Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Actor Michael Scott and cast members of the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival production of A   Midsummer Night's Dream display their plaque made from a cedar that grew in the garden of Shakespeare's birthplace. Photo courtesy Michael Scott by Linda Theil Buoyed by their success touting the  Shakespeare beyond Doubt defense against anti-Stratfordian attacks at the Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada last year, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust returns to North America this summer.  In a Jesuitical mission presumably designed to bolster Stratfordians against authorship apostasy, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Head of Research and Knowledge Paul Edmondson has been dispatched to America on a two month tour of fourteen Shakespeare festivals in fourteen states. Accompanied by Paul Prescott, associate professor of English at the University of Warwick, and supported by a truly splendiferous array of mobile media, the Shakespeare missionaries began their tour ...

Hamlet by Lord Ronald Gower (1845-1916) at Stratford-upon-Avon.  Photograph by Robert Freidus courtesy of Victorian Web . by Linda Theil Neue Shake-speareGesellschaft  (New Shakespeare Society) board member Hanno Wember reports from Hamburg, Germany that an article in the Travel section of the large circulation daily newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung   took a non-Stratfordian look at the spurious claims of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust at Stratford-upon-Avon. The article titled " Das Ratsel des Getreindehandlers Will Shakspere" ("The mystery of the grain dealer Will Shakespeare") by Roland D. Gerste was published April 25, 2014. Wember said, "FAZ was strictly Stratfordian in recent years. Now this!" The long, illustrated article criticizes the inauthentic aspects of the Shakespeare birthplace exhibits and discusses the fervor of the Stratfordian point-of-view (translation by Hanno Wember): One does not have to be a supporter of...

We happy few prior to Wells' event Aug. 16, 2013 in Stratford, Ontario: George and Sharon Hunter, Tom and Joy Townsend, Pam Verlone (hidden), Rosey Hunter, Richard Joyrich, Rey Perez, Linda Theil By Linda Theil Several members of the Oberon Shakespeare Study Group visited Stratford, Ontario this weekend to hear Shakespeare Birthplace Trust life trustee and former chairman Stanley Wells give a talk at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival on August 16, 2013. We found Wells a masterful speaker. A fine-looking man, with a shock of white hair and emphatic white brows, tie-less in a grey suit and wearing his signature pink dress shirt with flesh-colored stockings and oxfords, he read from a superb, prepared text on “Sex and Love in Verona, Venice and Vienna”. In the question and answer session post-presentation, therefore, it came as a shock to hear this elegant, accomplished gentleman lead the audience in jeering laughter against those, like my friends and I who questi...

After mopping the floor with Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s “Proving Shakespeare” web-based seminar lastweek , Marlovian Ros Barber has emerged as a passionate and compelling advocate for the anti-Stratfordian viewpoint. The May 1, 2013 seminar was held to celebrate the launch of the Trust’s refinement of the Stratfordian viewpoint, Shakespeare Beyond Doubt , that will be published by Cambridge University Press this month. The book is part of the trust’s ongoing response to Roland Emmerich’s 2010 anti-Stratfordian film, Anonymous – a response that began with their online “Sixty Minutes with Shakespeare” one-minute refutations of various complaints against the attribution of Shakespeare’s works to the man from Stratford. At the online seminar, Barber appeared to astound Wells and Edmondson with her articulate defense of the anti-Stratfordian position. Although she authored The Marlowe Papers -- due out May 24 by Sceptre --  a fictio...

In an interview titled "Roland Emmerich talks Shakespeare . . ."  with Jeremey Gingrich published this month at Flix 66, Roland Emmerich said attacks  by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and by Contested Will author James Shapiro  against his Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous , hurt the film's attendance. According to Gingrich, Emmerich said: It hurt. Because it made smart people not want to see the film. These guys are famous people. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is very powerful in England and Jim Shapiro is kind of your typical New York intellectual, and they were very smart how they handled this film in discrediting the film. And when you look at the reviews, you'll notice most were reviewing the [authorship] theory and not the film. The film opened to disappointing box office last fall, and was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on DVD, Blu-Ray, and iTunes this week. Despite impressive CGI and extraordinary performances by Vanessa Redgrave...

 I n his blog entry titled "Queering Shakespeare and Sherlock Holmes" posted yesterday on the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Blogging Shakespeare site, University of Hertfordshire professor Graham Holderness discussed his view of biography as revealed in his new book, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare . Holderness said:   Since there is no direct evidence that Shakespeare did in actuality enjoy and suffer a gay relationship with the Earl of Southampton, or with any other man, it seems legitimate for a fictional commentary to take the form of invention, and to operate by parallelism and contrast rather than by historical narrative. ‘The Adventure of Shakespeare’s Ring’ in  Nine Lives of William Shakespeare  finds Holmes and Watson, pursuing the theft of ‘Shakespeare’s ring’ from Stratford’s Birthplace Museum, drawn into the gay milieu of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, and thence provoked into an acknowledgement of their own homosexual attachment . . . Hold...

The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition announced today that the SAC and twelve anti-Stratfordian groups have endorsed a rebuttal to  the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's "Sixty Minutes with Shakespeare" initiative launched to counter interest in the Shakespeare authorship question generated by Roland Emmerich's film,  Anonymous .  Oberon Shakespeare Study Group vice-chair and Shakespeare Oxford Society President Richard Joyrich, MD is among the anti-Stratfordian scholars who participated in the SAC project. Joyrich authored the anti-Stratfordian rebuttal to  the SBT's Question 18: What was Shakespeare's social status?, originally answered for the Stratfordians by SBT  Representative Trustee from the University of London, Rene Weis: William Shakespeare was the son of a successful yeoman glover who had served a term as mayor of Stratfordupon-Avon. Through his mother Mary Arden, Shakespeare may have been related to the ancient Arden family  of Park Hall. In 15...

The Sunday Mercury  online edition published an article today titled "Row over new Shakespeare film which claims Bard did not write his plays" by Ben Goldby. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust education director Paul Edmondson is quoted throughout the short article railing against Anonymous , Roland Emmerich's forthcoming film about the Shakespeare authorship question . Edmondson, who took part in Monday's debate on the topic at the English Speaking Union , told The Mercury : This may well provoke debate, but the point we are making is that there is no debate. It is historical fact that William Shakespeare wrote these plays. When I first heard about this film I thought, ‘we have to do something and get the real story of Shakespeare out there’. Several questions occur to this reader regarding Edmondson's comments to The Mercury : Does Edmondson find it odd to insist there is no debate after taking part in a high-profile debate? Since when do academics take to the...

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust will host an online conference about Shakespeare authorship to be held in August 2011. The conference is limited to 1000 participants. Those who are interested in participating may sign up now at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website  or at  http://60-minutes.bloggingshakespeare.com/ . The contact person for the event Elizabeth Woledge said there are two authorship projects in the works, " . . .   the 60 Minutes with Shakespeare is 60 short recordings of people answering questions related to the question of Shakespearean authorship; the on-line conference is happening a little later."  

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust posted comments today that Chairman Stanley Wells made at the trust's Shakespeare birthday lunch this year. In the last paragraph of his speech (below) Wells mentioned the Stratfordian's imaginary education in rhetoric and classical literature that "lies behind the texts that he wrote". Wells assures us that Shakespeare developed his creative powers in Stratford and demands, "Let no one be in doubt of this." If only it were that simple, Professor Wells. Ladies and gentlemen, Stratford-upon-Avon is the town that gave birth to William Shakespeare. At our grammar school he received the rigorous education in, especially, classical literature and rhetoric that lies behind the texts that he wrote. In this town and its surrounding countryside his creative powers developed. Here in Henley Street and in New Place his family lived, in Holy Trinity Church he and they worshipped and are buried. Let no one be in doubt of this. There is, ...