Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

by Linda Theil An article titled “Come not between the Oxfordian and his wrath to paraphrase Lear”  appeared in the Toronto Globe & Mail on October 16, 2013 -- the day before the Toronto Shakespeare authorship conference began. This piece did not get as much attention as  later articles in the local press criticizing York University and Guelph University for their roles in supporting the conference. In the October 16 article, Stratfordian Kelly Nestruck wrote about an encounter last year between Toronto Shakespeare authorship conference organizer Don Rubin and Ontario's  Stratford Festival  communications director David Prosser at a day-long authorship seminar Rubin convened on April 7, 2012 wherein Prosser compared authorship inquiry with Holocaust denial. According to Nestruck’s October 16 article, Prosser said he regretted his comment. Nestruck wrote: In defending the traditional, fact-based narrative that a fellow named William Shakespeare wrot...

University of Kent at Canterbury emeritus professor David Ellis ’ new book, The Truth About William Shakespeare: Fact, Fiction and Modern Biographies (Edinburgh University, 2012), has been released in the US and received a starred review by Margaret Heilbrun in the May 2012 edition of Library Journal . The short review under the title “New Titles onShakespeare” offers this insight: In this meaty little book, Ellis takes on the spate of biographies of Shakespeare in recent decades. With incisive scholarship and wit, he demonstrates that most have been written in the absence of credible evidence: authors infer details of Shakespeare’s life and beliefs from information about the times, unverifiable anecdotes and jokes, sometimes even the sheer lack of evidence (e.g., Shakespeare must have been “discrete” and “concealing” because his name seldom appeared in the public records). . . . Non-academics and academics alike should pick this it up; it’s a sleeper and strongly recommended. (...