Brief Chronicles debuts at SF/SOS convention

Managing Editor Gary Goldstein announced the Shakespeare Fellowship’s publication of a new journal investigating the Shakespeare authorship issue — Brief Chronicles: The Interdisciplinary Journal of the Shakespeare Fellowship. The journal will appear annually each fall as a free online publication at http://www.briefchronicles.com. Their goal is to publish semi-annually in both print and electronic formats.

In a press release, Goldstein reported:

The inaugural issue of Brief Chronicles will be introduced November 6, 2009 at the joint annual conference of the Shakespeare Fellowship and Shakespeare Oxford Society in the Doubletree Hotel at Houston International Airport. The publication is a peer reviewed journal overseen by an editorial board of academics with terminal degrees and distinguished records of scholarship and teaching in theater, English, law and medicine. Contributors to the first issue include academic and independent scholars from the United States, Canada, and Germany.

General editor of Brief Chronicles is Roger Stritmatter, PhD, Associate Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature at Coppin State University in Maryland. Stritmatter holds an MA in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research and a PhD in Comparative Literature from University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

“Shakespeare was a Renaissance intellect who integrated a wide body of technical knowledge into the canon,” Professor Stritmatter said. “To fully reveal the insights contained in his drama and poetry, and accurately assess the evidence that resolves the authorship of the Shakespeare canon, requires the expertise of an inter-disciplinary editorial board that embraces disciplines such as the law and medicine as well as English and theater. Moreover, plans are to further expand the board’s editorial scope to take account of other relevant fields, such as history and religion.”

Stritmatter pointed to the papers in the inaugural issue as examples of the research being generated by Oxfordian scholars. Two articles are derived from books by American and German researchers—the late Peter Moore (1949-2007) and Robert Detobel of Germany. “Peter’s previously unpublished paper on how Shakespeare employed the role of time and Epicureanism in devising Macbeth’s inner dynamic was the last one composed in a 20-year career of research,” Prof. Stritmatter said. “And it appears in his just released collection of Shakespeare studies, The Lame Storyteller, Poor and Despised. Robert Detobel’s paper is a chapter from his book manuscript, Shakespeare and the Concealed Poet, which demonstrates how Francis Meres revealed Shakespeare to be Edward de Vere in his 1598 book, Palladis Tamia.”

Other papers in the inaugural issue examine:
· the particulars of William Shakespeare’s will,
· the causes for the financial downfall of the Earl of Oxford,
· the influence of Greek drama and literature in Much Ado About Nothing,
· the personal and topical allusions in Titus Andronicus that reflect Oxford’s involvement in the play,
· essays on the psychology of anti-Stratfordian responses to the Oxfordian hypothesis over time,
· a comparison of two film performances of Hamlet (Mel Gibson’s versus Lawrence Olivier’s),
· and reviews of three books on the authorship issue and the Earl of Oxford published in the US, England and Germany, the latter effort by Kurt Kreiler being a major literary biography of the Earl of Oxford.

Gary Goldstein is managing editor. He is former editor of The Elizabethan Review, a peer-reviewed history and literary journal of the English Renaissance that appeared semi-annually from 1993 through 1999.

The journal will focus on the authorship of the Shakespeare canon from the Oxfordian perspective, publishing research-based notes and articles as well as essays and reviews of books, theater productions and movies based on the literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

“We hereby invite submissions for possible publication in the journal,” Prof. Stritmatter said. “We will employ a double-blind peer review process. All submissions must conform to the Chicago Manual of Style.

“More generally the journal solicits relevant materials that shed critical light on the Shakespeare canon and its authorship, on theories and problems in the study of Early Modern authorship and literary creativity, and on related questions of early modern literary culture, aesthetics, bibliography, psychology, law, biography, and history. Contributions that utilize an interdisciplinary methodology that draws on
the conventions and data of more than one relevant humanities discipline to produce original, carefully reasoned and readable insights, are especially welcome.”

Contact:
Managing Editor Gary Goldstein

The Shakespeare Fellowship
P.O. Box 421
Hudson, MA, 01749
www.shakespearefellowship.org
garygoldstein1@bellsouth.net
Cell: 561-504-3220

Brief Chronicles Editorial Board
Richard Waugaman, MD, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; Training Analyst Emeritus at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute; and a Reader at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Tom Regnier, JD, LL M, currently serves as law clerk to Judge Harry Leinenweber in U.S. District Court in Chicago. In 2009, he earned his LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan F. Stone Scholar. Mr. Regnier formerly taught at the University of Miami School of Law as Professor of Law and Literary Studies (including a “Shakespeare and the Law” course), and also won a landmark case in 2008 before the Florida Supreme Court.
Michael Delahoyde, PhD, is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of English, Washington State University. Dr. Delahoyde is editor of the Rocky Mountain Review of Languages and Literature, the quarterly journal of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association.
Warren Hope, PhD, is an award winning poet and scholar, Dr. Hope was an instructor in English at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia for eight years and is currently teaching English at Montgomery County Community College. He is the co-author, with Kim Holston, of The Shakespeare Controversy: An Analysis of the Claimants to Authorship, and Their Champions and Detractors (McFarland, 1992 and 2009).
Sky Gilbert, PhD, is a noted novelist, playwright, poet and filmaker. He received his PhD in Theater Studies from the University of Toronto. Currently, he holds the University Chair in Creative Writing and Theater Studies at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
Sarah Smith, PhD, has written multiple award-winning novels including Chasing Shakespeares (Atria, 2003). Dr. Smith received her BA and PhD degrees from Harvard University, studied at the University of London as a Fulbright scholar and in London and Paris on a Harvard fellowship, and has also held an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities. She taught at Tufts University for several years and continues to teach fiction writing.

The Shakespeare Fellowship, founded in 2001, is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to promote and endow research and education in the European Renaissance, with particular emphasis on the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth I; to further the debate over the relevance of Shakespeare in the 21st century; to promote and endow research and education in the Shakespearean authorship question, with special emphasis on the theory first proposed by J. Thomas Looney identifying Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), as the true author of the Shakespeare canon.

Concordia Conference April 8-11, 2010

From:
Prof Daniel Wright, Ph.D
Director, The Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre
Concordia University
Portland, OR 97211-6099
www.authorshipstudies.org,

Friends,

Although it may seem somewhat premature, I thought, as the conference agenda for April has been finalized and proposals /submissions are now closed, that I would share with you the 18 distinguished presenters who will be speaking .

This year, at the 14th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference, we will hear from:
Dr Bruce E. R. Thompson of the California State University at San Marcos;
D. Claudia Thompson of the University of Wyoming;
Dorna Bewley of Cambridge, England;
Dr Paul Nicholson, Executive Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival;
Prof Michael Delahoyde of Washington State University (Scholarship Award recipient);
Prof Ren Draya of Blackburn College in Illinois;
Stephanie Hughes, former Editor of The Oxfordian (Scholarship Award recipient);
Chris Coleman, Artistic Director of Portland Center Stage (Arts Award recipient);
Dr Peter McIntosh, a senior scientist of the Forest
Practices Authority in Hobart, Tasmania;
Dr Earl Showerman, retired physician from Jacksonville, Oregon;
Richard Whalen, author and editor from Truro, Massachusetts;
Prof Kevin Simpson of Concordia University;
Hank Whittemore, author and actor from Upper Nyack, New York;
Bonner Cutting, independent researcher from Houston, Texas;
Bill Boyle, editor and librarian from Boston, Massachusetts;
Krystal Rapp of Concordia University;
Luis Garcia, attorney;
Charles Boyle;
Kevin Gilvary;
Eddi Jolly;
and myself.

We also will feature several panels that will focus on Shakespeare and Politics – with particular attention to what the Shakespeare canon says about the Queen, royal government, and Elizabethan/Stuart politics in general. Additionally, we will see a film entitled The Marlowe Inquest. Tours of the new Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre will also be offered during the conference.

I hope to see all of you at the conference from April 8 -11, 2010 (the conference will convene at 7:00pm on Thursday, April 8 and close at 3:30 on Sunday, April 11). Registration for the four-day conference (inclusive of the always-stellar Saturday night awards banquet which will be celebrated in the SARC and George White Library on the Concordia campus) is $265. Checks should be made out to The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference; they can be mailed to my attention at The Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre, Concordia University, 2811 NE Holman, Portland, OR 97211-6099.

Prof Daniel Wright, Ph.D
Director, The Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre
Concordia University
Portland, OR 97211-6099
www.authorshipstudies.org

Detobel reports on Die Weltwoche review of Der Mann, der Shakespeare erfund

Robert Detobel reports from Germany:
Here an extract of the one-page review of Kurt Kreiler’s book, Der Mann, der Shakespeare erfund: Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) in “Die Weltwoche” (The Week in the World) a well-known Zurich-based Swiss weekly. Translated are the four first and the final paragraphs.

WELTWOCHE, October 10, 2009

Pseudonym Shakespeare
Research proves: The author William Shakespeare was no real person. The name was the pseudonym of the 17th Earl of Oxford.”
By Daniele Muscionico.

Scientists have run out of their wits over authorship studies. Historians muted into intriguers, biographers into denunciators – for nearly 150 years the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a play of Shakespeare: a comedy of errors.

Shakespeare, this world-famous literary figure, was a man of whom nothing was known. A bust in Stratford – stone has no tongue. Six signatures in his own handwriting – but how cramped and clumsy! There is not very much more to prove his existence. From whence did he take his knowledge of the Italian language and landscape? A common player would at best have traveled as far as beyond the city walls of London. Could he write at all? When he arrived in the capital, ten of Shakespeare’s plays already belonged to the repertory of the playing company of which he became a member.

Suspicions have long been uttered: The glover’s son and part-time player Shakspere of Stratford, who created his works out of the blue and the genius Shakespeare embody two incommensurable types of human existence.

A journey to the otherworld sheds light on the enigma: Shakespeare was the pseudonym of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, a favorite at the court of Qeen Elizabeth I. Such is the thesis the Shakespeare expert Kurt Kreiler unfolds in his recent book. In a fascinating circumstantial novel he ennobles the most tenacious criminal case of literary history into a pleading for a Forgotten: Edward de Vere (1550-1604).

. . .

But in Stratford the efforts to fixate the name are going on, an open secret. What to tell the many millions of visitors on pilgrimage to their Saint? How to explain the uniqueness of the genius if suddenly it leaked out that not a burgher of the town but an aristocrat was the One? All’s well that ends well? The wish is father to the thought.

Folger “new media” submissions to be reviewed on Web

The Folger Shakespeare Library will conduct an “open review” of essays submitted for a special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly, themed “Shakespeare and New Media”.

For Shakespeare critics and scholars, among the most significant consequences of media change will be transformations in how we communicate about our work and publish new research. In keeping with the topic of its special issue, “Shakespeare and New Media,” Shakespeare Quarterly is conducting an experiment in open peer review which will apply only to the special issue. After the initial editorial evaluation, authors will be invited to opt into the open review process. For those who do, their essays will be posted online for public commentary and feedback by the journal’s readers. Authors may respond to this feedback before submitting their revised essays for final selection by the editors. (Authors who decline the open review and opt for a traditional review will not be penalized in the selection process.)

Source: Folger Shakespeare Library

The Library is working with MediaCommons, a digital network dedicated to promoting scholarly discourse about media studies and the digital humanities, on this project.

Deadline for “Shakespeare and New Media” essays is Jan 15, 2010. The open review period will run March 1 through May 5, 2010. The Folger recommends contacting editor contact Katherine Rowe at krowe@brynmawr.edu for information about the special issue “Shakespeare and New Media” or about Shakespeare Quarterly.

Authorship “expert” on BBC-TV show

De Vere Society member Malcolm Blackmoor reports on BBC-TV series “It’s Only a Theory” featuring Stratfordian Stanley Wells.

Purring & Preening from Professor Wells
Malcolm Blackmoor

Stanley Wells had a free run and a triumph last night, October 20, 2009, on a tv programme called “It’s only a Theory”. The show is a lightweight entertainment in which someone has a few minutes to propose a theory to three panelists and then, after a few questions, they give or don’t give it an official stamp.

I started watching it by chance and, after someone with a modification to the chaos theory, to my amazement Professor Stanley Wells arrived. (“It’s Only a Theory” Episode 3, 2009)

It was a superb assured performance as nobody challenged or asked for proof on anything Wells said. He, as usual, implied that Stratfordianism is totally supported by evidence and he wasn’t asked what that evidence was – which is the brilliant sleight of hand they use because the general public has no idea that there is no evidence, and he wasn’t made to face anything in Diana Price’s book. (See Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography by Diana Price.)

Whilst assuring everyone that it was possible to have “an excellent education” in Stratford, accusing doubters of snobbery and using Oxford’s death date as a comedy brush off, (and taking longer to rubbish the case for Marlowe), he happily yielded the possibility of collaboration early and late. This all took about five minutes as the programme has a few “rounds” in half an hour.

For that reason the voting was:

One person agreed with Wells because he didn’t want to take the chance of Wells having a stroke if he didn’t.

Another agreed because he was attracted by the idea of accepting one theory that destroyed hundreds of others.

The third person disagreed because she was intrigued by the collaboration idea and wanted to know more.This was Kirsty Young, a most able broadcaster and a possibility for further enlightenment.

It is, as I said, a lightweight programme but will have been seen by many people who could have been presented with basic disagreements to Wells, had anyone known anything about it.

Oh he was confident, funny, smart and lively and in a very good mood.

Something about ‘cudgeling the wretch . . . .” (Henry IV Part One – first tavern scene ?)

I happened to have my hard disc/DVD recorder switched on so I could then rewind and record it. Maybe it should be played at the next De Vere Society meeting to allow us to rehearse the questions that would have wiped the confident smirk from his face, and left my cats as the only purrers in the room.

SF/SOS joint conference Nov. 5-8 Updated schedule

Shakespeare Authorship Conference
Houston, Texas
November 5 -8, 2009

See abstracts of papers at: http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=138

Schedule of events

Thursday, November 5
1:00 – 1:30 Registration
1:30 – 1:45 Welcome and Introductions – Alex McNeil and Matthew Cossolotto
1:45 – 2:45 Cheryl Egan Donovan – Oxford as Shakespeare in the 21st Century
2:45 – 3:45 Ron Halstead – The Influence of the Family of Love on the Theme of Forgiveness in Measure for Measure
3:45 – 4:00 Break
4:00 – 5:00 Ebru Gokdag – Easing Elizabethan’s Turkophobia Through Othello
5:00 – 6:00 Panel Discussion – Oxfordian Think Tank: Felicia Londre, Robin Fox, Roger Stritmatter and John Shahan

Friday, November 6
8:00- 9:15 Shakespeare Fellowship Annual Meeting
9:15 -9:30 Break, Greetings and Announcements – Bonner Cutting
9:30 – 10:00 Roger Stritmatter – Brief Chronicles
10:00 – 11:00 Ren Draya – Music and Songs in Shakespeare’s Plays: Othello
11:00 – 12:00 John Hamill – A Spaniard in the Elizabethan Court : Don Antonio Perez
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch Break
1:00 – 2:00 Ron Hess – All the World’s a Stage: Did Shakespeare Kill Don Juan?
2:00 – 3:00 Matthew Cossolotto – By Death Departed: Marking the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s Posthumously Published Sonnets
3:00 – 3:30 Michael Egan – Discussion on The Oxfordian
3:30 – 4:00 Break with Snacks
4:00 – 5:00 Roger Stritmatter – The de Vere Geneva Bible: A Rosetta Stone in the Shakespearean Question
5:00 – 6:00 Keir Cutler – Is Shakespeare Dead?

Saturday, November 7
8:00- 9:15 Shakespeare Oxford Society Annual Meeting
9:15 – 9:30 Break, Greetings and Announcements – Richard Joyrich
9:30 – 10:00 Daniel Wright – The Inauguration of the World’s First Academic Centre for the Investigation of the Shakespeare Authorship Question: What the SARC Offers to Amateur and Professional Scholars Alike
10:00 – 11:00 Richard Whalen – The Influence of Commedia dell’Arte in Shakespeare: Italian Theater Unknown in England but Known to Oxford
11:00 – 12:00 John Shahan – Declaration of Reasonable Doubt: Strategy Implications for Oxfordians
12:00 – 1:30 Hosted Lunch & Registration of Teachers and Students for afternoon session
1:00 – 1:30 Scott Evans – Readings from First Folio
1:30 – 2:30 Keir Cutler – Teaching Shakespeare
2:30 – 3:30 Frank Davis – A Comparison of Contemporary Signatures with those of William Shakspere
3:30 – 3:45 Break with Snacks
3:45 – 4:45 Alex McNeill – Is Shakespeare in Jeopardy?
4:45 – 5:00 Break
5:00 – 6:30 Hank Whittemore – Shakespeare’s Treason

Sunday, November 8
8:00 – 8:15 Coffee
8:15 – 8:30 Announcements- Bonner Cutting
8:30 – 9:30 Marty Hyatt – Heaven’s Sweetest Air
9:30 – 10:30 Earl Showerman – Troilus and Cressida: Shakespeare’s Early Homeric Political Allegory
10:30 – 10:45 Break
10:45 – 11:45 Paul Altrocchi – Searching for Shakespeare’s Earliest Published Works
11:45 – 12:00 Break
12:00 – 1:00 Banquet and Awards Presentation
1:00 – 2:00 Thomas Regnier – Legal Imagery in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Shapiro at National Arts Club May 17, 2010

Columbia professor James Shapiro has added an appearance sponsored by The Shakespeare Guild at The National Arts Club in New York City to the promotional tour for his book about the Shakespeare authorship controversy, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, debuting in April 2010. The National Arts Club website says events are for “members only and their guests”.

May 17, 2010 – Monday at 8:00pm
Speaking of Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Guild
Tickets: $30 ($25 for members)
National Arts Club
New York, NY

Shapiro will also speak at the 92nd Street Y in New York City and at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. as reported earlier:

April 16, 2010 – Friday at 7:30pm
Folger Lectures
Tickets: TBA
Folger Library
Washington, DC

May 2, 2010 – Sunday at 11:00am
Books and Bagels Series
Tickets: $35 (some $10 tickets set aside for 35 and younger)
92nd Street Y
New York, NY

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro:
Simon & Schuster, April 6, 2010
Hardcover, 384 pages
ISBN-10: 1-4165-4162-4
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-4162-2

Vote today

To improve readability of the SOS blog, we are testing a new design based on the WordPress “Simpla” by Phu Ly. Please weigh in with your preference below or email linda.theil@gmail.com. Thanks for your help!

Hanno Wember review of Der Mann

German correspondent Hanno Wember offers an extensive review of Kurt Kreiler’s Der Mann, der Shakespeare erfund: Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) (The Man who Invented Shakespeare: etc.) on Mark Anderson’s Shakespeare by Another Name blog: http://shakespearebyanothername.blogspot.com/2009/10/news-from-germany-ein.html

Wember discussed Kreiler’s earlier work in the Anderson post:

Kreiler published earlier “The Poems of Edward de Vere” (Verlag Laugwitz, 2005), a bilingual English – German edition. By this he proved to be an excellent translator of poetry.

“Fortunatus im Unglück, Die Aventiuren des Master F.I” (Insel, 2006) . A German translation of the anonymous “The Adventures of Master F. I.” In an 80 p. comment he shows that it is an early work of Edward de Vere. This was really something new and in “Der Mann…” Kreiler referred several times to this finding.

In 2003 he wrote a feature-essay (a satire) “Der Mann mit dem Eber” (“The man with the Boar”) in “Neues Shake-Spear Journal”, a German Oxfordian yearbook, published since 1997, (editors Laugwitz and [Robert] Detobel).

Wember said he would expect more reviews during the Frankfurt Book Fair, Oct. 14-18, because Kreiler’s publisher, Suhrkamp/Insel is “first rank”.

Emmerich casting now for March shoot

2012 director Roland Emmerich confirmed in an October 9 interview with Heather Newgen in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that he is currently casting for a film about the Shakespeare authorship question (variously referred to as Anonymous and/or Soul of the Age) that he will begin to shoot March 22.

Newgen: What is it about?
Emmerich: It’s about how it came to be that William Shakespeare was not the author of his plays. It’s not Marlowe, it’s De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. It’s kind of like a political thriller. It’s about who will succeed Elizabeth and the cause of that thriller, the Essex Rebellion, we take on and we learn how the plays were written by somebody else.

Interview at: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=59905