, since I hadjust launched a publishing operation under the name Forever Press (with mybrother's book Another Hamlet:The Mystery of Leslie Howard, by Charles Boylenow available on Amazon.com being the first book) was that this indexshould be published as soon as possible. Jim agreed. . . . The Index toOxfordian Newsletter and Journal Articles (First Edition) will be available onAmazon.com and other retail outlets in 2012.

***
Here's a list of the publications indexed in James Warren’s Index toOxfordian Newsletter and Journal Articles (First Edition) (This list does notincluding the additional materials Warren indicated in his comments that he iscurrently adding to the indexed items):

•ALTROCCHI-WHITTEMORE ANTHOLOGIES
A series of volumes devoted to Shakespeare Authorship Research, compiled andedited by Paul Hemenway Altrocchi and Hank Whittemore. More than 250 articlescovering most of the major work published during the 1930s-1960s in theoriginal Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletters and the Shakespearean AuthorshipReview.

Volume 1: The Great Shakespeare Hoax (2009)
Volume 2: Nothing Truer Than Truth (2009)
Volume 3: Shine Forth (2009)
Volume 4: My Name Be Buried (2009)
Volume 5: So Richly Spun (2009)

•BRIEF CHRONICLES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF AUTHORSHIP STUDIES
Published annually by The Shakespeare Fellowship

Volume 1 (2009)
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Tom Hunter's Reply to Rev Dr. Edmondson of Shakespeare Birthplace Trust re the Trust's Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Blog

2011-09-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

E-MAIL REPLY TO Rev Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust with regard to Rev Dr Edmondson's welcome message to the Trust's Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Theory blog

Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson
Head of Research and Knowledge
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Dear Rev. Dr. Edmondson,

I despaired of hearing back from you since it has been some time, so you might imagine how welcome your message was to me when I saw it in my in-box. I, too, look forward to working with those participating in this project by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and congratulate the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for taking this giant step forward with regard to the authorship issue. I am especially gratified to hear from the Head of Research and Knowledge of your organization since my own research has demonstrated that we are just beginning to discover Shakespeare's true genius and that further research is sure to demonstrate how much more profound--and even entertaining--is Shakespeare's work, far beyond anything we have ever imagined before.

Therefore, it is with great excitement that I have this opportunity to contribute to the understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare however modest that contribution may be.

With warmest regards,

Thomas Hunter, Ph.D.

REV DR Edmondson's message:

In a message dated 9/1/2011 7:46:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, blog@bloggingshakespeare.com writes:
Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser.

Dear Thomas Hunter, Ph.D.,

I hope that you will enjoy this chatty and lively response to the Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy Theory, and that you might like to recommend the site (Short URL -http://shksp.re/60conf) to your friends, family, colleagues, students, and e-contacts. Please tell others about the things you find interesting in the posts on Facebook, Twitter (using the hashtag #60mins), and any other social media sites you might use.

Whether you are local to Stratford or live thousands of miles away the fact that you have registered for this site means a great deal to the world-wide reputation and appreciation of Shakespeare.

Thank you for your support, and happy listening!

You might like to look out on bloggingshakespeare.com for further developments in our on-going response.

All best wishes,

Rev. Dr Paul Edmondson
Head of Research and Knowledge
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

L

Question 59: How stupid are you? SBT asks Emmerich

2011-09-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust response to Roland Emmerich's film about the Shakespeare authorship question, Anonymous, debuted today at "60 Minutes with Shakespeare" where 60 questions about the Shakespeare authorship controversy are answered in one minute soundbites by 59 Stratfordians and one by Roland Emmerich. The answers may be viewed as video, or read in manuscript.

Here is Victoria Buckley's denigration of Concordia and Brunel for daring to legitimize inquiry into the authorship question.

Question 53: Degrees are awarded to those doubting Shakespeare’s authorship at Brunel and Concordia universities. What is the intellectual justification for this?

Concordia University’s Shakespeare authorship research centre regards traditional Shakespeare scholarship as ‘an industry in denial’ and invites enthusiastic amateurs to, Horatio-like, assist in the process of ‘reporting the cause aright’ .For $125 a year anyone with an undergraduate degree can become an associate research scholar. $10,000 buys the title Life Scholar.

Brunel’s Master’s programme in Shakespeare Authorship Studies propounds the view it was the desire for a national and global icon which produced the Shakespeare industry, and argues Shakespeare was not one, but many authors. While there is certainly intellectual justification for serious enquiry into the early modern collaborative writing process, both institutions seek to disprove the research of generations of scholars, and are in danger of obfuscating long established critical approaches to the history and literary production of the period. Schoenbaum’s assertion that the Looney Oxfordian theory derives in part from a medium, channelling the disembodied voice of Shakespeare in 1942, neatly demonstrates why it deserves no place in academic Shakespearean curricula.

Emmerich's question "Why don't you think that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare?" is answered in this fashion:

I don't think that William Shakespeare of Stratford, you know, like, wrote these plays because in his will he left not one book. Lots of works by Shakespeare are like, kind of based on other material. Secondly, you know, his father was illiterate, his two daughters were too, very unlikely for a big author of this magnitude, you know, to not, like, teach his children to write and read.

There's also this fact, you know, in a way, you know, that he retired early and became a grain merchant. And there's one thing which always got me as I'm a very visual person. When you look at his eight signatures they look not the signatures of a learned man or writer, when you, like, compare them with the other signatures.

Standard journalistic practice edits meaningless words from verbal quotes, yet the producers of "60 Minutes with Shakespeare" felt comfortable representing Emmerich in all his unexpurgated glory. You've got to wonder what the trust is so afraid of, that they must stoop to ridicule.

Answers may lie in Andrew Hadfield's reply that paper was scarce as a reason why we have no material in Shakespeare's hand, or in Margaret Drabble's timeworn response to the question: "Could the plays have been written by someone who never left England?"

Shakespeare's geography was patchy. . . . He could have talked to travelers, seen paintings, read accounts, and constructed from them the lively cities we see on stage.

Yes, he could have, may have, might have; but perhaps Ms. Drabble and others will find better answers in Richard Roe's The Shakespeare Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown Travels when it is released Nov. 11, 2011 by Harper Perennial.

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has achieved the opposite of their intention by adding fuel to the authorship inquiry with their sad and unconvincing collection of tired responses to questions about the Shakespeare authorship.

Wilkinson comments on human nature

2011-08-25T03:38:00.000-07:00

London guest correspondent Heward Wilkinson comments below on the nature of the human. Wilkinson makes the point that human nature has indeed changed, but he argues that change occurred long before the nineteenth century. Linda Theil

Changes in Consciousness and Changes in Human Nature: Shapiro and the emergence of biographically slanted literature by Dr. Heward Wilkinson

In response to Linda Theil's comments on Shapiro's presentation, I think Shapiro's assumption is indeed that human nature changed around the time of Garrick's Shakespeare Festival (1769) or Boswell's Life of Johnson (1791). This is indeed problematical (though it is not wholly without merit, thinking of Romanticism!).

However, I do not think we should dismiss the idea that human nature itself changed. Leaving aside the huge theme of the emergence of consciousness from the bicameral mind around 1000 BCE [http://www.julianjaynes.org/pdf/jaynes_consciousness-voices-mind.pdf], one of the great traditional literary scholars, CS Lewis, argues that consciousness indeed changed in Provence in 11th century, with the advent of Courtly Love. This then shapes the work of such introducers of the vernacular as both Chaucer and Dante, and it leads on to Spenser and Shakespeare. That such notions are valid is suggested in relation to Shakespeare by one of the greatest, if most maverick, of Stratfordian Shakespeare critics, Harold Bloom, who notoriously writes of 'Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human' [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Invention-Human-Harold-Bloom/dp/1841150479]. And TS Eliot postulated a 'dissociation of sensibility' in the 17th Century [http://personal.centenary.edu/~dhavird/TSEMetaPoets.html]. We should be vigorously using such historical considerations in our arguments.

CS Lewis writes, in The Allegory of Love p. 4 [http://www.amazon.com/Allegory-Love-Medieval-Tradition-Paperbacks/dp/0192812203]:

French poets, in the eleventh century, discovered or invented or were the first to express, that romantic species of passion which English poets were still writing about in the nineteenth. They effected a change, which has left no corner of our ethics, our imagination, or our daily life, untouched, and they erected impassible barriers between us and the classical past, or the Oriental present. Compared with this revolution the Renaissance is a mere ripple on the surface of literature.

There can be no mistake about the novelty of romantic love: our only difficulty is to imagine in all its barrenness the mental world that existed before its coming - to wipe out of our minds, for a moment, nearly all that makes the food both of modern sentimentality and modern cynicism.

There is much more in the same vein. Nietzsche took this for granted, and accounted for it (in, if I recall, The Genealogy of Morals), as indeed Lewis does, by the influence of, and reaction against, Christian ideals of devotion to God. Hegel makes a parallel argument in The Phenomenology of Spirit. That 'biographical' interpretation of fictional work is part of this is engagingly illustrated by Spenser himself in his poem to Oxford at the beginning of The Fairie Queene! Flattery or no flattery, it means the concept was as familiar as cliche to the Elizabethans!

REceiue most Noble Lord in gentle gree,

The vnripe fruit of an vnready wit:

Which by thy countenaunce doth craue to bee

Defended from foule Enuies poisnous bit.

Which so to doe may thee right well befit,

Sith th'antique glory of thine auncestry

Vnder a shady vele is therein writ,

And eke thine owne long liuing memory,

Succeeding them in true nobility:

And also for the loue, which thou doest beare

To th'Heliconian ymps, and they to thee,

They vnto thee, and thou to them most deare:

Deare as thou art unto thy selfe, so loue

That loues & honours thee, as doth behoue.

[https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/784/faeriequeene.pdf?sequence=1]

I am not convinced of Shapiro as a closet subversive of Stratfordism. Rather, I believe he really is as a-historical and uncritical as he seems to be. The degree of his scholarly slipshodness he evinces has been commented upon by many, like Roger Stritmatter [http://shake-speares-bible.com/2010/04/18/james-shapiro-and-the-notorious-hyphen/] and Richard Waugamann [http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A225SESW3OPTJS/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp].

For me, the crashing contradiction which hits one between the eyes [http://hewardwilkinson.co.uk/2010/04/] is his use of the same Shakespearean example, Theseus's speech at the beginning of Act 5 of Midsummer's Night's Dream, to illustrate simultaneously (!),

A. Shakespeare's repudiation of any attribution of true biographical meaning in poetic writing (in favour of 'imagination'),

B. Shapiro's actual attribution of Theseus' very positivistic views (which are congruent with Theseus' contextual role in the play) to Shakespeare himself,

i.e., not only is he prepared to break his own rule at the very climax of his book, but he does it at the very instant he is propounding the rule!

It is a wonderful illustration of the paradox of the liar, and that Shapiro seems not to be in the least aware of it, either means he is a completely conscienceless journalist politician and rhetorician (IF he is aware of it), OR so unscholarly that it is actually breathtaking. I lean to the latter, and accordingly believe he does believe his own position, and that it is academic incompetence that keeps him from noticing the problems.

This would also go with his a-historical mentality, and short-term positivistic populism, which makes his supposed insight into the historical character and development of biographically slanted fictional writing and theatre seem like a revelation to him, overturning his own VERY recent forays into 'biographical' interpretation [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/oct/27/biography.classics].

Dr. Heward Wilkinson
Hon. Fellow of UKCP
UKCP Registered Integrative Psychotherapist

Shapiro spoke at Stratford Shakespeare Festival August 13, 2011

2011-08-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

As Tom Hunter said in his August 17 post here, a group of anti-Stratfordiansattended Contested Will author James Shapiro’s lecture at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival on August 13, 2011. Oberon members Tom Hunter, RichardJoyrich, Sue Width, Tom and Joy Townsend, and I were joined by Lynne Kositsky,her husband Michael, and Roger Stritmatter to swell the ranks of approximately220 spectators at The Studio Theater in downtown Stratford, Ontario.

Shapiro appeared scruffy chic in his bagged-out black T-shirt,wrinkled gray jacket, jeans, and black oxfords. His tossled hair was cut longon the top in the manner of mid-life men everywhere. A slim, good-looking manwith an engaging manner and a gentle, raspy voice, Shapiro charmed the audienceas he praised the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

“This is an extraordinary place,” he said. “I've never been herebefore and I'll be back as a theater-goer. You're all fortunate."

He read expressively from a prepared manuscript, stopping oftenfor audience laughter at jokes lampooning anti-Stratfordians. The laughter wascued by Shapiro’s use of a particularly dry delivery, and the audience was soresponsive to this command that I began to wonder if they knew what they werelaughing at.

One of the more hilarious jokes went something like this:

“If I were rather hard pressed by an Oxfordian, I wouldsay we know Oxford was a contemptible person who was accused of having sex witha horse. Should we go back to the play where he says ‘My kingdom for a horse?’”

Another joke had to do with the subversive nature ofauthorship research and the dangers of Roland Emmerich’s forthcoming film onthe topic, Anonymous.

“Roland Emmerich is one of the great and most popularfilmmakers . . . (his film) is a major, $40-million, Hollywood production inwhich Queen Elizabeth was not a virgin queen and her son was her lover. It’s adifferent kind of disaster film, for every teacher in North America -- ‘Youdidn’t tell me Queen Elizabeth was a ‘ho!’”

Ican’t help but wonder if Shapiro is the real subversive. Although he seemstotally committed to the Stratfordian attribution and thoroughly disdainful ofauthorship inquiry, the professor wrote the book that opened the academic gates on atopic that has traditionally been taboo. And he excoriates Stratfordians – In Ontario namingStephen Greenblatt, Michael Wood and Germain Greer, specifically – fortarting up biographies of Shakespeare with historically unsupportedspeculation.

“This has been a blessing for those who deny Shakespeare‘s authorship,” Shapiro said.“If you dismiss claims related to Shakespeare’s life in the works, then the(anti-Stratfordian) argument collapses because there IS NO OTHER proof.”

In this, Shapiro makes the mistake of assuming thatanti-Stratfordians have been convinced by similarities between de Vere’s life(to use one example) and the contents of the plays. I’m guessing that Shapirobelieves this because he may feel that this “evidence” is a powerfulpersuader. He doesn’t realize that this “biographical” similarity provides onlya fillip of interest when compared to the deep historical study that comprisesShakespeare authorship research. He seems to think that if he can getStratfordians to stop making things up, the authorship question will evaporate.

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust director Stanley Wells came in for a bit of Shapiro's criticism when an audience member asked about the Cobb portramal" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">

“Those mainstream Shakespeareans who did that had a wrongheaded notion”, Shapiro said. "That kind of identification of Polonius with Burghley is nonsense."

When a gentleman in the audience described Shapiro’s criticism of Greenblatt as “unsettling”, Shapiro replied:

“Greenblatt invents material that has no historical validity. When you say ‘This possibly is so.’ you’ve crossed a line – a line that leads to Roland Emmerich. It’s the same speculative strategy. It has enabled the kind of work that Emmerich has created. . . . When you mingle speculative items with facts in a biography, it is dangerous. What’s dangerous about Greenblatt and Emmerich is they tell great stories.”

Roger Stritmatter asked Shapiro, “If biography was an invention of the nineteenth century, what was Ovid’s Tristia all about?”

And Shapiro replied,“As far as we know, we don’t know the relationship between the writing and life.”

And yet, previously, in his talk Shapiro had said:

“When you write Shakespeare biography, you end up writing autobiography and I’m as guilty as the next one.”

I found this statement remarkable coming from a man who insists that Shakespeare did not put his life in his work. Does Shapiro believe that human nature altered between the time Shakespeare put pen to paper and the professor opened his laptop? To me this statement indicates that Shapiro understands very well the impossibility of removing the worker from the work – and that fact of life has nothing to do with biography emerging in the eighteenth century as a publishing phenomenon, as Shapiro contends in Contested Will.

When an audience member requested acourse of study, Shapiro said, “I never took a course in Shakespeare. I went tosee the plays and that’s what you should do, too. Study Shakespeare. You don’twaste your time on my books.”

WhatI take away from Shapiro’s talk is that, more than most Stratfordians, Shapirounderstands what a hole they have dug for themselves; and I think he wishes, like most ofthem, that the authorship question would just all go away.

UPDATE
Aug. 26, 2011: James Shapiro will discuss Roland Emmerich's film Anonymous after a screening of the film at the by New Yorker Festival, Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 2011.

Tom Hunter announces Oberon meeting August 25

2011-08-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Oberon,

Come to meetin' this Thursday, August 25, usual time 7 p.m. at the usual place, the Farmington Library on 12 Mile Rd.

We will hear updates on the latest Anonymous film developments, including a possible screening locally thanks to the efforts of Ray Perez and Linda Theil.

We will also hear the latest about James Shapiro who appeared at the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival this past Saturday. Some of the details are not to be believed, but we have eye witnesses who heard and saw it all.

Also, our discussion of The Merchant of Venice will be driving toward a conclusion, including the solution to one of the most bothersome mysteries presented by the play to audiences for 400 years. Plus we will take a look at a part of the play that has been omitted by past productions due to lack of understanding of its key importance and its essential role in conveying the purpose of the play.

So again the plate is full. See you Thursday!

Your Oberon chair,

Tom Hunter, PhD

New Anonymous trailer assuages fears of double incest plotline

2011-08-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

A new Anonymous trailer has been released and is up on Facebook. Rob Frappier at the online movie site ScreenRant reported the release of the "international" trailer in an article titled "Anonymous international trailer"
on August 16, 2011. Frappier said:

If you love the works of Shakespeare, would you still love them if you learned that Shakespeare himself was a fraud? That's just one of the questions director Roland Emmerich is tackling in his new film, Anonymous, an interesting period drama which unravels the conspiracy behind who really wrote Shakespeare's greatest works.

Mark Anderson comments about this new trailer on his Facebook page, Fans of the Book: Shakespeare by Another Name:

For the record, John Orloff -- ANONYMOUS's screenwriter -- recently emailed to say that the movie has Rober Cecil tell Oxford that Oxford is the son of the queen. But even Oxford doesn't believe it! So initial worries about the movie's portrayal of some sort of incest storyline appear to have been overblown. Beyond that, I can only say what I've seen in the trailers released to the public so far. I've reprinted what John emailed me (with his permission) at the link: Anonymous questions: did Queen Elizabeth have children? BTW, he (Orloff) didn't deny the Southampton as secret royal heir storyline. And the above trailer certainly suggests it, too. But Oxford and Southampton as both royal heirs . . . that one appears to have been a bridge too far even for Mr. Emmerich.

Sources:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/158493889528/?view=permalink&id=10150361592119529
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI6BkhOXi0E
http://screenrant.com/anonymous-trailer-international-robf-128314/
http://shakespearebyanothername.blogspot.com/2011/08/anonymous-questions-did-queen-elizabeth.html

Shapiro at Stratford

2011-08-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

James Shapiro appeared at the Stratford Festival in Canada this past Saturday morning to a packed Studio Theater. His message was the very same message he gave to a packed house for his Folger talk in April, 2010. The problem with the message is that it is full of error and misleading statements about Oxfordians and the work we are doing.

Even worse than that, it became clear Saturday that Shapiro is interested in nothing less than the dumbing down of Shakespeare. He encouraged his audience to read the plays and to ignore the centuries of scholarship and research which have brought great insight into those plays. For example, in maintaining steadfastly that there are absolutely no allusions in Shakespeare, he denied the work of scholars, traditional and Oxfordian alike, who have determined six specific references in Hamlet that, taken together, demonstrate that the character Polonius is a fictional representation of Lord Burghley.

Instead of embracing the work Oxfordians are doing which demonstrates greater genius by the writer than he or other Stratfordians could ever imagine, he ridiculed them for daring to question traditional assumptions about Shakespeare. With this kind of thinking, Stratfordians will do themselves in without any help from Oxfordians or anybody else.

The Stratford Beacon Herald reported on the event in an article “Shakespeare Authorship Debate Rages On.” To its credit the Beacon Herald did attempt to give voice to Oxfordians by quoting Dr. Roger Stritmatter who attended the Shapiro event. The following letter to the editor responds to that article.

Tom Hunter

To the Editor:

Thank you for reporting Dr. James Shapiro's presentation at Stratford on Saturday about the identity of the true author of works attributed to the glover's son from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Contrary to your headline, there was no debate. Dr. Shapiro does not allow debate or even statement by those who disagree with Dr. Shapiro. He told us so in his opening remarks. Also, the Festival has declined our requests for equal time. The reasoning, of course, is that to doubt the authorship of the man from Stratford is to believe in conspiracy theories and suffer psychological deficiency. I suppose that makes us similar to those who believed the earth actually orbited the sun.

In the mean time, Dr. Shapiro continues to ridicule us and to spread misinformation about us. He has no idea of the incomparable and profound achievement of Shakespeare's work. Traditional scholars like to refer to Shakespeare's genius, but until they throw off the restrictions imposed by the biography upon which they insist, they will have no idea of how great a genius Shakespeare really was.

Thomas Hunter, Ph.D.

New Anonymous film trailer posted on YouTube

2011-08-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

A second film trailer for Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous, was posted on YouTube August 5, 2011. Emmerich's historical thriller about the Shakespeare authorship controversy is scheduled for wide-release in the U.S. October 28, 2011. A preview will be screened on Sept. 7, 2011 in downtown Portland, Oregon as part of the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre's annual conference September 6-9, 2011. Anonymous will also be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival to be held September 8-18, 2011.

Emmerich's film has Stratfordians aflutter, fearing examination of the traditional attribution of Shakespeare's plays may damage the brand. Instead of welcoming interest in Shakespeare's life and times, they are boarding up the windows against a flood of inquiry. The previously taboo topic of Shakespeare authorship is now allowed in the hallowed halls of Stratford-on-Avon so that a rear guard action against apostasy can be mounted. Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said in an August 2, 2011 blog post , "Our concern is that the new film will stir up the questions again."

. . . So, we are hosting an Authorship Campaign which will continue to make clear the case for Shakespeare of Stratford. One part of our response will be 60 Minutes with Shakespeare: 60 scholars, 60 questions, 60 seconds each. This will be freely available to all from September, and should be a good resource for students, teachers, theatre practitioners, and all who love Shakespeare. You can register for it now in advance; just follow this link. Please tell your family and friends about it. Editing 60 Minutes with Shakespeare is taking up most of my time just now and the project will feature some very special contributors. So, watch this space…
And, there are also the three speeches the Stanley Wells, Michael Dobson, and I gave at a debate at The English-Speaking Union on 6 June posted on this blog in June to refer to as well. We spoke up for Shakespeare against Charles Beauclerk (a descendent of the Earl of Oxford), William Leahy (Brunel University), and Roland Emmerich himself. Or, you can watch the debate here.
As many of you will already know, William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, a glover’s son, formed by a grammar school education, with a strong imagination, a sense for the musicality of language, and who knew what it is to act, won the debate.

The head of research and knowledge made up the part about the grammar school education and is only guessing the Stratford man had an imagination or artistic ability because there's not a scrap of evidence to support his claims. Oh, well, anything to keep "the questions" from being stirred up!

Resources:
"Anonymous trailer: a history lesson from Roldand Emmerich" http://screenrant.com/anonymous-full-trailer-sandy-126980/
"New trailer for Roland Emmerich's Anonymous" http://www.reelzchannel.com/movie-news/11353/new-trailer-for-roland-emmerichs-anonymous/

Tom Hunter invites you to Oberon meeting next Thursday, July 28, 2011

2011-07-24T10:33:00.000-07:00

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, Sept. 22, Oct. 27.