The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold!
The 2014 SOF conference in Madison, Wisconsin will likely be remembered as the conference of the down-filled comforters. Although the weather was brisk all weekend, and the medieval picnic before the play at the American Players Theatre in Spring Green was delightful, the superb performance of Much Ado required a truly committed love of the Bard. Temperatures plummeted, but Oxfordians whipped out their blankets and hunkered down.
Before the performance, Actors Equity member David Daniel who played Benedick gave a truly remarkable, close-up view of his world while conferees enjoyed an Elizabethan-inspired picnic provided by locavore chef Jeremy Lynch of Enos Farms.
Earlier on the third day of the conference, Alexander Waugh astounded those assembled with a well-reasoned and heavily documented paper on his discovery that Elizabeth’s palace at Hampton Court — where courtiers assembled to enjoy the plays of Shakespeare — was known as Avon. Waugh’s discovery allows an alternate view of Ben Jonson’s First Folio reference to Shakespeare as the “swan of Avon.” His paper is available to SOF members in the new edition of The Oxfordian 16. For information, see https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/the-oxfordian/
Waugh’s presentation was filmed and will be available on this site along with outstanding presentations by:
- Walter Hurst on Sabbioneta Italy
- Michael Delahoyde on Oxford’s Early Work
- Earl Showerman on Much Ado about Hercules’ Labors of Love
- James Warren on the Use of State Power in the Effort to Hide E. de Vere’s Authorship
- Newton Frohlich on his novel The Shakespeare Mask
