Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

The Shakespeare authorship controversy will be discussed in two, new classes at eastern universities in the new year: Harvard Extension School lecturer Donald Ostrowski, PhD, will teach a four-credit class titled “Historical Controversies” Jan. 4-17, 2011 in Harvard Hall, Boston and detective fiction critic B.J. Rahn will teach a non-credit class titled “What's in a Name? The Shakespeare Authorship Debate Investigated” April 6- May 11, 2011 at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies in New York City. In Ostrowski’s class the Shakespeare authorship controversy will be one among many issues the class will investigate. Ostrowski will not attempt to resolve controversies; he will use them to enlighten his students on the topic of scholarly debate. From Ostrowski’s "Historical Controversies" syllabus : My intent in offering this course and in is to define a number of controversies that are currently exercising scholarly ingenuity and to analyze...

Georgetown University psychiatry professor Richard M. Waugaman, MD has launched a new web-log about the Shakespeare authorship controversy. He has christened his space, The Oxfreudian . This quirky title is apt because Sigmund Freud was an early proponent of Thomas J. Looney's work on the Shakespeare authorship question, and an ardent Oxfordian. Waugaman said, Freud's intellect has deeply impressed me since I first read him in college. Under Walter Kaufmann's direction, I did my college senior thesis on Nietzsche's influence on Freud. We studied Freud during my psychoanalytic training, then I read (or re-read) all his 23 volumes during the years after I graduated from the psychoanalytic institute.  I puzzled over Freud's endorsement of Looney's authorship hypothesis. Then I put it out of my mind. Until 2002, when William Niederkorn's New York Times article introduced me to Roger Stritmatter's dissertation showing that de Vere's Geneva Bible might be...

Actor Keir Cutler, PhD, explains why he became interested in the Shakespeare authorship question.

Reporter Lauren Rogers sums up Edward de Vere's "disgraceful" life in her Dec. 17., 2010  Worchester News  article,  "Is this the real Bard?"  announcing playwright George Dillon's one-man show about DeVere,  The Man Who Was Hamlet    that opens next month at the Number 8 Community Arts Center in Worchester, England. Rogers said: Edward de Vere was a courtier, swordsman, adventurer, playwright and poet. He killed a servant, made love to Queen Elizabeth, abandoned his wife, got his mistress pregnant, was maimed in a duel, travelled in Italy, was captured by pirates, fought the Armada, was imprisoned in the Tower of London, kept two companies of players, and then disappeared from history for 15 years before dying virtually bankrupt. In youth he was hailed as the best of the secret court writers, but no plays bearing his name have survived and his poetry suddenly stopped after the first invention of 'William Shake-speare'. Traditional Shakespear...

Cover of Abrams Julie Taymor edition of The Tempest A new hardcover Julie Taymor edition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest was released last month by Abrams with a foreword by Jonathan Bate. According to the publisher: The book of   The Tempest   is both a handsome edition of Julie Taymor’s eminently readable adaptation of Shakespeare’s play and a stunning visual narrative of her new film, which stars Helen Mirren as Prospera, the magician/alchemist in a bold, gender-switched realization.   Industry sources report the film will be in general release December 17, 2010. Taymor referenced the appeal of her gender-switching hero/heroine in an interview with Alison Stewart on the Dec. 10 2010 broadcast of the PBS news magazine, Need to Know . Taymor said: Prospero's famous speech, “Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves . . ."  -- that speech ise airs and winds: ye elves of hills, of brooks, of woods alone, / Of standing lakes, and of the night, approach ye e...

Michiganders will be able to see Sir Derek Jacobi's acclaimed  King Lear  here in Michigan via the University Musical Society's   sponsorship of a National Theater Live broadcast at 7 p.m. Sunday, February 20, 2011 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor . This program is one of a series of high-definition broadcasts from the National Theater in London that are being shown throughout the US and worldwide. UMS says: UMS and the Michigan Theater have joined forces to bring high definition screenings of live theater broadcasts by London’s National Theatre to Ann Arbor. NT Live broadcasts performances of plays produced by London’s National Theatre onto cinema screens worldwide. In the US, these screenings are delayed broadcasts to accommodate the time difference. Broadcasts will also feature behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with actors.  Resources: US venues for NT Live broadcasts: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/61172/venues-amp-booking/usa-venues.html...

In yesterday's London Telegraph  contributor William Langley wrote an interesting essay on Sir Derek Jacobi's decision to play Shakespeare's  King Lear at long last. Langley's mini-bio is titled "Sir Derek Jacobi: Bard to the bone" with the subtitle: "Sir Derek Jacobi doesn't believe Shakespeare wrote King Lear -- but he's still given one of the greatest performances in the role, says William Langley." Jacobi's anti-Stratfordian viewpoint is given some prominence in the article: In recent years, Jacobi has emerged as a leading Shakespeare sceptic, taking the view that a semi-educated country boy from Stratford-upon-Avon couldn’t possibly have written the great works attributed to him. Three years ago, he co-launched the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition – a group dedicated to proving that the plays must have been penned by others, and later, in a speech to a like-minded American research organisation, declared: “The only evidence of S...