Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

by Richard Joyrich I hope you have all marked your calendars for the upcoming Joint SOS/SF Conference being held October 17-20, 2013 at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto. See the earlier post on this (June 3, 2013) for hotel and registration information or check the websites. New details on the conference events are now available (keep checking the websites for the Shakespeare Oxford Society ( www.shakespeare-oxford.com ) and the Shakespeare Fellowship ( www.shakespearefellowship.org ) for continued updates. The conference will include an open public debate on the Authorship Question. Roger Stritmatter and Bonner Cutting have been tapped for the Oxfordian (or at least anti-Stratfordian) side, but no one has been found yet to support the Stratford man. There will be an opportunity to travel to the world-renowned Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario (about 2 hour bus ride from Toronto) on Friday to see The Merchant of Venice and meet with the director of the produc...

by Richard Joyrich As you know, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) has come out with their new book, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt , which they believe will settle this whole Authorship Question once and for all. They couldn't be more wrong! Tom Regnier, current President of the Shakespeare Fellowship, has written a remarkable review of this new book. His review will be published in the next issue of Shakespeare Matters (the quarterly Shakespeare Fellowship newsletter), but you can read it here . You can believe that the discussion will continue to go on. The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) has already published a book in response to Shakespeare Beyond Doubt , called Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? (the similarity in title is of course intentional). See previous posts on this blog for more information on this. I will just say here that the SAC book actually has the evidence and argument that the SBT's book completely lacks (despite its subtitle: Evidence, Argument, Con...

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...

by Linda Theil I received Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial (Llumina Press, May 23, 2013)  edited by Shakespeare Authorship Coalition director John Shahan and  Alaxander Waugh from Amazon today. My initial examination reveals a  book of monumental import to the Shakespeare authorship inquiry. This  book is a  comprehensive report on the current state of  anti-Stratfordian commentary. Divided into two sections,  the first  section is a series of twelve essays by prominent anti-Stratfordian  researchers:  A J  Pointon, PhD; Frank Davis, MD; Ramon  Jimenez, Bonner Miller Cutting, Alexander Waugh, Thomas Regnier, JD, LLM; Earl Showerman, MD; John Rollett, MA, PhD; and Richard Whalen.  This section covers the topic of why there is reasonable doubt about  the attribution of Shakespeare’s work to William Shaksper of  Stratford. The second section is a complete reproduction of the  ...

An argument for less heat on the topic of Prince Tudor by Linda Theil If the universe of Shakespeare lovers may be roughly divided between those who accept the Stratfordian attribution of authorship and those who do not, those anti-Strats who favor Edward De Vere (Oxford 17) as author may be similarly divided between those who proclaim the Prince Tudor (PT) variation on the Oxfordian theme and those who despise Prince Tudorites. In fact, a heated conversation between Oxfordians of opposing PT persuasions often uses the same terms of non-endearment heard between Strats and anti-Strats. Roland Emmerich’s 2011 film, Anonymous -- based as it was on PT theory – and increased interest in the Shakespeare authorship question fueled by easy access to information on the Internet have stoked the fires of PT enmity, leading to unrest in the Oxfordian realm. The PT story as delineated in the nineteen-thirties and generally as presented in Anonymous says that Oxford 17 and Elizabeth...

Earl Showerman reported on the Shakespeare authorship conference to be held in Toronto October 17-20, 2013: North America’s two leading Oxfordian associations – the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society – are pleased to announce that their  2013 Joint Conference will take place in  Toronto ,  Canada  from October 17 to 20, 2013 . The Joint Conference , held with the support of the Theatre and Drama departments of   York   University  and the  University  of  Guelph , two major Canadian universities,  will take as its theme “Shakespeare and the Living Theatre.” “The man who wrote under the name of Shakespeare,  “said conference organizer Professor Don Rubin of  Toronto ’s  York   University , “was clearly a man of the theatre. We know that William of Stratford had connections to the Globe but few people know that the 17 th  Earl of Oxford, also had significant theatre co...

Cheryl Eagan Donovan of Controversy Films reported in her May 26, 2013 "Shakespeare News" on an interview conducted May 25 at the Cannes Film Festival with Only Lovers Left Alive director Jim Jarmusch and film actors Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, and John Hurt in which Jarmusch and Hurt celebrate their anti-Stratfordian viewpoint. Hurt plays an immortal Christopher Marlowe in the upcoming film. Jim Jarmusch (4:17 on video): "I think one of the biggest scandals in literary history that someday may be divulged, to me, is that William Shakespeare didn't write anything. And there are a lot of us so-called anti-Stratfordians that don't believe this . They included Orson Wells and Sigmund Freud and Ralph Waldo Emerson and and John Gielgud. (John Hurt says, “And John Hurt!”) And now John Hurt as well. Sources http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khqIxAx0v4Y