Skip to main content

Goldstein resigns in protest against SF caving to PT pressure

Gary Goldstein resigned from the Shakespeare Fellowship board of directors and from the fellowship in protest against the board's decision to rescind their June 15, 2011 statement titled, "The Shakespeare Fellowship commends Roland Emmerich for directing the film,Anonymous, but stresses that this production's 'Prince Tudor' narratives are not essential to the theory that the Earl of Oxford was the writer 'Shakespeare'" 


Shakespeare Fellowship President Earl Showerman said yesterday about the board's action, "While a number of trustees still support the language on the posted statement, the board moved unanimously to withhold the statement on Anonymous and to remove it from the Fellowship website until a later date when members of the board have actually seen a preview of the film." 


In a letter submitted yesterday to Nina Green's Phaeton email list, Goldstein reported his objection to Showerman's characterization of the board action as unanimous, and announced that he had resigned from the SF board and organization.


Goldstein gave Oberon permission to publish his remarks:
One fact needs to be amended to that communication. I did not participate in the vote as a member of the SF Board in protest at the appeasement of the minority PT faction of the Fellowship, who demanded the Board immediately reconsider the motion, which was critical of the PT hypothesis. The president acquiesced to this demand and, furthermore, supported their other demand to have the statement retracted in its entirety.



The Board of Trustees took two months to debate a proposed statement on PT and the movie Anonmyous before voting to approve it in June; it also went through half-a-dozen revisions before being submitted to a Board vote. That statement has now been rescinded by all but one member of the Board (myself). For this reason, I am resigning as a member of the SF Board of Trustees and as a member of the Fellowship, effective immediately. I find the Board's abdication of their intellectual responsibility to both members of the Fellowship and the larger Oxfordian community to be reprehensible.


Update July 18, 2011:
Gary Goldstein will remain as managing editor of the Shakespeare Fellowship online journal, Brief Chronicles, through the current 2011 issue. Goldstein said, "I notified the Shakespeare Fellowship president that I will resign with the upcoming issue of Brief Chronicles; in turn, he asked me to reconsider. I informed him I will take the summer to do so."


Shakespeare Fellowship board members include: Earl Showerman, Alex McNeil, Ted Story, Tom Regnier, Sam Saunders, Bonner Cutting, Ian Haste, Pat Urqhart, Gary Goldstein (installed 2008, resigned July 2011)



Popular posts from this blog

Ros Barber's new Shakespeare authorship book out November 24, 2013

by Linda Theil Ros Barber's Shakespeare: The Evidence --The Authorship Question Clarified will be published Nov. 24, 2013. Info at  https://leanpub.com/shakespeare . Video promo for the book (above) is available on YouTube at Shakespeare: The Evidence. Promo material on the publisher's page says: Whether you are a firm believer that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, or suspect that he didn't, this book aims to enable readers to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of the problems at hand, clarify their thinking, and identify weaknesses in, and logical rebuttals to, the arguments of their opponents, as well as potentially strengthening their own. Ros Barber, PhD is the author of The Marlowe Papers (St. Martin's Press, 2013) that won the Hoffman Prize in manuscript in 2011. UPDATE 11/17/13 : A note published today by Ros Barber at  http://rosbarber.com/shakespeare-evidence/  says the first installment of the  Shakespeare: The Evidence  ebook will be published o

New Anonymous film trailer posted on YouTube

A second film trailer for Roland Emmerich's film, Anonymous , was posted on YouTube August 5, 2011. Emmerich's historical thriller about the Shakespeare authorship controversy is scheduled for wide-release in the U.S. October 28, 2011. A preview will be screened on Sept. 7, 2011 in downtown Portland, Oregon as part of the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre 's annual  conference September 6-9, 2011 .  Anonymous will also be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival to be held September 8-18, 2011. Emmerich's film has Stratfordians aflutter, fearing examination of the traditional attribution of Shakespeare's plays may damage the brand. Instead of welcoming interest in Shakespeare's life and times, they are boarding up the windows against a flood of inquiry. The previously taboo topic of Shakespeare authorship is now allowed in the hallowed halls of Stratford-on-Avon so that a rear guard action against apostasy can be mounted. Paul Edmo

Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project from the University of Guelph

  Quote from masthead of Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project This treasure trove of a site offers much to Shakespeare omnivores, not least of which is the Spotlight feature on Aboriginal adaptations of Shakespeare  . Here's a snippet from the main page introduction of the site: T h e  Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project   is the online resource for anyone interested in how Shakespeare's plays have been transformed and adapted in Canada. But it also contains a wealth of material that relates to all things Shakespearean. With the launch of CASP Version 2, we are pleased to expand the already ample offerings on the site. These include a significant increase in multimedia files; multiple new pages on new areas of research with an emerging focus on French Canada; a huge amount of special resources, including documents, books, scholarly articles, reviews, images, and the like; a literacy video game and perhaps the most comprehensive and intensely multi-mediated stud