An international cast of Oxfordian scholars convened online Saturday, April 10, 2021, for the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s Spring Symposium celebrating the birthday of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, the man behind the mask of “Shakespeare.” The event was free and open to the public, presented live via Zoom.
Video recordings are available here on the SOF Youtube channel. Read the SOF news article here recapping the success of the symposium.
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
The Shakespeare Attribution: Information, Misinformation, and Changing Opinions
The co-hosts of this free webinar are filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, M.F.A. (hosting from Boston) and SOF Secretary Earl Showerman, M.D. (from Oregon). The unifying theme is the problematic reception of the authorship question by the academy and the public.
As expressed by Michael Dudley: “The Shakespeare authorship question — the proposition that these plays and poems have for centuries been attributed to the wrong person — is treated with unique disapprobation in the academy, almost universally excluded from scholarly
curricula and inquiry.”
Steven Sabel’s interview with Dr. Showerman on the March 17 podcast episode of “Don’t Quill the Messenger” previewed the international cast of featured speakers. Some background information and syllabus materials have been made available by some individual speakers; see Symposium Syllabus Materials below, following the schedule. Several of the speakers, as noted, are past recipients of the Oxfordian of the Year Award. Information on all Oxfordian of the Year honorees is available here.
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
Welcome and Introduction by Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Dr. Earl Showerman
Kevin Gilvary, Ph.D. (President of the U.K.’s De Vere Society and 2011 Oxfordian of the Year) — 21st Century Fictional Biographies of Shakespeare (video here) — Dr. Gilvary edited Dating Shakespeare’s Plays (2010) (available online and recently reissued by Portsea Press) and wrote The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare (2018) (based on his Ph.D. dissertation) (see Symposium Syllabus Materials below).
James A. Warren (retired diplomat and 2020 Oxfordian of the Year) — The Oxfordian Movement and Academia (video here) — Warren edited the centenary scholarly edition of J. Thomas Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identified and the first collection of Looney’s articles and letters. In his forthcoming new book, Warren examines the effect of Looney’s landmark on Shakespearean studies over the past century.
Michael Dudley, M.L.I.S., Master of City Planning (Community Outreach Librarian at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) — The Stratfordian Belief System, Epistemic Injustice, and Academic Freedom (video here) — Dudley has previously delivered lectures on his research into the lived experience of “Becoming an Oxfordian,” as well as a TEDx talk, “Liberating Shakespeare.”
Julia Cleave, M.A. (Oxford University) — “Excellent. I smell a device.” Shakespeare makes sport with a colourful cast of Queen Elizabeth’s actual suitors: English, French, Spanish, German, and Swedish (video here) — Cleave, Trustee of the U.K.’s Shakespearean Authorship Trust and Fellow of the Temenos Academy, discusses how Shakespeare dared to present Queen Elizabeth on stage in the guise of Titania (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Portia (The Merchant of Venice), and Olivia (Twelfth Night).
Professor Roger Stritmatter, Ph.D. (Shakespearean scholar and 2013 Oxfordian of the Year) — Witty Numbers: Ben Jonson’s First Folio Jest in Context (video forthcoming) — Dr. Stritmatter is Professor of Humanities at Coppin State University (Baltimore) and author (among many scholarly publications) of The Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s Geneva Bible, (2001 Ph.D. thesis, 4th ed. 2015) (exploring parallels between biblical references in the works of Shakespeare and hundreds of hand-marked verses in Oxford’s personal copy of the Geneva Bible). His presentation here focuses on the hidden meaning of Jonson’s epigram “To the Reader” facing the Folio’s Droeshout engraving.
Dorothea Dickerman, J.D. — The First Thing We Do, Let’s Convince All the Lawyers (video here) — Dickerman started asking whether Will of Stratford really wrote the “Shakespeare” canon when she was ten years old. After graduating from Amherst College (summa cum laude) and the University of Chicago Law School, she became a partner in a major law firm, structuring real estate deals worth billions of dollars. She retired from law to research and write about the life of Oxford, hoping to answer her childhood question. Her talk describes a thoroughly researched trip to Italy with her Harvard Law School-educated husband, seeking to convince him that Oxford was the real Bard.
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, M.F.A. (film director, writer, lecturer, and 2019 Oxfordian of the Year), Professor Stritmatter, and Dr. Gilvary — Manuscript Circulation and the Band of Brothers (video here) — Eagan-Donovan, director of the acclaimed documentary Nothing Is Truer Than Truth (2018), leads a discussion on the circulation of manuscripts among Oxford’s literary circle.
Mr. Warren, Professor Stritmatter, and Dr. Gilvary — Oxfordian Publications Panel (video here)
Conferral of the inaugural Tom Regnier Veritas Award to Jennifer Newton (SOF Website Design and Technology Editor), by Julie Sandys Bianchi (SOF Trustee and Vice President) (at the 3 hour 52 minute mark of the full symposium video), was followed by concluding remarks by Ms. Eagan-Donovan and Dr. Showerman.
Symposium Syllabus Materials
Dr. Gilvary provided two handouts as background for his presentation at the following links: a summary of his book, The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare, and a summary of the known historical records relating to William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Professor Stritmatter provided a handout, at this link, as background for his presentation (which he recommends viewers read in advance of watching his presentation).
Future Ashland Conference Plans
From 2005 to 2015 three very successful Shakespeare authorship conferences were held in Ashland, Oregon, home of the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF). The SOF originally planned to hold the 2020 Annual Meeting and Conference in Ashland, but the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted our best-laid plans. The Annual Meeting was held online Sept. 26, 2020, followed by the Fall 2020 Online Symposium on Oct. 2–3, 2020 (webcast from Napa, California).
The OSF released plans in February 2021 that did not include any live-stage Shakespeare productions during 2021, forcing the SOF to again postpone our in-person Ashland conference. It is now scheduled for Sept. 22–25, 2022, at the Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites, which has worked flexibly through the pandemic and continues to guarantee the same favorable rates offered for 2020. Reservations may be made by calling the hotel at 541-482-8310 and requesting rooms secured by the SOF.
As in 2020, the SOF Annual Meeting in Fall 2021 will be held online, with a separate free virtual educational event comparable to the October 2020 and April 2021 Symposia. We will continue to explore all possible options for both in-person and online educational events in the future.
