Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Stephen Greenblatt speaks during the closing session titled "Where are we now?" at the Folger Institute's "Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography" conference held April 3-5, 2014 in Washington DC. Photo by Teresa Wood.  Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library By Linda Theil Regarding his mention of Holocaust denial in proximity to the study of Shakespeare authorship in a 2005 New York Times letter to the editor, Pulitzer Prize winning author Stephen Greenblatt, PhD , replied yesterday to Dr. Richard Waugaman’s request to make a public apology for his remarks. Greenblatt said: . . . I very much regret my Holocaust example, I had meant it only to call into question in the sharpest terms the apparent difference between the NY Times ' treatment of scientific consensus and its treatment of historical consensus. But I had not reflected — as I should have — that Oxfordians might draw the implication that I was likening THEM to a particularly abhorre...

by Linda Theil The Folger Institute has extended the deadline for National Endowment for the Humanities grants to support travel and lodging to their “Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography” conference to be held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC on April 3-5, 2014. The new deadline for aid applications is February 14, 2014. NEH grants are available to qualified graduate students and faculty from US institutions and may be applied for online at the Folger Shakespeare Library: info at “Scholarly Programs Application Guidelines” and “The Folger Institute Application forAdmission” . Enrollment to the conference is open to all, and those who are not applying for grants must send a registration form that is available online and the $50 registration fee to arrive at the Folger no later than March 21, 2014. I was delighted to hear that the great Folger plans to address the issue of the Shakespeare authorship and I read the conference précis with interest: Th...

by Richard Joyrich I would like to direct everyone's attention to a new e-book published by Keir Cutler. As readers of this blog will be aware, Keir is a celebrated author and actor, whose one-man show Is Shakespeare Dead (an adaptation of the work by Mark Twain) has been performed all over Canada and at several places in the United States (including at two of the past Joint SOS/SF Authorship Conferences). This play is available to view on You Tube. Keir is a spokesman for the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare ( www.doubtaboutwill.org ) and has made a wonderful five minute You Tube video about it, entitled "Why Was I Never Told This". This You Tube video is embedded at the very bottom of the Oberon blog page and I encourage everyone to check it out. Now, Keir has collected information from various articles of his to produce his new e-book, The Shakespeare Authorship Question: A Crackpot's View . It is available for Kindl...

Sir Derek Jacobi in PBS series Shakespeare Uncovered, Richard II episode by Linda Theil In a new six-part PBS series, Shakespeare Uncovered, elucidating the glories of the Bard’s plays, Sir Derek Jacobi “ . . . sets the fur flying”, as he says in his one-hour segment on the play, Richard II , by advocating Edward de Vere  as the author of the work known under the pseudonym William Shakespeare. The Richard II segment aired February 1, 2013 on PBS stations and is available on DVD and for viewing online from the Shakespeare Uncovered site at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/shakespeare-uncovered/video/richard-ii-with-derek-jacobi/ Retired humanities professor James Norwood of St. Paul, Minnesota has given Oberon permission to publish his commentary on the Shakespeare Uncovered series that Norwood originally posted to the late Robert Brazil’s private authorship discussion list, Elizaforum. Professor Norwood taught a course on the topic of Shakespeare authorship at the University...

First of all, forgive me for the somewhat far-reaching title of this blog (although I think Stephen Greenblatt would approve of it). I was moved by the increasingly broad geographical trend of the last two blogs on this subject and I wanted to continue with it. It also ties in with what I thought was the most interesting parts of the presentation we saw in Grand Rapids. I can't really add very much to the two excellent blogs that have already been posted, but I can say a few things. I would like to give a word of thanks to Marty for letting us know of this opportunity to see Stephen Greenblatt. I only wish we had found out sooner. Perhaps we could have organized a larger Oberon contingent. Perhaps we could have had time to print up our "Holocaust Denial" posters or lapel pins. Anyway, I had a great time in Grand Rapids and I am glad I went. It's true that it was sometimes hard to follow the details of what Greenblatt was saying, but I liked his general idea. He is int...

Little did I think when Marty H. passed along on Wednesday the heads-up about Stephen Greenblatt at Grand Valley State in Grand Rapids that on Thursday Linda, Richard and I would be motoring our way westward across our beautiful state to the land of Amway to hear one of the most renown literary teachers and critics of our time. Well, we did, and there we found Mr. Greenblatt and a large lecture hall filled with Grand Valleyites who had come to hear his tale of the cultural mobility of Cardenio . The Cardenio project actually represents quite an undertaking, a grand experiment in cultural differences. It is a variation of the Cardenio text as updated by Greenblatt and a professional playwright Charles Mee (prompting many humorous references to the joint work of Mee and I) which was then sent out to be produced in various countries to compare the cultural differences emerging from the various productions. Why Cardenio ? Greenblatt said that it was important to the experiment to use ...

Last night a few Oberons trekked across Michigan to attend Stephen Greenblatt’s lecture on “Cultural Mobility: The Strange Case of Shakespeare’s Cardenio” in the L.V. Eberhard Center at Grand Valley State University in downtown Grand Rapids. Greenblatt, who is a professor of humanities at Harvard, is the GVSU’s Distinguished Academic Lecturer for their Fall Arts Celebration which includes the fifteenth anniversary season of the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival . This year the festival offering is A Midsummer Night’s Dream ballywood-style at 7:30 p.m. Sept 26, 27, Oct. 2, 3, 4 and matinees at 2 p.m. Sept 27, 28, Oct 4, 5 at the Louis Armstrong Theatre Performing Arts Center on the GVSU Allendale campus. Greenblatt is, famously, the author of numerous critical works on the Shakespeare oeuvre, most recently his 2004 $1-million baby -- Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakespeare . He is known for his development of a theory called “new historicism” which as near as I can figure ...