Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

This past Saturday five intrepid Oberon members braved the weather ("The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold"-Hamlet, Act I, scene 4) to attend a double-feature at the Hilberry Theatre in Detroit. First up was Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead , then after a leisurely dinner it was off to Hamlet (by Shakespeare). It was a most enjoyable day.  Stoppard's play is quite funny in its way. It is a kind of retelling of Hamlet from the point of view of the "minor characters" of R & G, in which they become the main characters with a large part also for the Players, while the "major characters" of Hamlet are relegated to "walk-on parts". It's kind of like being with R & G "offstage" during a performance of Hamlet , so that whenever they are supposed to appear in a scene of Hamlet, the other actors "come on" and do the scene (or a part of it) with them. In the interim, R & G talk among the...

Oberon’s November meeting last week definitely was no turkey. As promised, Tom Townsend delivered a feast of evidence about Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that knocks the stuffing out of Stratfordian pretensions that their boy Will Shaksper ever could have put pen to paper and produced anything like Hamlet. Of course, de Vere received his just desserts as Tom doled out one course after another of evidence including the following: De Vere’s brother in law Lord Willoughby led a diplomatic mission to Denmark in 1582 and returned with information about the Danish court that shows up in Hamlet. A state reception was held for Willoughby which only Danish nobility attended. A Rosencrantz and two Guildensterns were on the list of attendees. The dating of Hamlet, traditionally put at 1595-1600, could be the early to mid-1580s. A Guildenstern from Sweden visited Hedingham when de Vere was 12-years-old. By the way, de Vere was 12 when his father, the 16th Earl, died. Is there a connecti...