The Library of Congress, through its Office of Scholarly Programs, hosted two presentations by Peter Dickson (January 25th and March 11th) dealing with key issues relevant to the Shakespeare authorship dispute. The subject of the lecture, which offered a new perspective that may produce the solution to the authorship dispute, is suggested by its title, "Shakespeare's First Folio: A Response to the Tyranny of Buckingham and the Spanish Marriage Crisis of 1621-1623."
Until now, Oxfordians and Stratfordians (except for a few specialists like Willoughby, Greg, and Hinman) have ignored the First Folio as a serious subject of study. Dickson was drawn to this anthology after his review of works by Michell, Whalen, and Sobran for The Washington Post (August 17, 1997) suggested to him that there was something peculiar about the historical sequence beginning with Lady Pembroke's death in late September 1621 and ten days later the sudden registration of Othello, whose villain's name is the diminutive form of James in Spanish (Iago).
Dickson's research revealed further evidence of a full-court political vendetta, beginning with the fall of Bacon in May 1621, between Buckingham (the tyrannical royal favorite and King James' varlet) and the three popular earls (Southampton, Pembroke, and Oxford). This triumvirate tried to resist the dissolution of parliament and the King and Buckingham's plan to marry Prince Charles to a Spanish Princess, the first sign of what they perceived as a "creeping Catholicism'' about to engulf the throne, if not the nation, given the King's pro-Spanish foreign policy and inclination to soften restrictions on English Catholics.
In a timeline covering 1612-1624, Dickson argues that: 1) the decision by the King and Buckingham (Bacon's protege) to imprison Southampton and Oxford in mid-1621, followed by: 2) a final imprisonment of Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford, from April 1622 until December 1623 (with an initial plan to execute him) are both key acts in the Folio drama; the First Folio first appears in London book stores in December 1623.
He argues that for Oxfordians it is impossible to view the First Folio as merely a literary project. Even Stratfordians need to reassess their position since it was Charlton Hinman's landmark work, The Printing and Proof-reading of Shakespeare's Folio (1963), which proved that the project began much later than once believed, not in 1618 or 1620 but in 1622, perhaps as late as the month of May that year.
This means that the Folio project did not get started until the political-religious crisis in question had reached monumental proportions. Dickson believes that the historical sequence of events as shown in the timeline tends to confirm the intuition that the First Folio was a desperate effort by the Southampton-Pembroke-Sidney clique (the Anti-Spanish, Protestant faction) to preserve the Bard's plays as the nation's literary crown jewels.
Dickson's analysis also includes a discussion of the tabu subject of the possible Catholicism of the Stratford man and his family, perhaps even as late as 1613 when he purchased the Blackfriars's Gatehouse, a notorious center of the Catholic underground in London. Dickson did not try to resolve this issue but emphasized that since Hongimanm's Shakespeare: The Lost Years (1985), the major Stratfordian biographers have split over this religious issue. The matter of the true Shakespeare's true religious affiliations and beliefs is, of course, also a concern for Oxfordians.
The last two months of 1623, when the Spanish Marriage negotiations collapsed and the First Folio appeared, were a time of jubilation and emotion that exceeded that in 1588. The First Folio's late appearance in the midst of the dramatic climax to the Spanish Marriage Crisis begs for further explanation as to how this celebration of the incumbent Bard whose wife (Ann Hathaway) had died in August 1623 was so meager in 1623-1624, to say nothing about the total silence in 1616 when the Stratford man died.
Dickson has recently stated that, except for Roger Stritmatter, prominent Oxfordians appear uncomfortable with his research, perhaps fearing that the historical timeline will kill Oxford's claim. And indeed, the fact that King James planned to execute Henry de Vere (18th Earl of Oxford) does raise serious problems, but Dickson believes that, when taken as a whole ( including the Catholic Question), the evidence is more likely to both wipe out the Stratford man and to clinch the claim for Oxford, with the former as the cover-story in order to save the King's face when he had to release Henry de Vere after Buckingham and Prince Charles returned from the marriage negotiations in Madrid empty-handled!. The need to close ranks against the mortal enemy (Spain) after this national humiliation explains the continuation of a pre-existing concealment strategy.
Dickson believes that it is no mere coincidence that the public Buckingham-Southampton reconciliation and the decision to release Henry de Vere from the Tower took place only a few days before the First Folio printer, Isaac Jaggard finally visited the Stationer's Hall to register the 18 dramas that had never appeared in print.
This sequence also strongly suggests that the shift in political winds that confirmed the wisdom of critics of the Spanish Marriage (Southampton, Pembroke, and Henry de Vere) was a factor in the Folio publication process because there is no credible argument why Jaggard would have waited until just that moment to register half the Folio's plays after already having embarked on such a costly publication project.
The Globe in London, a replica of the Elizabethan theater, has invited Felicia Hardison Londre, former trustee of the Shakespeare Oxford Society, to lecture to visiting teachers in July, with one of the lectures to be on the case for Oxford as the true author of the works of Shakespeare.
Londre, who is curators' professor of theater at the University of Missouri, will be one of the faculty at the second annual workshop, "Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance." The workshop draws drama and English teachers from all over the world. Londre will also give lectures on "Shakespeare and the 1990s Culture Wars," using The Merchant of Venice in her discussion of the perceived or actual anti-Semitism in the play and its effect on modern productions.
Authorship issues are not new to the new Globe, which opened last year. Its first artistic director, Mark Rylance is a young actor and director who has stated that he does not consider Will Shakspere of Stratford to be the author of Shakespeare's works.
Londre will also take the authorship issue to the world congress of the International Federation for Theatre Research, which is meeting in Canterbury in July. Her lecture there on the culture wars of the l990s will also include the case for Oxford as the true author. Londre is one of several society members who are introducing the authorship issue to their fellow professors in academia at conferences. She also speaks to general audiences, most recently in December to a church-sponsored forum in Kansas City, Missouri, where she lives and teaches. Her latest book is a collection of essays on Love's Labour's Lost (1997, Garland).
A small contingent of Oxfordians and non-Stratfordians spent three days mixing with the Shakespeare establishment at its annual conference in Cleveland during the third week of March. They renewed old acquaintances and made new friends while gently pressing for a free and open inquiry into the authorship question in academia.
The Oxfordian challenge came up at least twice during the proceedings of the 26th annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, attended by about seven hundred professors.
In one session a professor suggested that Shakespeare is coming to stand for all early English authors as they are pushed out of the curriculum by modern concerns of gender, class and deconstruction. We know so little about Shakespeare himself, she said, that he is not associated with any particular point of view, and indeed the Oxfordians and others try to prove that he was not even the author of Shakespeare's works.
Professor Alan Nelson of the University of California at Berkeley, well-known to Oxfordian scholars for his archival work on Edward de Vere (while arguing against him as the author), delivered a paper on Humphrey Dyson and his library. He seemed at one point to argue that Dyson, like Shakespeare of Stratford, had an illiterate father and wife; worked with Oxford's associate, Anthony Munday; and yet fully accepted Troilus and Cressida as by William Shakespeare.
One of the small-group seminars brought together two of the leading editors of Shakespeare's Sonnets--Professors Katherine Duncan-Jones of Oxford University and Helen Vendler of Harvard (A review of their editions can be found on pages 18-19). Among the questions discussed were whether the ending of Venus and Adonis was tragic or merely pathetic, and whether Lucrece's suicide is the ultimate expression of revenge.
At the close of the seminar the hidden meaning of the dedication to the Sonnets was put on the table. A professor distributed photocopies of the dedication page and tried to elicit a group discovery of its hidden meaning. She noted its hourglass shape and suggested that the letters, like grains of sand, could flow from the top to the bottom. Time was running out, however, and she did not get a chance to explain her theory to everyone's satisfaction. Many left the room mystified ( See page three for an alternative theory on the dedication).
Before the seminar began Professor Duncan-Jones had sought out Diana Price of Cleveland to compliment her on her article regarding Dugdale's sketch and Hollar's engraving of the monument at the Stratford church. (Price's paper was reviewed in the Fall 1997/Winter 1998 Newsletter).
Other Oxfordians and non-Stratfordians at the conference were John Price Jr. and Richard Whalen, past presidents of the Shakespeare Oxford society; Gerald Downs of Redondo Beach CA, who discussed his workon the King Lear texts with leading scholars; Roger Parrish of Hayesville OH; and Pat Dooley of Cleveland. The book exhibit included Oxfordian books by society members Felicia Londre, Joseph Sobran and Whalen. Featured at the opening reception was a wind ensemble led by a society member, Dr. Ross W. Duffin of Shaker Heights OH, who has also presented on Oxfordian matters musical at society conferences.
SOS Vice President Aaron Tatum visited with German Oxfordian and co-editor of the Neus Shake-Speare Journal Robert Detobel in January while visiting his wife's family in Munich. Detobel, a resident of Frankfurt and a professional translator, brought hundreds of pages with him for an all-day meeting.
He told Tatum about several projects he has been working on in the Frankfurt library, including ones involving copies from Robert Greene's Mamillia, The Second Part and Harvey's Speculum Tuscanismi (the longer version published in his letter-book), a Burghley letter to Walsingham that he's never seen quoted by Oxfordians, and material from the calendar of state papers in 1599 involving testimony from a spy who drew out John Pole, a follower of the Stanleys.
The Greene project, Detobel maintains, shows that there was cooperation between de Vere and Greene as a repartee to Harvey's libel. A parody exists there, he believes, on Harvey's Speculum.
Burghley's letter, dated five days before Oxford received his annuity, adds to Ward's theory that it was Walsingham who managed the formation of the Queen's Men in 1583.
The state papers provide a bit of testimony from Pole who, while ensconsed in Newgate, said that "the Queen wooed the Earl of Oxford, but he would not fall in." The statement was given on 25 July 1587.
Among his other projects are a paper aiming to prove that the author of The Merchant of Venice can only have been the Lord Chamberlain (Hunsdon or, as expected, Oxford), and work on Nashe and "apis lapis" and "The Importance of Being Honest," which appeared in the Neus Shake-Speare Journal as of late last year.
He has provided Tatum with electronic copies of all his work, which he says can be shared with any willing researchers. Interested parties should contact Tatum directly.
The German Oxfordian contingent is quite enthusiastic and energetic, reports Tatum. A television program will be filmed later this year for Swiss, Austrian and German TV stations, and there is some interest again from Germany's second largest magazine, Focus, in doing an authorship article later this year.
A simple albeit unsophisticated cipher has been discovered in the dedication to Shake-speares Sonnets that states that "EVER" was the author. (Dedication page image courtesy of Raeto West)
The discovery was made by John M. Rollett, a retired physicist in England, who published his findings in the autumn 1997 issue of The Elizabethan Review. In his article Rollett explains how the layout of the awkward and obscure text, all in capital letters, led him to the cipher.
For no textual reason periods separate the words and initials of the dedication, and the lines are printed in three blocks, each an inverted pyramid (See illustration). The layout seemed to Rollett to invite counting. The top block has six lines, the next has two and the bottom one has four. If 6-2-4 is the key to the cipher, the message could be revealed by the sixth word, followed by the second after that, and the fourth after that, and the sixth after that, etc., counting each initial as a word and hyphenated words as two. The hyphen is unusually low, almost like a period. This 6-2-4 counting yields: "THESE SONNETS ALL BY EVER THE FORTH." And, as it happens, 6-2-4 also describes the number of letters in "Edward de Vere." Cryptologists would consider this cipher as relatively unsophisticated: it simply takes words at regular intervals and the key is found in the format. This unsophistication can be seen as a virtue or a weakness.
Oxfordians, of course, find "ever," or a variant, in contexts in Shakespeare's works where it seems to identify the author as "E. Ver," that is, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. For example, in sonnet 76 Shakespeare says, "That every word doth almost tell my name."
Rollett has also found "HENRY" and "WR...IOTH...ESLEY" in the text of the dedication when it is written in two "arrays." An array is a rectangle similar to a crossword puzzle layout but without blacked squares. The name of Henry Wriothesley, the third earl of Southampton, who many suggest was "Mr. W.H." of the dedication, appears in an array with lines of fifteen letters across and one with eighteen letters. Such arrays are standard methods of encrypting messages. To judge the likelihood that his method would produce a hidden message Rollett consulted books of cryptography. He calculates the odds in the millions or billions for a encrypted message that is specific to the authorship controversy and the identity of Mr. W.H.
In a similar article in The De Vere Society Newsletter (February 1998) Rollett says he discovered the 6-2-4 cipher in 1967 before he knew about Edward de Vere as a possible author of Shakespeare's works. Not until he read Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality two decades later did he see the significance of his finding and of the word "EVER" years earlier. Then he went on to test various arrays of the 144 letters in the dedication. The Times of London, in a major article on New Year's Eve, reported on Rollett's work with arrays.
Ever since the Baconian ciphers were largely and loudly discredited earlier in the century, authorship scholars have been wary of ciphers and cryptography. Rollett's method of investigation, however, seems to have been quite cautious and thorough. He says four specialists in cryptography reviewed his manuscript. His published work will probably require independent testing and validation by recognized authorities before Stratfordians (and some Oxfordians) will take it seriously. One difficulty is that his cipher solution requires reversing the initials "W.H." and taking "EVER" as standing for "E. Ver," the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. (John Ogilvie has suggested in the same De Vere Newsletter that the "THE FORTH" could refer to Oxford as the fourth in his family to use the Bolebec crest, a lion shaking a broken spear.)
Even Stratfordian professors recognize the possibility of ciphers in Shake-speares Sonnets. In her edition of the Sonnets Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones notes that Jonson mentions a cipher in his dedication of his Epigrammes (1616) to William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke. Jonson notes that his own epigrams are not dangerous and that he had nothing on his conscience "to expressing of which I did need a cipher." Duncan-Jones suggests that Jonson may be alluding "to some other, more compromising or 'dangerous' form of poetry, which had indeed required use of 'a cipher."' She thinks the passage might refer to Shake-speares Sonnets of 1609, but carries the thought no further.
Professor Helen Vendler also sees ciphers. In her Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets she says, "There is always something cryptographic in Shakespeare's sonnet-surfaces--sometimes literally so, as in the anagrams of 7, or as in the play on "vile" and "evil" in 121, but more often merely an oddness that catches the eye and begs explanation." She does not, however, even mention the enigmatic dedication.
Rollett is not alone in finding a cipher in the dedication. John Michell in his 1996 book Who Wrote Shakespeare? states flatly that Thorpe knew who the author was and conveyed it in an anagram on the phrase "our ever-living" in the dedication. The letters in the phrase can be rearranged to read "Vero Nil Verius," but a final "G" has to be substituted for a final "S" and "Nil" substituted for "Nihil." Oxford's family motto is usually written "Vero Nihil Verius," although Michell says it was written with "Nil." (He also votes for a William Hall as being Mr. W.H.).
Michell's anagram has only thirteen letters and one of them is changed. Usually cryptologists require a longer phrase if the anagram, which must use all the letters and no more, is to be considered valid. In their book The Shakespeare Ciphers Examined (1954), generally considered quite authoritative, William F. and Elizabeth S. Friedman cite approvingly a mathematician who says the minimum length for an anagram should be about twenty-five letters in order to eliminate the possibility of a chance solution or of alternate solutions. That's twice the length of Michell's anagram.
The Friedmans also point out that if a text begins to yield more than two or three hidden messages, the chance that the author of it actually encoded several messages in the same text begin to diminish rapidly. If someone finds a third, seemingly valid cipher in Thorpe's 144-letter cryptic dedication to Shake-speares Sonnets, there will be serious doubts about the validity of any of them.
The Annual Meeting of the De Vere Society took place in London during the first weekend in February. DVS member Derran Charlton wrote to us that nearly half the current members of the DVS attended, including Society patron Sir Derek Jacobi. SOS member Gerit Quealy from New York was also in attendance.
Special events at this year's DVS meeting included a performance of a new Oxfordian play (Edward de Vere, by Elizabeth Imlay), and a tour of the Globe theatre, which included an hour's informal discussion with Artistic Director Mark Rylance.
Among the talks given this year was one by John Rollett on his work on the Sonnets Dedication, and one by Arthur Challinor, author of The Alternative Shakespeare (under the pseudonym Arthur Maltby).
The Christian Science Monitor for December 31st, 1997 carried a story about a new Shakespeare authorship book, this one from a Russian writer who is stoutly anti-Stratfordian, but who has settled on the Earl of Rutland as the true Shakespeare.
In The Game of Shakespeare author Ilya Gililov uses "careful textual analysis, detective work on ancient manuscripts, and some striking pieces of circumstantial evidence" to make his case.
For example, two of Rutland's classmates while he attended the University of Padua were Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern. He has also found that Rutland once paid "Shakespeare" 44 shillings (in 1612), and that the two brothers who built the Shakespeare memorial in Stratford also built Rutland's tomb, to a very similar design. Such details as these, especially the last, will have to be corroborated by other researchers.
The Monitor article dutifully reports the usual storyline that Shakespeare authorship stories are inherently unbelievable, quoting, for example Richard Wilson (of the University of Liverpool) who says authorship theories are "less respectable than ever."
Wilson further comments that attributing all of Shakespeare's plays to someone else is reading too much into the evidence, quoting from Anthony and Cleopatra that, "Sometimes we see a cloud that is dragonish."
However, later in the article a different scholar (Jonathan Sawday, an expert in Renaissance literature at the University of Southampton) is quoted as saying, "Most people now work on the assumption that all late 16th-century plays were collaborations--more like what we would call a theater workshop today ... You should think of Shakespeare as the character who put the whole process into motion."
Well-said, Mr. Sawday. Of course, Oxfordians already do think of Shakespeare as someone "who put the whole process in motion," although that key event in the history of Elizabethan theater occurred in the 1580s, not the 1590s, a reading of history which presents a major obstacle for Mr. Shaksper of Stratford.
On November 30th C-SPAN cablecast taped coverage of a Moot Court Trial originally held on June 4, 1997 in Washington DC. No, it wasn't a reprise of the 1987 Moot Court. It was instead a Trial of Richard III, held before three Supreme Court Justices (Ginsberg, Rehnquist and Breyer) in the Supreme Court Building. The event was organized by the Lawyers' Committee for the Shakespeare Theater in Washington.
As Oxfordians know, the Richard III story has intriguing implications for the authorship debate, since the central issue is whether or not the portrait of Richard III immortalized by Shakespeare is in fact true history or political propaganda designed to make the founding of the Tudor dynasty look good at the expense of Richard III.
Shakespeare's Richard III has a crook-back Richard ordering the murder of the young princes, and thus "deserving" of his fate at the hands of Henry Tudor. The verdict in this Trial was unanimous-evidence was insufficient to convict Richard of having had any role in the murders.
What was (to our knowlege) not reported about this Trial was one of the concluding comments from Justice Breyer. In finding Richard not guilty (and fingering Buckingham as the most likely culprit), Breyer remarked that he had been used to accepting Shakespeare's version of events, until, that is, he "discovered that Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford."
On October 30th Joseph Sobran came to town to take on three Stratfordians in a debate at Boston College. The debate had been arranged by Father Ronald Tacelli of Boston College and was sponsored by the College's St. Thomas More Society. Father Tacelli had read Sobran's Alias Shakespeare last spring and found himself so interested in the authorship issue that he went straight from being an interested observer to an activist.
The debate format called for Sobran to speak for thirty minutes, followed by five to seven minutes of rebuttal from each of the three Stratfordians, and then questions from the audience.
For Oxfordians in attendance the evening was quite interesting. Sobran's talk was similar to his appearance at the conference in Seattle earlier in October. In short, he built his case on the personal testimony of the Sonnets, and how the Sonnets and such "personal" plays as Hamlet resonate with parallels to Oxford's life. But it was remarks by the all three Stratfordians during their rebuttals that provided some of the evening's most interesting and quotable lines.
All three rebuttals covered the basic points anyone engaged in the authorship debate is familiar with, e.g. the chronology, the testimony of contemporaries that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, the impossibility of any conspiracy, the methodology of Oxfordians in using the works of Shakespeare as evidence and then quoting "selectively" from the works, etc.
Prof. Thomas Howard, who teaches undergraduate Shakespeare courses at BC, spent much time talking of how his "maverick personality half-wishes that Sobran were right," further commenting that "I'd be the first to be delighted if we found out that these [the Sonnets] were written by the Earl of Oxford," and concluding with "You [Sobran] have placed a burr under my saddle, but I still think I'm sitting on the horse."
Prof. Dennis Taylor (also from Boston College) then spoke, and after listing some basic questions he felt Oxfordians must answer, he turned to his current research for a book on Shakespeare that will explore the theory that Shakespeare [i.e. Stratford] was a secret Catholic. This would, he stated, then explain some of the mystery about the author's true feelings and about his shadowy whereabouts during the years of his greatest fame. His concluding comment was, "The English Catholic and Protestant split was a repressed trauma in English life [every bit as important] as Shakespeare and the Shakespeare authorship story ... unearthing the true story of Shakespeare might have a lot to do with unearthing that buried trauma."
The final Stratfordian to speak was also the most notable. Prof. John Tobin of the University of Massachusetts-Boston is co-editor of the new Riverside Shakespeare. Prof. Tobin was the most outspoken of the three in his defense of the Stratford story, and began by expressing his disappointment at how much time Sobran had been given compared with the three rebutters. He did praise Sobran for having written what he described as "the very finest argument for Oxford," but added that "he [Sobran] knows many, but not enough, of the facts."
Finally, then, he went on to make the usual points, giving much emphasis to the standard chronology as excluding Oxford altogether because of all the post-1604 plays. "For Oxfordians," he concluded, "the problem is 1604 and selective interpretation."
Prof. Tobin also made an interesting observation about the state of orthodox scholarship in the 1990s. He said, "It is a mistake to think of establishment Shakespeareans as closed-minded ... we are particulary interested in broadening the Canon ... [In the new Riverside Shakespeare] we included a new play (Edward III), and arguments in behalf of Shakespeare as a collaborator (Henry VI, Part I, Henry VIII, Two Noble Kinsmen, and even-surprisingly-Measure for Measure)." He did not mention The Funeral Elegy, which is also included in the new Riverside Shakespeare.
What was most notable throughout the evening for the local Oxfordians in attendance was that none of the three Stratfordians actually engaged the substance of Sobran's presentation, and all continued "not to engage it" even by the evening's end, as Sobran asked them more than once to do so.
Sobran's thesis? That Oxfordians can argue their case from the poems and plays of "their candidate," but that Stratfordians cannot. His final comment for the evening was, "I focused on two works (Hamlet and the Sonnets). Both point to Oxford. Show us they don't. Show us they point to Willie."
Instead, as was so amply demonstrated by Prof. Tobin, the Stratfordian arguments continually marshall the same small set of external facts that supposedly link the Stratford man to the theatre, and therefore, by default, must mean that all references to "Shakespeare" must be to the Stratford man.
Comments overheard afterwards confirmed that, for many in attendance, Sobran had made an effective presentation for his thesis and his opponents had not.
Yet another academic community has yielded to the surge of interest among educators and students for more information and reports on new research discoveries about the actual author of the works of Shakespeare. The twenty-eighth annual CAES (Committee for the Advancement of Early Studies) Conference, directed by Dr. Bruce Hozeski, convened on the campus of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana from October 17th-18th, and featured several presentations to conference attendees on the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
A brisk but entirely friendly interchange of opinion and argument among Stratfordians and Oxfordians punctuated the weekend's proceedings, but the highlights of the conference were the many fine papers (principally Oxfordian in thesis) read by graduate and undergraduate students of Dr. David Richardson of Cleveland State University. Other noted Oxfordians in attendance at the CAES Conference were Dr. Jack Shuttleworth, Chair of the English Department at the US Air Force Academy, and Dr. Daniel Wright, Chair of the English Department at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon (and also a Ball State alum).
Dr. Shuttleworth shared Oxfordian insights with skeptical Stratfordians in attendance at the conference, and Dr. Wright presented a paper entitled, "'A man is but what he knoweth': Why the Shakespeare Canon Cannot Be the Work of the Man from Stratford." Several open-minded Stratfordians were engaged by the discussions, debates, and papers read at the conference. As more walls of Stratfordian orthodoxy within academia continue to crumble, there is good reason, therefore, to hope for yet more captures of the keeps of academia by the bearers of the Oxfordian standard in months and years to come.
Prof. Richardson reports that the student panels on the authorship were among the best attended during the Conference, and that the atmosphere was quite open and positive. In fact, two of the Cleveland State graduate student participants (Jennifer Mattingly and James Maxfield) will be traveling to Concordia University in Portland next spring to present the results of their expanded studies at the Edward de Vere Studies Conference.
Dr. Wright noted that, while there were no "Damascus-like conversions [or] new Society members in evidence from his talk," he did find most of the professors he came in contact with to be receptive and interested. Several have already indicated that they will attend the De Vere Studies Conference next spring. Dr. Wright reports that the De Vere Studies Conference agenda is already quite full, with speakers from the ranks of Oxfordians plus Dr. Richardson's graduate students and several "non-Oxfordian" professors and teachers from around the country scheduled to appear.
The 21st Annual Conference of the Shakespeare Oxford Society was held in Seattle, Washington from October 12th to 15th, 1997. The following reports on Conference activities are adapted from conference coverage in the current issue (Fall 1997/Winter 1998) of the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter.
The Debate
As has been the case in recent years, a special public event kicked off the Conference weekend. This year it was a debate between Joseph Sobran, author of Alias Shakespeare, and Prof. Alan H. Nelson from the University of California-Berkeley, who has been researching the authorship question and the life of Edward de Vere over the past several years for a planned biography of de Vere.
Sobran, speaking first, skillfully presented the Oxfordian case in terms similar to those used in his Alias Shakespeare, emphasizing the strong personal autobiographical links in the Sonnets, Hamlet, etc.
While the tactic of arguing the autobiographical nature of the works is a familiar one, Sobran's approach breathes new life into it. This was particularly true when he was able to thank Nelson for all his recent research into Oxford's life, and in particular, to thank him for finding a heretofore unknown Oxford letter (to Lord Burghley in 1595), a letter in which Oxford refers to himself as a "lame man." Upon thanking Nelson, Sobran than immediately asked Alan if he thought the author of the Sonnets (who twice refers to himself as lame), was, in fact, lame? Nelson never did give a direct answer to this direct question.
Sobran has also developed some good lines in making the case for Oxford. For example, he quips that, if the works of Shakespeare were to be used as "testimony" in a court of law, the supporters of "William of Stratford" (as Sobran calls him, rather than Shaksper, Stratford man, etc.) suddenly invoke his "Miranda rights." Sobran notes that when lawyers argue over whether a document should be submitted in evidence, that generally means it can help one side and hurt the other. In the case of Shakespeare, what becomes clear is that Orthodoxy knows that the works can't help their man, in fact can only hurt him, and, further, they know the works can help Oxford.
"Appealing to the Shakespeare works is not a game two can play," Sobran said. "Oxford's partisans play it with gusto. William's partisans can't play it at all. Instead they play the dating game."
Nelson's debate presentation centered on his two years plus of research into Oxford's life, and numerous Elizabethan documents. He first made a number of comments on inaccuracies in Oxfordian research and in the biography of Oxford that has been developed over the years. He went on further to paint a harsh portrait of Oxford (his poetry is "dreadful," his behavior "disgusting," etc.). In short, Nelson's thesis is that Oxford was a mediocre poet and mediocre Latinist who couldn't spell, had a tin ear, owned few books, read few books, and whose contemporaries thought of him as not much more than a "minor" poet.
He responded to Sobran's points about appealing to the Shakespeare works themselves by stating that, "I have no interest in the parallels in Oxford's life and the plays." About the Sonnets he said that, "First the authorship of them must be proved, and [only] then are they interesting."
The second half of his presentation argued for William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author, presenting the usual documentary evidence to back up the historic attribution, such as the First Folio and the monument in Stratford.
To demonstrate what Nelson considers to be the critical difference between bona fide documentary evidence versus what he considers to be the inferior, speculative evidence that Oxfordians rely on, he showed the title pages of several different Elizabethan play quartos with handwritten annotations by Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels in the early 1600s. The annotations, Nelson emphasized, clearly indicate that Buc consulted "Shakespeare" about matters related to plays and playmakers, and since it is also known that he personally knew the Earl of Oxford, one must therefore conclude (as Nelson does) that Buc knew Shakespeare and Oxford were two different people.
During the question and answer session another interesting example of what is or is not documentary evidence came up with mention of Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. Nelson stated that Groatsworth is one of what he described as "puzzles in the documentary record."
"Other documents can shed light on them [the puzzles], but they can't shed light on anything else," he explained. "That's why I like to start with rock solid documents and then pick up the puzzles later."
Sobran quickly pointed out (as everyone in the audience also knew well) that Groatsworth with its "upstart crow" reference is almost a holy grail, cited faithfully in virtually every standard Shakespeare biography. Nelson responded that "There are much more important documents, such as the 1594/95 reference to Shakespeare, Burbage [etc.] ... In my biography of Shakespeare I'll start with 1594/95, not with his birth, not with anything else."
Exchanges such as this illustrate how difficult the whole authorship debate can sometimes be. When a Stratfordian debater can disown Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (and all the mainstream speculation that goes with it), it becomes just that much clearer how definitions about "documentary evidence" can indeed be in the eye of the beholder.
The Papers
There were eight papers presented this year, plus a number of special events such as the showing of the video interview with Charlton Ogburn, a slide show presentation by Katherine Chiljan, separate workshops for both teachers and newcomers, and for researchers, a Promotions Panel, readings from Alan Hovey's one man play Aye, Shakespeare!, a presentation by Mildred Sexton on Cymbeline just before Greenstage's production on Saturday night, and an update on research into Oxford's Geneva Bible by Roger Stritmatter.
Among this year's papers probably the most notable (and controversial) was "The Relevance of Robert Greene" by Oxfordian editor Stephanie Hughes. After several years of research and reading nearly everything Greene ever wrote, Hughes presented her thesis that Robert Greene may have been an earlier version of the Stratford man, that is to say not a writer himself (or perhaps not even a real individual), but rather a pen name that Oxford used for nearly twelve years, until abruptly discarding it in 1592 in order to launch the "Shake-speare" name.
Dr. Daniel Wright was impressive with his presentation on how Oxford's classical learning is mirrored throughout the Shakespeare Canon ("He Was a Scholar and a Ripe Good One..."). Wright covered much ground, and demonstrated how relatively easy it is to find rich veins of learning in Shakespeare, which in turn clearly makes the point that Shakespeare's breadth and depth of learning, when juxtaposed with the "self-taught" Stratford man, is a problem for anyone wishing to argue for Stratfordian authorship.
Indeed, Dr. Wright made this point perfectly when he read a selection from Geoffrey Bullough's master work Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. After first reading a typical list of the many sources for just one play (with some works often available only in a foreign language), Wright then read a section in which Bullough simply marvels at how Shakespeare seems to have remembered everything he ever heard [not read], and then, at just the right moment in his writing, whatever he needed just "floats up from his unconscious."
Joseph Sobran ("Shakespeare's Lost Poems") and Alan H. Nelson ( "New Light on the Historical William Shakespeare") both presented papers that complemented their respective presentations in the Thursday debate. Among some of the new light presented by Prof. Nelson was the title page to a quarto of Edward III which had a signature-William Shakespeare-on its verso side. Edward III is an apocryphal play that is now included as Shakespeare's in the new Riverside Shakespeare.
Mark Anderson spoke on "Strat or Strata: Merry Wives of Windsor as a case study in Oxfordian chronology," addressing the many layers of composition over time in the Shakespeare plays. Roger Stritmatter presented "By Every Syllable: Shakespeare's Mannerist Parable and the Authorship of Measure for Measure," in which he demonstrated another level of Shakespeare's art in writing this play in which the shadowy Duke actually mirrors the shadowy true author, Edward de Vere.
Elisabeth Sears presentation on "Harts, Hounds and Hedingham" dealt with Ovid and Shakespeare, presenting hard evidence that Oxford was the translator of The Metamorphoses, not Golding.
Finally, Dr. Edward Spencer spoke on "Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Cry from the Tomb." Dr. Spencer presented an updating of analysis first presented by Ralph Tweedle, who believed that the Sonnets as first published in 1609 contain word clues and other encrypted information about their true author, Edward de Vere.
The Speakers
Speakers this year all came from the ranks of current Society members and the Board of Trustees. Michael York's filming schedule unfortunately forced him to cancel his Friday luncheon appearance. However, a reading of Alan Hovey's one-man play Aye, Shakespeare! (moved from its Saturday evening slot) was an exciting and satisfying replacement. Actor John Bogar of Greenstage performed for approximately 20 minutes and gave his audience a feel for how Oxford's story can effectively be told through this popular theatrical form.
Randall Sherman spoke at the Saturday Banquet on his commitment to the authorship cause and how all Oxfordians can contribute. Sherman emphasized the importance to the authorship movement in having the Society continue to gain new members, and how important it can be to have members actively involved in promoting the authorship debate in their own locales.
The other two speakers this year were Christopher Dams, President of the De Vere Society, and William Boyle, Newsletter editor and webmaster for the Society's Internet Home Page. Dams reported on news about the De Vere Society's recent activities in England, but concluded his talk with a statement on the so-called "Prince Tudor" theory, telling his audience that the Society as an organization must be wary of going too public with the theory about Southampton's possibly being the son of Elizabeth and Oxford.
Boyle, during his talk the following day on "Oxford on the Internet," responded to Dams, noting that the Society Home Page carries virtually nothing about the theory. In concluding, he also noted that the history of the authorship movement has often been marked by controversial theories, and the Internet, for all the good it does in publicizing the authorship debate (and the Society), also magnifies such controversy. Debating controversial theories in this new "hothouse" atmosphere is inevitable, Boyle said, and we need to consider not "whether or not" to air controversies, but rather "how to air them."
The Workshops
One of the more recent additions to the regular conference agenda has been workshops for teachers and researchers. Through the workshops basic information can be provided for newcomers to the authorship debate, and more detailed information for those who are interested in contributing to it through either teaching or through original research. This year's workshops built on the success of last year.
The workshop for researchers was conducted this year by Dr. Daniel Wright, Director of the Edward de Vere Studies Conference, and Stephanie Hughes, editor of The Oxfordian. Dr. Wright, Ms. Hughes, and others in attendance shared news about research efforts currently underway by Oxfordians in America and abroad. Broad participation and support for Oxfordian researchers by participants was encouraged, and a host of areas where research and investigation to secure Lord Oxford's recognition as Shakespeare need to be conducted were suggested for and by interested parties in attendance.
The teachers workshop was presented by Robert M. Barrett (a teacher at Central Kitsap Junior High in Kitsap, WA) and Prof. David Richardson of Cleveland State University. The format followed by both Mr. Barrett and Prof. Richardson was to speak on their respective experiences teaching the authorship issue in the classroom. Since their experience ranged from junior high to college undergraduate to graduate level, there was no shortage of experience to draw on. Both presenters shared their practical assignments, readings and other resources as used in their classrooms.
Advancing the Cause
Another interesting conference event was the Promotions Panel conducted by Walter Hurst, Katherine Chiljan and Randall Sherman. The Panel presented information and strategies to enable Oxfordians to publicize and promote the authorship issue in their local communities. All three panelists in this instance had put together the highly successful Oxford Week in San Francisco last April.
Included in this session were a number of useful handouts based on the materials that had been prepared for the Oxford Week events. This included sample press releases, letters to local media, flyers and posters advertising meetings for local chapters, and agendas for meetings.
Walter Hurst was the primary speaker and shared his thoughts and experiences from Oxford Week with attendees. There has probably never been an authorship event quite like Oxford Week, which featured a full agenda of activities including lectures, debates, interviews in both print and on radio, and play performances.
In the weeks following Oxford Week twenty-five new members from the San Francisco and Sacramento area joined the Society, and local chapter meetings were heavily attended. One thing clearly learned during the week, Hurst said, is that there are many people out there who either already know something about the authorship debate, or who are ready to learn about it.
Ogburn Interview
A special highlight this year was the showing of a "rough cut" from the eleven hours of videotape shot over the Labor Day Weekend of an interview with Charlton Ogburn, Jr. at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina. The interview had been arranged by Society member Lisa Wilson after many months of negotiation. A team of five spent three full days in Beaufort working on the project: Lisa Wilson, Laura Wilson, Roger Stritmatter, Mark Ehling and Charles Hubbell.
Just before the screening a letter from Ogburn was read, thanking all those involved in the arrangements, especially interviewer Roger Stritmatter, and all those whose generous contributions made the taping possible.
It is expected that the finished videotape of the interview will be available next spring. It will be made available to members through the Blue Boar.