SOF Vice President Don Rubin Will Edit
Critical Stages (critical-stages.org), a mainstream webjournal published three times a year by the Paris-based International Association of Theatre Critics, has agreed to devote its December 2018 theme section to the Shakespeare authorship issue. The free journal receives over 10,000 hits a month and is read by theatre critics, theatre professionals and theatre scholars in some one hundred countries. The following photo from a recent issue of Critical Stages is indicative of the journal’s international flavor:
To be called “The Question That Won’t Go Away,” the section is being edited by SOF First Vice-President Don Rubin, a Professor Emeritus at Toronto’s York University and one of the few professors in the world who has taught courses on the authorship on a regular basis. Rubin, founder of the quarterly scholarly journal Canadian Theatre Review and series Editor of Routledge’s six-volume World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, is Managing Editor of Critical Stages and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the SOF’s scholarly journal, The Oxfordian.
“I had been pushing for an issue on the authorship for quite some time,” said Rubin. “I finally got them to agree to publish a series of articles in their essay section. That would have been a good start in this area. I reached out to a number of scholars and theatre artists working in this area and they helped create the content. When I sent it to the Editor in-Chief, Prof. Savas Patsaladis in Greece, he felt it was strong enough to be an issue theme on its own.
“The downside was that the material had to be pushed back from issue 17 (out now) to issue 18 (coming out in December). But it seemed worth the extra few months for the additional promotion and notice it will get. And we may be able to add an article or two and/or a photo or two more. Any suggestions will be appreciated.”
The issue as planned includes the following:
1. An Introduction to “The Question That Won’t Go Away” Did the Man From Stratford Really Write the Plays? By Don Rubin. An introduction to a seven-essay section on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. The introduction suggests that there are significant irregularities in the traditional biography, that the authorship question has a history of some 400 years and that among its adherents are notable figures in many fields from Henry James, Walt Whitman, Sigmund Freud and Mark Twain to Tyrone Guthrie, Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance. It is argued that should a different author be identified the contexts of the plays – social, political, sexual – would change, possibly leading to new insights in staging them.
2. Reasonable Doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare. Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance. A conversation between two distinguished Shakespearean actors about why the Shakespeare Authorship Question should be accorded respect and taken more seriously by the theatre, literary, and academic communities. Recorded originally for the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition in April 2016.
3. A Theatre Artist’s Path: Questioning Shakespeare’s Authorship By Keir Cutler. A Canadian actor with a Ph.D. in Theatre asks why in all his years in academe no one ever mentioned that there even was such a thing as a “Shakespeare Authorship Question.” Cutler’s own questioning led him to create several one-person shows on the subject.
4. The Authorship Question: Literary Paper Trails By Diana Price. American researcher and independent scholar Diana Price provides evidence that there are significant irregularities in the standard biography of the putative author of the plays of Shakespeare. A reprint of Chapter One from her volume, Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography along with a chart comparing documentation on the life of the man from Stratford with two dozen other writers of the period.
5. Opening New Possibilities for Transforming Productions of Shakespeare’s Plays By Gary Goldstein. The author explores how the authorship debate can change the ways in which the plays can be produced if the true Shakespeare was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford and if the plays were written 20 years earlier and then revised.
6. The Argument for Edward de Vere: “Shake-speare” Was a Man of the Theatre By Hank Whittemore. Whoever the author of the Shakespeare canon was, he had to be a man of the theatre. American actor Hank Whittemore argues that one of the leading candidates for the honour was himself someone with significant theatrical connections and experiences – Edward de Vere.
7. John Florio, alias Shake-speare? By Michel Vaïs. The Secretary-General of the International Association of Theatre Critics explains why he has come to believe that the real author of the plays of Shakespeare was not the man from Stratford but rather scholar John Florio. In French.
We will let you know when this free online issue is available.
