Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Yesterday, Oberon member Susan Nenadic  reported this encounter in Ann Arbor: A woman who had taken my Shakespeare Authorship Controversy class came to the program I presented today and handed me a note indicating that the Petit Larousse from a 1965 biographical entry of Shakespeare calls into doubt the authorship by Stratford Will. I Wonder how many other foreign language sources do the same thing. Oberon member Rey Perez followed up with this information from the 2001 edition of Larouse : The online Larousse dictionary of literature, 2001 edition, in the entry “Shakespeare (William)” from its first sentence begins by expressing doubts about the traditional authorship, then continues with the bare facts about Shakespeare from  Stratford . The key sentence is the second, that some have seen in him a pseudonym for others, such as  Oxford . The French seem way ahead of the rest of us. Rey provided this link to the dictionary item on William Shakespeare: http://...

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 r...