Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

by Richard Joyrich Last year, after some discussion among remaining members of the original Oberon Shakespeare Study Group, we decided to liquidate the remaining Oberon treasury --which was no longer needed for such things as meeting space rental and social events -- and donate the funds. Accordingly, the funds were split into a donation to the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship and a donation to the Aim High School in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Aim HS is a private school that caters to students with language-based learning differences, anxiety disorders, and attention deficits. Further information on this school is available at aimhighschool.com . Our donation was made as part of Giving Tuesday, on December 2, 2024, and the funds were designated to be used by the school to further its English Literature teaching program. It turns out that there is a good concentration of Shakespeare in their curriculum. The students read Shakespeare, watch videos, and also par...

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 ...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

Michael Robin Browne 1941-2024  Oberon Shakespeare Study Group meeting Bloomfield Hills Library Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, February 9, 2019 by Linda Theil Our dear friend and longtime Oberon colleague Robin Browne passed away March 28, 2024 after a brave fight with longstanding illness. A memorial service to honor  him will be held on July 14, 2024 at Christ Church Cranbrook, 470 Church Road, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; and will be followed by a recption at his home. A tribute to  his life can be viewed at Michael Robin Browne on Legacy. To honor Robin's memory, Oberon will make a contribution to the church garden fund, as was his wish. Oberon chairperson Richard Joyrich shares his tribute to our beloved friend and colleague, Robin Browne: Robin has been a part of the Oberon Shakespeare Study Group almost from the beginning. He very rarely missed one of our meetings in various libraries in the past, and always had much to contribute. Although not a strict Oxfordian -- h...

  Screenwriter John Orloff and actor Rhys Ifans featured on  title card of today's  Don't Quill the Messenger podcast by Linda Theil In a long reminiscence of Rolland Emmerich's 2011 film Anonymous,  screenwriter John Orloff recalled Robert (sic) Shapiro as an "asshole". Twice. In the Oct 20, 2023 "Not so Anonymous" episode of his anti-Stratfordian  Don't Quill the Messenger podcast, host Steven Sabel spoke to Orloff for over an hour about the making of Emmerich's epic flop that brought the Shakespeare authorship question to international prominence. (See:  "Anonymous Opens . . ." , et al on Oberon  weblog.) At time-mark 38:30 during a discussion of the Anonymous post-release furor, Orloff opined regarding Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro -- although Orloff did Shapiro the ultimate disrespect of not remembering his first name correctly: "Robert (sic) Shapiro! Oof, that guy! . . . he's such a dishonest broker. Above anythin...

by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler  calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h...

Our dearly loved friend Mara Radzvickas 1941-2023 Oberons are saddened by the loss of our fellow Oberon,  Mara Radzvickas . Mara was a beautiful, brilliant, and delightful friend; we will not know her like again. A funeral mass will be held May 26, 2023 at St. Regis Church in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Fellow Oberon member Tom Townsend remembers Mara here.  by Tom Townsend Our wonderful friend, Marilyn “Mara” Radzvickas, passed away April 14, 2023. She was a dynamic and energetic woman all her life. Mara came to work in the Detroit area from Chicago. She loved her work at the agency: She was the Associated Director of Consumer Insights for a large advertising agency. Mara was loved by all her work associates, clients, and suppliers. In fact, there were few, if any, who were ‘simply neutral’ about Mara. As her friend, I enjoyed working with Mara. We both worked in an agency research department where we had a great working relationship and were highly productive. Mara read cons...

Elizabeth Winkler presenting at Shakespearean Authorship Trust virtual event April 22, 2023 by Linda Theil In her new book, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature , Elizabeth Winkler presents a smart, witty, and eminently readable account of one woman's journey through the wonderful world of Stratfordian bullshit. Winkler's new book published by Simon & Schuster, 2023 According to her publisher: "Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in  The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement , and  The Economist,  among other publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her master’s in English literature from Stanford University. Her essay “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”, first published in  The Atlantic , was selected for  The Best American Essays 2020.  She lives in Washington, DC." I'v...

 by Linda Theil Frank Lawler, author of Behind the Mask of William Shakespeare In September, Oberon Zoom member Frank Lawler released Behind the Mask of William Shakespeare , his new translation and annotation of Abel Lefranc's Sous le Masque de William Shakespeare under the imprint of James Warren's Veritas Publications, LLC. Lawler generously agreed to share his thoughts about the work with Oberon readers. Oberon: What drew you to this enormous project? Lawler: Abel Lefranc's two-volume Sous le Masque de William Shakespeare was published in 1918 and 1919. The man was a brilliant scholar of literary history who, as a Frenchman, wasn't burdened with the entrenched English hagiography of the man from Stratford. A world-renowned expert on Moliere and Rabelais, he had academic credentials rivaling those of the greatest of the orthodox bardologists of the early Twentieth Century. Lefranc, however, thought the Stratfordian myth was ludicrous. Having spent most of his caree...