Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

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Joyrich honored at SOF conference

Bonner Cutting and Richard Joyrich, MD at SOF 2025 conference in New Haven, CT by Linda Theil The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship awarded Oberon co-founder and chairman Richard Joyrich, MD the 2025 Tom Regnier Veritas Award at their annual conference on September 20, 2025 in New Haven, Connecticut. SOF Vice-president Bonner Miller Cutting presented the award citing Joyrich's decades of service to the Oxfordian mission, his lifelong devotion to, and encyclopedic knowledge of the works of William Shakespeare, and his enormous contribution to the SOF as board member, past-president, conference committee stalwart, and conference tech support. "There would be no conference without Richard and his computer," Cutting said. Oberon members Joy and Tom Townsend were able to congratulate Joyrich in person, as they had traveled from their home in Seattle to attend the New Haven conference. "I sat next to Richard during most of the conference," Joy Townsend said. "I had ...

Mark Twain Project Online has no plans to include Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography

Title page: Is Shakespeare Dead: From My Autobiography by Mark Twain, 1909 by Linda Theil A major project involving creating a digital critical edition, fully annotated, of everything Mark Twain wrote should include at least the names of all the author's published works, but after twenty years of toil, The Mark Twain Project Online has no plans to even mention Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography by Mark Twain -- a book published by Harper & Brothers Publishing in 1909, a year before the author's demise. Oberon addressed this topic in a 2016 post titled "Mark Twain's benighted book" featuring background information about the Mark Twain Project Online and the absence of Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography from the project site. Nine years later, we still find no mention of Is Shakespeare Dead? From My Autobiography on the Mark Twain Project Onlline. When we queried the site regarding this omission, we received the following information from ...

Oberon IRL

Oberon members Linda Theil, Richard Joyrich, and Susan Grimes Gilbert meet in-real-life at the Good Sense Coffee Company in downtown Howell, Michigan on October 27, 2024. by Linda Theil Oberons had a real life encounter yesterday when Susan Grimes Gilbert visited from Texas and joined Richard Joyrich and me at the Good Sense Coffee Company in downtown Howell. The Oberons haven't met face-to-face since 2020 when Oberon switched to Zoom meetings during the pandemic. Although we have tried to resume local meetings, our hopes have not panned out, as our group becomes older and less mobile. Since we no longer collect dues, or hold events, we made plans yesterday to close out the Oberon bank account and donate the proceeds; and Richard as Oberon chair will carry out that duty for our group. Richard still hosts a monthly Zoom meeting usually at 2 p.m. on the second Saturday of the month, welcoming all who are interested. To contact Oberon, send email to oberonshakespea...

Stratford shipwreck

by Linda Theil Look no further than best-selling author Jodi Picault's brand new novel for evidence that the Shakespeare author ship is leaking like a sieve. Picault credited Elizabeth Winkler's 2019 Atlantic article "Was Shakespeare a Woman?" about Emilia Bassano as inspiration for By Any Other Name , a novel released today by Ballentine Books featuring Bassano as a pen behind the Shakespeare pseudonym. In that same interview on Jacke Wilson's History of Literature podcast, Picault told Wilson that she believes Edward deVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, played a role in the Shakespeare authorship. "I believe the earl of Oxford was the puppet master behind the works of William Shakespeare," Picault said. The History of Literature podcast episode is titled "Meet the woman who REALLY wrote Shakespeare's plays with Jodi Picoult" , broadcast today. For centuries pressure has been building on the bulwark of Stratfordian-based authorship cre...

Dudley nails it to the door

Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...

Is Languet the sonneteer?

by Linda Theil "If you marry a wife, and if you beget children like your-self, you will be doing better service to your country than if you could cut the throats of a thousand Spaniards or Frenchmen." * So said French protestant teacher and diplomat Hubert Languet to young Philip Sydney during their decade-long correspondence beginning in 1573. Languet's Sydney correspondence was published in the original Latin in 1633, and was translated into English along with some of Sidney's reply in 1845 by Steuart A. Pears. Pears' work was reprinted along with a new introduction by William A. Bradley in 1912. The 1845 edition is available free on Google Books ; the 1912 edition can be purchased in reproduction from Leopold Classic Library on Amazon for $18.45. Various other sources of the correspondence are also available. The existence and availability of this trove of primary source material was made known to us by Elizabeth Quattrocki Knight, MD, PhD during her presenta...