Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

by Linda Theil Matt Wyneken enjoyed breakfast at Features restaurant on Ontario St. in downtown Stratford before 10:30 a.m. "Authorship Appeal" moot court. A contingent of Oberons hit the road again this weekend to attend the "Authorship Appeal" moot court sponsored by the Stratford Festival in Ontario as part of its annual Forum series. Ron Halstead stands outside the Festival Theater in Stratford, Ontario before attending the October 4, 2014 "Authorship Appeal" moot court. Matt Wyneken, Ron Halstead and I attended the event held in the Festival Theatre on October 4 where we watched litigator Guy Pratte contend against the Stratfordian attribution of the Shakespeare canon before the Right Honorable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. We met-up with old friends Lynne and Michael Kositsky.  Lynne Kositsky shared the news that she has two new young adult books out: With Fearful Bravery and The Plagues of...

Film maker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan presented on the topic of Oxford's homosexuality. "I believe Oxfords sexuality is a primary reason for his pseudonym," she said. She will debut her film Nothing Is Truer than the Truth in Boston in November. New York actor and author Hank Whittemore spoke about Oxford as the guiding force behind the three most important acting companies of Elizabeth's reign. Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter sign their new book On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Journalist Mark Anderson gave the keynote address on "Shakespeare, Newton and Einstein: Listening to the Obsession of Genius". Shelly Maycock made her debut appearance at the conference with a paper on "Essex, Oxford, and the Concept of Popularity in Late Elizabethan Discourse". SOS/SF Unification vote: During the SOS annual meeting this morning, Vote Teller Frank Davis announced a total of  l38 ballots ...

By Richard Joyrich I have just become aware (courtesy of Cheryl Eagan-Donovan's Shakepeare News [Controversy Films] e-mailing) that the new book by Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky is now available for advance ordering on Amazon. It is scheduled to be published July 15 by McFarland Press. The book is titled:  On the Dates, Sources and Design of Shakespeare's The Tempest On Cheryl's announcement e-mail Roger and Lynne write: This book challenges a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in Shakespearean studies that The Tempest long supposed to be Shakespeares last play was not written until 1611. In the course of investigating this proposition, which has rarely been questioned and has not received the critical inquiry it deserves, a number of subsidiary and closely related interpretative puzzles have come sharply into focus. These include the plays sources of New World imagery; its festival symbolism and structure; its relationship to Wi...

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 Vir...

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! ...

Lynne and Michael Kositsky at Swiss Chalet in Stratford, Ontario Oberoners Tom and Rosey Hunter, Tom and Joy Townsend, Richard Joyrich and Linda Theil met Minerva's Voyage author Lynne Kositsky and her charming husband Michael for lunch at the Swiss Chalet in Stratford, Ontario yesterday. We all wished Lynne a happy birthday and many happy returns of the day as she blew out the candles on her chocolate cake. After lunch Oberons attended the Stratford Shakespeare Festival matinee performance of  Two Gentlemen of Verona, then   joined Lynne and Michael for dinner at Demetre's where we polished off Lynne's cake, and fulfilled all our wishes at a magnificent production of The   Winter's Tale  directed by Marti Maraden  -- whom Richard says is the only person who really knows how to direct Shakespeare. If you are able to make your way to Ontario, we highly recommend this production that runs until September 25, 2010. Staging, costumes, casting -- th...

Lynne Kositsky asked us to share this information about the Shakespeare Fellowship newsletter, Shakespeare Matters : Thanks to Roger Stritmatter and Marty Hyatt, all issues of Shakespeare Matters from Fall 2001 to Winter 2009 are now available free online. To access them, click on Shakespeare Matters at www.shakespearefellowship.org . Our four most recent issues are available only to subscribers.

Oberon Canadian correspondent and Shakespeare authorship expert Lynne Kositsky sends us this update on f ormer  New York Times  editor William S. Niederkorn's   review of James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?,  "Absolute Will"  in the April 2010 edition of  The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics and Culture . Kositsky says: The truth is getting out! William Niederkorn's review of Shapiro's book has received another, and bigger, boost. It has been posted by Critical Mass, the Blog of the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors, as an NBCC Featured Review: William S. Niederkorn on Contested Will by James Shapiro. This news has been picked up and relayed by a number of other book news observers. Here are the ones I've noticed so far: http://content.usatoday.com/ topics/article/People/ Politicians,+Government+ Officials,+Strategists/U.S.+ Representatives/John+Hall/ 0ekE6Lk1tDcdA/1 http://book-reviews.ma...