The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship (SOF) has announced the award of two research grants for 2021. The purpose of the SOF Research Grant Program (RGP) is to support and promote new research about Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford: his biography, his literary life, and the evidence that he is the true author of the Shakespeare canon.
The 2021 recipients are Boston-based filmmaker, writer, and educator Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Professor of Humanities Roger Stritmatter at Coppin State University (Baltimore). Both have been honored as Oxfordian of the Year, Professor Stritmatter in 2013 (see Fall 2013 Newsletter, pp. 37–38) and Eagan-Donovan in 2019. The 2021 RGP announcement was made by SOF President John Hamill, who chairs the RGP Committee. For more information about the RGP, click here. To support the RGP and other SOF activities, click here.
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan
Eagan-Donovan was awarded $3,250 to fund her research on “The Lives of the Poets in Late 16th-Century London: Manuscript Circulation and the Workshop Method—Keys to Discovering Edward de Vere’s Literary Circle.” Her research will focus on the evidence that manuscripts were shared between and among the writers in Oxford’s circle and other contemporary poets and playwrights, and that these writers critiqued one another’s work in the workshop method, as indicated by annotations, correspondence, dedications, and prefaces.
Eagan-Donovan states: “I am very grateful to the SOF and honored to receive the award. Building on the work of Steven May, Roger Stritmatter, John Hamill, Alexander Waugh, and other scholars, I plan to visit the British Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, and private libraries including Dulwich in the U.K. to look for manuscripts and correspondence between select members of Oxford’s circle, including Marlowe, Nashe, and Peele. Because of Covid-19 restrictions, my preliminary research will be conducted using online collections.”
Eagan-Donovan is a former Trustee of the SOF. Her debut documentary, All Kindsa Girls (2006), screened at film festivals and art house theaters in London, Toronto, and throughout the U.S. Her acclaimed biographical film on the life of Edward de Vere (Oxford), Nothing Is Truer Than Truth, was completed in 2018 and widely released in 2019. It recently obtained a new global distribution deal under the title Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Name. Eagan-Donovan has served on the boards of Women in Film & Video New England and the Next Door Theater. She has published and lectured on writing, film, and literature, including at Lesley University, Northeastern University, Lasell University, and Grub Street Center for Creative Writing. She spoke at the SOF Centennial Symposium in March 2020. At the SOF Online Symposium in October 2020, Eagan-Donovan spoke about her forthcoming book, Shakespeare Auteur: Creating Authentic Characters for the Screen.
Professor Roger Stritmatter
Dr. Stritmatter was awarded $200 to study and clarify “The Role of Cryptography in Literary and Shakespeare Studies.” He will pursue a detailed study of the Charlotte Armstrong solution to Ben Jonson’s First Folio cryptogram. Stritmatter notes: “Much of the evidence in support of Oxfordian conclusions is framed in a ‘code-like’ context that makes copious use of the large repertoire of ‘secret writing’ techniques known and practiced in the 16th and 17th centuries. As a movement, we need to continue to explore and debate these possibilities rather than suffer under the absurd legacy of Baconian pseudo-cryptology.”
Dr. Stritmatter accomplished two historic firsts, as the first person to earn a Ph.D. in a field centrally relevant to Shakespeare studies, and to obtain a tenured university position in such a field, while openly embracing the Oxfordian perspective. He has been a prolific Shakespearean scholar for decades, publishing numerous articles in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Review of English Studies, Shakespeare Yearbook, Notes and Queries, Critical Survey, and Cahiers Élisabéthains. He is co-author (with Lynne Kositsky) of the highly praised On the Date, Sources, and Design of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (2013). He currently edits the Brief Chronicles series of scholarly books published by the SOF. His landmark 2001 Ph.D. thesis, The Marginalia of Edward de Vere’s Geneva Bible, explored striking parallels between biblical references in the works of Shakespeare and hundreds of hand-marked verses in Oxford’s personal copy of the Geneva Bible. For more details on Stritmatter’s work, see this article on his March 2020 Centennial Symposium lecture.
The SOF wishes Eagan-Donovan and Stritmatter the best as they continue their research.
