Michael Delahoyde, PhD, managing editor of the SOF journal Brief Chronicles, has released his Oxfordian edition of William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, available through CreateSpace, Amazon’s independent publishing platform.” Although this edition of Anthony and Cleopatra was originally conceived as one of several Oxfordian editions of Shakespeare plays under the general editorship of Richard Whalen, Delahoyde found it expedient to publish under his own imprint with the assistance of SOF webmaster Jennifer Newton as book designer.”
Delayhoyde said:
[Anthony and Cleopatra] was more or less done in 2011. CreateSpace was the recommendation from many people when I announced this edition could be ready for the conference and had to bypass Richard Whalen’s system. I’m very very happy, but Jennifer Newton is entirely responsible for the actual physical existence of this edition in that respect. I am well into work on Twelfth Night, and trust that the process will be extremely streamlined so that it can be in print within the year.
Delahoyde, a professor of English and humanities at Washington State University, said his editorial work on Anthony and Cleopatra provides detailed line-by-line annotations, and restores the play to the context in which it was written, the Elizabethan court:
I’d say there are two most significant Oxfordian features of the play: how much Oxford could see himself in Plutarch’s descriptions of Antony, and how much he fashioned Cleopatra after Queen Elizabeth, including many scenes matching Elizabeth’s high drama that he did not derive from his source. The play promises Elizabeth immortality, and it worked!
Oxfordian editions of Macbeth edited by Richard Whalen, and Othello edited by Ren Draya and Richard Whalen have been published under Whalen’s Oxfordian Shakespeare Series imprimatur at Llumina Press. Other editions are anticipated including a Tempest edited by Roger Stritmatter and Lynne Kositsky that Stritmatter recently confirmed is forthcoming, and Jack Shuttleworth’s Hamlet, which Whalen says is still in the works.
Although fellow originator of the series, Daniel Wright, PhD, is no longer active in the project, Whalen remains committed to the concept:
Although we’re not on the best-seller lists yet, I’m very enthusiastic about the long-term success and potential impact of our Oxfordian Shakespeare Series. In the short term, most people think that since they have already seen and read, for example, Macbeth and Othello, they know what they are all about. An Oxfordian perspective, however, reveals that they are in fact very different plays from what the Stratfordians would have us believe.
Whalen says other forthcoming Oxfordian editions include: Henry the Fifth edited by Kathy Binns-Dray of Lee University, Love’s Labor’s Lost edited by Felicia Londre of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Much Ado About Nothing edited by Anne Pluto of Lesley University.
Note: For more information about Whalen’s editorial project, read a 2011 interview at “Interview with Richard Whalen about the Oxfordian Shakespeare Series.”
