Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Newsletter editor Alex McNeil has released the Summer 2015 edition of the newsletter, now available online — under password — to SOF members. Non-members may gain access to the newsletter by joining the SOF. Sign up to become a member from our Join the SOF page.
The summer-edition, cover story, “An Hour with Wells and Edmondson,” is an interview of Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson by SOF trustee Don Rubin and his wife, poet Patricia Keeney.
The interview took place in Stratford, Ontario when Wells and Edmondson spoke there last year. This interview, along with a foreword by editor McNeil, is provided to all of our readers at “An Hour with Wells and Edmondson.”
In his foreword, McNeil said:
A couple of things caught my attention. First is Wells’s statement (made before the interview, and brought up in Rubin and Keeney’s first question) that he didn’t intend to read Mark Anderson’s Shakespeare By Another Name until it had been ‘categorically proven’ that the Stratford man was not the author of the Shakespeare canon. That reminded me of something I’d read years ago in a biography of Galileo. Turning his telescope to the night skies, Galileo was the first to see the moons of Jupiter, objects which obviously revolved around something other than Earth. When he invited a professor of mathematics at the local university to look through the telescope, the professor declined the offer because he knew that there was nothing to see.
In addition to SOF news, news notes, and book reviews, this summer issue features an article titled, “Is Ben Jonson’s De Shakespeare Nostrati a Depiction of Edward de Vere?” by Andrew Crider, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Williams College. Crider said:
Ben Jonson’s De Shakespeare Nostrati is usually regarded as a brief remembrance of William Shakspere of Stratford. Yet the person described by Jonson corresponds poorly with what we know from other sources of the life and character of the Stratford man. On the other hand, Jonson’s character sketch is fully consistent with the colorful biography of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Jonson described Shakespeare as an open and creative individual whose writing and whose conduct suffered from a lack of self-discipline. We have no evidence that either openness or poor self-discipline characterized Mr. Shakspere, but both qualities are major themes in de Vere’s biography.
Notes, reviews, and more
A news note, titled “An article in a recent issue of Shakespeare Quarterly Sheds Light on Odd Word in Loves Labours Lost,” is a fascinating report on work by Ross Duffin, author of the award-winning Shakespeare’s Songbook published in 2004. The note begins:
An article in a recent issue of Shakespeare Quarterly was picked up by many media outlets, including Live Science.com and several newspapers. In the SQ note, Ross Duffin, Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, makes a solid case that a one-word line uttered by Moth at the beginning of act 3 of Loves Labours Lost—“Concolinel”—is a mistranscription of the title of a then-popular bawdy French song, “Qvand Colinet.”
Reviews include:
- John de Vere: Thirteenth Earl of Oxford 1442 – 1513, The Foremost Man of the Kingdom, by James Ross. The Boydell Press. 2011. Paperback ed. 2015. Reviewed by Ramon Jiménez
- Unreading Shakespeare, by David P. Gontar New English Review Press, Nashville, TN, 2015 (available in paperback or in a Kindle edition at Amazon.com) Reviewed by William J. Ray
- Ver, begin by Ricardo Mena, with an introduction by Hank Whittemore, Self-published, 2015 (available in paperback or in a Kindle edition at Amazon.com) Reviewed by William J. Ray
An article about estate planning titled, “Making a Planned Gift to the SOF: Taking a First Step” is condensed on our Ways to Give page.
Editor McNeil said:
In each issue I try to include a good mix of articles — up to 3000 words or so— book reviews, news notes, and official announcements from the SOF. Three-thousand words is not necessarily the maximum length for an article; sometimes we’ve run an article in two parts in consecutive issues. I’ve been fortunate to have a surplus of good articles for each issue of the newsletter, which means that some items have to be cut. So for those who may have submitted something quite a while ago, that doesn’t mean I won’t get to your article!
Keep up to date using the SOF website
SOF president Tom Regnier reported that changes have been made to the conference agenda since the newsletter went to press. For an up-to-date agenda, check the “2015 Ashland Conference Agenda” page on this website. Regnier said, “Conference attendees will receive a printed program with the latest schedule when they arrive at the conference.”
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