Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

By Richard Joyrich I have just become aware (courtesy of Cheryl Eagan-Donovan's Shakepeare News [Controversy Films] e-mailing) that the new book by Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky is now available for advance ordering on Amazon. It is scheduled to be published July 15 by McFarland Press. The book is titled:  On the Dates, Sources and Design of Shakespeare's The Tempest On Cheryl's announcement e-mail Roger and Lynne write: This book challenges a longstanding and deeply ingrained belief in Shakespearean studies that The Tempest long supposed to be Shakespeares last play was not written until 1611. In the course of investigating this proposition, which has rarely been questioned and has not received the critical inquiry it deserves, a number of subsidiary and closely related interpretative puzzles have come sharply into focus. These include the plays sources of New World imagery; its festival symbolism and structure; its relationship to Wi...

David Tennant in 2012 National Theatre production of Hamlet by James Norwood The final program of the PBS series  Shakespeare Uncovered  explores the thesis that  Hamlet  and  The Tempest   are Shakespeare’s most personal plays.   British actor David Tennant, who played Hamlet in a recent modern dress RSC production, asks why it is that  Hamlet  is so “unique.” But the program fails to locate the play in context in the Elizabethan age in order to identify why this play was special from the outset.  There was no discussion of the political world of the era and no mention of the court, including the key figure of William Cecil. The program never mentions the numerous resemblances of the character of Polonius to Cecil, which have been identified by such famous scholars as E. K. Chambers, A. L. Rowse, and Dover Wilson. The program’s narrative unfolds in a complete vacuum, relying on routine plot synopsis, as opposed to careful re...

In a holiday present for all anti-Strats, Lynne Kositsky announced in a Christmas Eve post on her blog:  McFarland accepts our book, A Movable Feast! Kositsky and her research partner Roger Stritmatter, PhD have found a publisher for their research on dating Shakespeare's Tempest , a work titled  A Movable Feast: Sources, Chronology and Design of Shakespeare’s Tempest. Kositsky said:  Contrary to longstanding belief, the play’s New World imagery is derived not from William Strachey’s account of a 1609 shipwreck in Bermuda, but from Richard Eden’s 1555 Decades of the New World. The book will include detailed point-by-point rebuttals to two newly published critiques of our work: one by Alden Vaughan (2008) in Shakespeare Quarterly and another by Tom Reedy (2010) in Review of English Studies, showing how their misplaced confidence in traditional authority has led to misinterpretations of the evidence of the date and influence of Strachey’s manuscript. Grats, guys! ...