Kamm’s anti-Eddy antics

Oliver Kamm’s anti-Eddy antics at the London Times Online assure Edward de Vere’s face and fame are spread ever more widely as the author of Shakespeare’s works. In a running commentary to Kamm’s latest foot-stomp “Great historical questions to which the answer is no 2” dated 28 January 2010, Kamm rebuked Heward Wilkinson for saying Strats and anti-Strats alike love Shakespeare, while informing Richard Malim that neither Malim nor any other anti-Strat  likes Shakespeare, either:

The sheer grubby irrationalism of this non-existent debate testifies to the point I’ve just made to your comrade: we don’t have a common passion for Shakespeare. To you and your comrades, the works are merely a vehicle to ransack – in a thoroughly amateurish manner – to buttress your belief in a conspiracy.

You gotta admit, the guy has a way with words and universal concepts. You go, Oliver!

SOS newsletter out, editor sought

The December 2009 issue of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter is being printed and will be mailed next week. This issue was delayed one month so that we could include coverage of the November 2009 Shakespeare Fellowship/Shakespeare Oxford Society Conference in Houston, Texas.

Highlights of this issue of the newsletter include:

• SOS Vice-president Richard Joyrich’s extensive report on the Houston conference,
• a fascinating article on “Rowe’s Shakespeare Biography” by Frank Davis
• an article on “The Two Shakespeares” — the Stratford monument and the First Folio frontispiece – by SOS President John Hamill,
• and a comprehensive financial report by SOS Treasurer Susan Grimes Width.

To support this important outreach of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, please become a member of SOS. You may join the organization online at: http://www.goestores.com/catalog.aspx?Merchant=shakespeareoxfordsociety&DeptID=27020

The March 2010 issue of the newsletter is currently underway. Once the March issue is published, I will step down as the SOS newsletter editor in order to concentrate on administering the organization’s Internet news site in this space, the Shakespeare Oxford Society News Online. If you have any questions or comments about online coverage, please contact me: Linda Theil at <mailto:linda.theil@gmail.com>.

SOS Second Vice-president for Publications and Public Relations Matthew Cossolotto is accepting applications and suggestions for the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter editor position now. Please address correspondence to him at <mailto:matthew@ovations.com> or write him at the SOS office at PO Box 808, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0808. The office may be reached by telephone at 914-962-1717.

Richard Paul and Jane Roe SARC to be named

Director Daniel Wright, PhD of the Shakespeare Authorship Research Center at Concordia University in Portland OR, announced that as part of the April 8-11, 2010 Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference, the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre at Concordia will be named in honor of Mr. & Mrs. Richard Paul Roe of Pasadena CA. The center will be christened the Richard Paul and Jane Roe Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre during a ceremony to be held at 5:30 p.m. April 9 at Concordia.

Wright said:

The gifts bestowed by this revered colleague and his wife, in sums totaling almost half a million dollars, have gone far to make the institutionalization of the Shakespeare authorship inquiry — in a permanent, academic, and non-political setting for the benefit of scholars on this campus and worldwide — a reality. I hope you will join us for the ceremony that will name the SARC after this esteemed couple during the 14th annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference.

For more information about the announcement, see “Shakespeare Center to be named . . . “

Click here for the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference Agenda, or here to register for the conference: https://acme.cu-portland.edu/ecomm/shakespeare/

New American publishes review of antiStrat book

Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

Raven Clabough reviewed Samuel L. Blumenfeld’s two-year-old book, Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: a New Study of the Authorship Question (McFarland, 2008), in yesterday’s edition of The New American Magazine, published bi-weekly by American Opinion Publishing — a wholly owned subsidiary of the John Birch Society.

Clabough’s review, “Who Authored the Shakespeare Canon?”, highlights the shortcomings of the Stratfordian authorship theory and places Blumenfeld’s Marlovian thesis within the controversy.

Clabough says:

Blumenfeld, like most anti-Stratfordians, makes use of the lack of information recorded about Shakespeare as a means to justify that Shakespeare could not have written the plays. Scholars cite Shakespeare’s failure to mention any manuscripts or books in his will to justify the claim that he could not have been the author, since the plays reflect an author who had access to historical, political, and geographical sources. Yet Shakespeare seemingly had none.

While it is certainly reasonable to question the authorship of the plays, given the lack of historical documentation, the solution proposed by Marlovians leaves several questions unanswered.

. . .

Despite the lingering questions, Blumenfeld’s book proves to be an intriguing read. His use of English history and close analysis of Marlowe’s plays are vital to the reader’s understanding of his theory, which is to convince the reader that Stratfordians have been duped for nearly 400 years.

Hogg to play Robert Cecil in Emmerich’s Anonymous

RADA actor Edward Hogg

Michael Symons of Hamilton Hodell Talent Management in London confirmed today that Royal Academy of Dramatic Art trained actor Edward Hogg will play Robert Cecil in Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous” set to begin filming in late March this year in Berlin.

“Anonymous” is set during the Essex Rebellion at the end of the long reign of Elizabeth I, when factions struggled over the succession. The queen’s counselor Robert Cecil cranked the levers of state, and his foster brother/brother-in-law, Edward de Vere seventeenth Earl of Oxford,  revealed the blood and glory as the author of the works of William Shakespeare.

An announcement today from Shooting Stars: Europe’s best young actors said Hogg will be honored at a Berlin film festival in February as the UK Shooting Star of 2010:

Edward Hogg was selected in November 2009 by an independent jury as the UK SHOOTING STAR 2010. Together with nine other young European stars, he will be presented to international professionals at the Berlinale from 13-15 February and honoured at a glamorous award ceremony in the Berlinale Palast by festival director Dieter Kosslick.

Oxfordian research repository

In response to concerns raised among Oxfordians regarding long-term plans for maintaining research materials online, Oxfordian Bill Boyle — owner of Shakespeare Adventure and creator of the New England Shakespeare Oxford Library and its attendant online service, the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR) — prepared the following message:

Long-term planning for Oxfordian research is the goal of the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR) and the New England Shakespeare Oxford Library, and also for the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre (SARC) at Concordia University. Since SARC is now officially open at Concordia, such long-term planning is one of the things we will be discussing this April 8-11, at the 14th annual Shakespeare Authorship Research Conference.

Dan  Wright has informed me that the seminar room and classroom in the SARC will be available all day April 7, 8 and 12 for groups to meet and discuss projects. I plan to hold a meeting during the conference on Thursday, April 7 to discuss long-term plans for the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR).

If you go to the Shakespeare Online Authorship Resources (SOAR) right now and search under “family” or “birth” you will see new entries that I have added with links to material on Nina Green’s The Oxford Authorship Site. If you search under “Willobie” (for Willobie his Avisa) you will find six entries that demonstrate how I envision SOAR working when there are many hundreds (or actually, thousands) of entries. These Willobie entries include two for research notes Barbara Flues sent me on Willobie two years ago, so as you can see how they are now easy to access. Files could just as easily be maintained at SARC/Concordia, or anywhere where one person agrees to be responsible and for which the minimum funds are available to keep an account open forever (and by minimum I think about $10/month would do it …text files are not that large). Keep in mind with SOAR the actual location of files is not important as long as they are maintained somewhere. Also, such files could be kept in protected, passworded directories if any  author/researcher so requests.

To access SOAR go to http://www.shakespeareoxfordlibrary.org and click on SOAR in the-left hand column.

Note also under the Willobie entiries in SOAR that two are for articles available only by subscription. Since the SARC has now created a new status of campus student called “SARC Associate Scholars” anyone with an interest in Shakespeare and/or the authorship question can be enrolled at the SARC for a small annual fee ($95.00) and gain access to an incredible amount of material, most especially JSTOR (the mother load of humanities research articles). I will be creating links to JSTOR materials that will use the SARC proxy ID, so that access is streamlined for anyone with a SARC ID. Of course, anyone with access to JSTOR can always get at these articles, but most such access is limited to universities and very big public libraries (such as the state of Michigan electronic library, Michigan eLibrary, at http://mel.org/) LT)

Go to this address for more info about the Shakespeare Authorship Research Center: http://www.authorshipstudies.org/databaseSubscriptions.cfm

Comments are welcome.

Bill Boyle

CORRECTION from Deb Biggs Thomas, MeL Coordinator, Library of Michigan: Just to let you know that the Michigan eLibrary does not have JSTOR as one of its statewide databases.  We do, however, have others in which Michigan residents may find humanities articles.  Best thing to do first is a full-text journal search; click on the button on the MeL homepage that says: Full Text Magazines and Journals.

Hughes on Sir Thomas Smith

Founder and former editor of SOS journal The Oxfordian, Stephanie Hughes, says Edward de Vere’s relationship with his remarkable tutor, Sir Thomas Smith, laid the groundwork for Shakespeare’s prodigious genius.

Hughes says:

Not only did Smith own most of the important works that scholars tell us were Shakespeare’s sources, but his personal interests, the passions that drove him, appear in Shakespeare in depth, astonishing knowledge for a poet and playwright, whatever his class, knowledge he throws about with abandon in allusions, similes and metaphors.  This is an approach to a subject that can only be taken by one who’s been steeped in a subject from earliest days so that it permeates all his thinking.

Read the entire essay, “More nine-inch nails in the Stratford coffin”, posted January 16, 2009 on Hughes’ Politic Worm website, where you can also explore Hughes’ research into Oxford’s Mentors.

First negative response to Kreiler’s Der Mann

Hanno Wember reported on the first negative review of Kurt Kreiler’s new book Der Mann der Shakespeare Erfand (The Man who Invented Shakespeare) on his German-language, Oxfordian website: Shake-speare Today. The book review appeared in the leading German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt General Newspaper) on January 12, 2010 under the title:  “Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele nicht?” (Who am I – and if so, how many am I not?) by Tobias Doring.

John Tanke of Berkeley CA translated Wember’s German essay into English, and the translation now appears in the English section of Shake-speare Today under the title, “The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) has just published a review of Kreiler’s book”

Wember said:

The “Frankfurter Allgemeine  Zeitung “(FAZ) has just published the latest in a series of reviews [of Kreiler’s book] in the German print media. Tobias Döring is the first to side with the man from Stratford-but only indirectly, and with a highly defensive rationale: “There’s no reason for doubt.”

Tanke has also translated another review of Kreiler’s book that appeared in Weiner Zeitung (Newspaper from Vienna) on December 19, 2009 titled “Vom Himmel gefallene Genies” (A Genius Out of the Blue) by Gerald Schmickl. The translation appears on the Shake-speare Today English language section under the title: A Genius Out of the Blue.

Tanke translates Schmickl’s commentary:

With a modicum of skepticism and common sense, it’s rather easy to accept the proposition that this actor and theatrical entrepreneur from Stratford, possessing relatively little means and little education, couldn’t, at the same time, have been a great dramatic genius. Unless of course one believes that a genius can fall from the sky, as it were-a notion that’s by no means incidental to the bourgeois theory of art. Like its very own Christmas miracle. And it’s for the same reason that this theory clings to such a notion so tenaciously.

SOS journal source of Globe & Mail story on authorship

A feature article about Amelia Bassano Lanier as the author of Shakespeare’s works —  “Was Shakespeare a Woman?” by Michael Posner — appeared in the Toronto newspaper Globe & Mail on January 15/16.

The article opens with the statement:

One of the most prestigious academic journals devoted to Shakespearean authorship studies has just added a new candidate to the centuries-old debate about who else plausibly might have written the works we associate with the little-educated merchant and actor from Stratford-Upon-Avon.

The journal is identified as The Oxfordian edited by Michael Egan, although the reporter misidentifies The Oxfordian publisher — the Shakespeare Oxford Society — as the “Oxford Society”.

The Globe and Mail reporter quotes Egan:

Mr. Egan of The Oxfordian allows that Bassano “was a remarkable woman with strong literary and court connections. But it’s a big step from that to Shakespeare. Unfortunately, Hudson’s evidence, such as [the] detailed knowledge of northern Italy, also supports other candidates. My view is that the Shakespeare mystery remains unsolved.”

The Oxfordian article that proposed Bassano-Lanier as Shakespeare is John Hudson’s “Ameria Bassano Lanier: a New Paradigm”. In the comments section attached to the Globe & Mail article, Hudson offers to defend his thesis :

In order to understand the research it is necessary to read the article in The Oxfordian titled ‘Amelia Bassano Lanier; A New Paradigm’. It is available on the Dark Lady Players web site http://www.darkladyplayers.com on the page for the Theater Practice. If anyone cares to read the article and has a substantive point to make I will be happy to respond to it.

A sidebar to the article lists and describes the major contenders in the Shakespearean authorship question: Oxford, Marlowe, Bacon and Derby; and cites London-based The Shakespearean Authorship Trust as one of the resources for the information.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/was-shakespeare-a-woman/article1433158/

Hogg in Anonymous?

RADA grad Edward Hogg

Yesterday Matt Goldberg at Collider.com reported a rumor that Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts graduate and Shakespearean actor Edward Hogg, 30, will perform in Roland Emmerich’s Shakespeare authorship film, Anonymous. Emmerich has said the film will be set during the Essex rebellion and will portray Edward de Vere as the secret author of Shakespeare’s works. Although Hogg’s character has not been named, he is too young to play Oxford at the turn of the century — but his dark beauty might suggest Southampton, or maybe Essex? Goldberg reports that Emmerich plans to begin shooting in March at Babelsberg Studios in Berlin.

Michael Symons of Hogg’s London management firm, Hamilton Hodell, said he can’t give information confirming the rumor, but he will keep us informed of future developments.