Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship president Tom Regnier, JD, LLM, enlightens viewers in his talk, “The Law of Evidence and the Shakespeare Authorship Question,” now available on the SOF YouTube channel.
Regnier said, “While the Shakespeare authorship question is more a literary-historical question than a forensic one, the legal rules of evidence are instructive in examining the evidence.”
His talk explores legal concepts and their relevance to the authorship question, including: evidence vs. proof, relevant evidence, direct vs. circumstantial evidence, contemporary vs. posthumous evidence, motive to fabricate, hearsay, and expert witnesses. He also discusses the debate about circumstantial evidence that appeared in the “Comments” section of the article, “The Campaign to Prove Shakespeare Didn’t Exist,” published in the December 29, 2014 issue of Newsweek.
Regnier’s presentation is the first of a series of videos filmed at this year’s SOF conference in Ashland, Oregon that will be made available on the Web. The SOF board approved funds for recording conference presentations by videographer Sangye Ince-Johannsen. SOF webmaster Jennifer Newton is preparing the videos for posting on the SOF YouTube channel.
The next video in the series — Katherine Chiljan’s “Origins of the Pen Name, ‘William Shakespeare’”— will be added to the SOF YouTube channel within a week.
More information on the conference presenters and their talks is available at “2015 Conference abstracts” on the SOF website.
