Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

by Richard Joyrich As a member of the Folio Society (an organization that prints and sells very beautiful, although expensive, editions of classic works of literature, history, fiction, science, and just about everything else) I get a free subscription to their semiannual magazine, which is simply called folio . This magazine contains very short articles about literary matters of all kinds. I just received the September 2014 edition and it has a short article by Professor Stanley Wells, titled “Shakespeare: A Lover of Books”. In this article Professor Wells discusses briefly how Shakespeare (by whom he of course means William Shakspere of Stratford) loved and read many books and used them as inspiration for his plays. Wells mentions many books that Shakespeare must have read and says that many of them were published before Shakespeare began writing his plays. These include Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562), Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1...

We happy few prior to Wells' event Aug. 16, 2013 in Stratford, Ontario: George and Sharon Hunter, Tom and Joy Townsend, Pam Verlone (hidden), Rosey Hunter, Richard Joyrich, Rey Perez, Linda Theil By Linda Theil Several members of the Oberon Shakespeare Study Group visited Stratford, Ontario this weekend to hear Shakespeare Birthplace Trust life trustee and former chairman Stanley Wells give a talk at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival on August 16, 2013. We found Wells a masterful speaker. A fine-looking man, with a shock of white hair and emphatic white brows, tie-less in a grey suit and wearing his signature pink dress shirt with flesh-colored stockings and oxfords, he read from a superb, prepared text on “Sex and Love in Verona, Venice and Vienna”. In the question and answer session post-presentation, therefore, it came as a shock to hear this elegant, accomplished gentleman lead the audience in jeering laughter against those, like my friends and I who questi...

After mopping the floor with Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s “Proving Shakespeare” web-based seminar lastweek , Marlovian Ros Barber has emerged as a passionate and compelling advocate for the anti-Stratfordian viewpoint. The May 1, 2013 seminar was held to celebrate the launch of the Trust’s refinement of the Stratfordian viewpoint, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt , that will be published by Cambridge University Press this month. The book is part of the trust’s ongoing response to Roland Emmerich’s 2010 anti-Stratfordian film, Anonymous – a response that began with their online “Sixty Minutes with Shakespeare” one-minute refutations of various complaints against the attribution of Shakespeare’s works to the man from Stratford. At the online seminar, Barber appeared to astound Wells and Edmondson with her articulate defense of the anti-Stratfordian position. Although she authored The Marlowe Papers -- due out May 24 by Sceptre --  a fictio...

While the public waits for Sony to approve release of “ The Shakespeare Authorship Debate with Roland Emmerich”  video recorded live at the  English-Speaking Union (ESU) in London   on June 6, 2011, interested readers may read  Stanley Wells’  and  Paul Edmondson’s  debate speeches on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s site, Blogging Shakespeare. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust   chairman Professor Stanley Wells CBE and trust education director Rev. Dr. Paul Edmondson along with University of London professor  Michael Dobson formed the Stratfordian triumvirate at the ESU debate.  Anonymous  director Roland Emmerich, author Charles Beauclerk, and Dr. William Leahy who is head of the English Dept. at Brunel University where he runs the graduate program in Shakespeare authorship studies defended the anti-Stratfordian position.  The debate chairman was former head of speech and debate at ESU, James Probert, who  c...

The Shakespeare Authorship Debate with Roland Emmerich at the English-Speaking Union (ESU) in London will be streamed live on the ESU website   beginning at 7:30 p.m. tonight, according to ESU events manager, Susan Conway. (2:30 p.m. EST, DST in USA) Conway said 120 people will be in attendance and 20 names are on a waiting list for the program featuring Anonymous director Roland Emmerich, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust chairman Stanley Wells, trust education director Paul Edmondson, and Brunel University School of Arts head William Leahy  who will debate the Shakespeare Authorship question. According to the ESU website the motion for debate is: "This House Believes that William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon wrote the plays and poems attributed to him." The event is being held in conjunction with Sony Pictures, the ESU and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust at the ESU headquarters at Dartmouth House in London, UK. The event will begin with a reception at 7 p.m. ...

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust posted comments today that Chairman Stanley Wells made at the trust's Shakespeare birthday lunch this year. In the last paragraph of his speech (below) Wells mentioned the Stratfordian's imaginary education in rhetoric and classical literature that "lies behind the texts that he wrote". Wells assures us that Shakespeare developed his creative powers in Stratford and demands, "Let no one be in doubt of this." If only it were that simple, Professor Wells. Ladies and gentlemen, Stratford-upon-Avon is the town that gave birth to William Shakespeare. At our grammar school he received the rigorous education in, especially, classical literature and rhetoric that lies behind the texts that he wrote. In this town and its surrounding countryside his creative powers developed. Here in Henley Street and in New Place his family lived, in Holy Trinity Church he and they worshipped and are buried. Let no one be in doubt of this. There is, ...

Waiting for William:  After four centuries, we may finally be seeing history's greatest writer for the first time By Sally Jenkins Washington Post, August 30, 2009 (with slideshow)  Writer Sally Jenkins will be taking questions about this Cobbe portrait story on Monday, August 31 at 12 noon.  Click here  to submit comments or questions before or during the discussion. *** This credulous article by Sally Jenkins is as much about authorship as the Cobbe portrait. She immediately -- in the second paragraph -- points out that Stanley Well’s favored Cobbe portrait of Shakespeare brings the authorship into question, but she dismisses an aristocratic connection with a flip of the wrist. “The fellow is clearly no earl -- he lacks the arrogant jaw -- but he's someone. Maybe too much of a someone to be a mere playwright.”  As if weak chins or arrogant jaws -- whatever they may be -- never occurred in the noble English genome. She then goes on to describe how v...