Press Release - October 19, 2004:

Conference will observe 20^th anniversary of The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Atlanta-native Charlton Ogburn, Jr. and 400^th anniversary of the death of Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford, alias "William Shakespeare"

SILVER SPRING, MD – OCTOBER 19, 2004 – The Shakespeare Oxford Society (SOS) will hold its 28^th annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, October 28-31, 2004, at the DoubleTree Hotel Buckhead.

Atlanta was selected as the host city to recognize the 20^th anniversary of the publication of The Mysterious William Shakespeare, the seminal book by Atlanta-native Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998). The book argues that Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford, is the true author behind the pseudonym of "William Shakespeare." Mr. Ogburn – author of numerous other works including The Winter Beach, The White Falcon, and The Marauders – donated his collected papers to Woodruff Memorial Library at Emory University in Atlanta.

Atlanta-based actor, Christopher Paul of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company, will speak at the conference about the death of Edward de Vere’s father, the 16^th Earl of Oxford, as it relates to Hamlet. He will later perform Claudius’s soliloquy from Hamlet.

Mr. Paul comments: "Knowing Shakespeare’s plays were written from the perspective of a high-ranking nobleman and court insider, and that they were based largely on actual events and individuals, aids the acting process by enabling me to recover the author's original psychology and purpose. As a result, I feel I can present modern audiences with a more accurate portrayal of characters and situations in the plays."

As a member of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company, Mr. Paul has performed a variety of Shakespearean roles, including the Ghost and Priest in Hamlet, Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, Escalus in Measure for Measure, and Gremio in The Taming of the Shrew.

The three-day conference highlights 21 speakers from the US, England and Germany, including best-selling authors Hank Whittemore (author of CNN: The Inside Story and the forthcoming The Monument: 'Shake-Speares Sonnets' by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, presenting a new theory to explain the 154 verses) and Joseph Sobran (Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time).

"After 400 years of attributing the plays and poems to the wrong person," commented SOS President and Savannah resident Frank Davis, "the Society believes it is time, at long last, to honor the true author of these immortal works. We’re especially pleased to hold our conference in Atlanta as a tribute to Charlton Ogburn."

Ogburn’s 1984 book is widely credited with rekindling popular interest in the case for Oxford-as-Shakespeare, leading to a 1987 moot court on Shakespeare’s identity at American University in Washington D.C. The "trial" was presided over by Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun, William Brennan Jr., and John Paul Stevens. (For additional background on the moot court, see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shakespeare/debates/americanudebate.html and http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/mootcour.htm)

Justice Blackmun is quoted in the introduction to the 1992 second edition of The Mysterious William Shakespeare: "If I had to rule [today] on the evidence presented, it would be in favor of the Oxfordians."

Justice Stevens followed up on the 1987 moot court by writing an incisive essay on the authorship issue for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review ("The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction," UP Law Review, April 1992. http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/stevens.htm).

The Alumni Association of the University of Chicago awarded Justice Stevens its 2002 Alumni Medal. His former law clerk, Edward Siskel, made the following observations about Justice Stevens in the University of Chicago Magazine: "Despite his busy schedule on the Court, Stevens has never abandoned his love for literature … [A]lways the iconoclast, Stevens is not content to accept the received wisdom with respect to the authorship of Shakespeare's works. He is part of that small but growing group of scholars who contend that Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, is the true author of the Shakespeare Canon." (See http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0208/features/business-print.html.)

There is a distinguished history of doubting the so-called "orthodox" theory that attributes the works of Shakespeare to William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon. The list of noted Stratford doubters or Oxford supporters over the years includes Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Henry James, James Joyce, Charlie Chaplin, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, and Sir Derek Jacobi.

As historian David McCullough wrote in his foreword to The Mysterious William Shakespeare: "The strange, difficult, contradictory man who emerges as the real Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is not just plausible but fascinating and wholly believable. It is hard to imagine anyone who reads the book with an open mind ever seeing Shakespeare or his works in the same way again."

The Shakespeare Oxford Society has posted two informative "Top 10" lists  on its website: Top 10 Reasons To Doubt The Conventional Theory That William Shakspere of Stratford Wrote the Works of "Shakespeare" and Top 10 Reasons to Believe Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, Was the Author Known to History as "William Shakespeare." Please visit www.shakespeare-oxford.com.

About the Shakespeare Oxford Society

Founded in 1957, the Shakespeare Oxford Society is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization. Its mission is to research, publish and facilitate debate on the evidence regarding Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), as the author of the works of William Shakespeare. For more information about the Shakespeare Oxford Society, please visit: www.shakespeare-oxford.com.

Matthew Cossolotto
Ovations International, Inc.
914-245-9721
matthew@ovations.com

Gary Goldstein
718-458-5675
gbgoldstein@earthlink.net