Shakespeare Authorship Q&A - Everything You Always Wanted To Know

Blue Boar regulars Bonner Cutting, Dorothea Dickerman, and Jonathan Dixon are joined by Alex McNeil, star of Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship’s popular “Shakespeare 101” video, to answer questions about Shakespeare, Oxford, and all things authorship.
00:00 Welcome to the Blue Boar!
05:30 What are some of Alex's favorite articles from his tenure as editor of the SOF Newsletter?
10:10 The dangers of letter writing in Elizabethan England
12:40 Have the Vatican archives been searched for material relevant to the Shakespeare/Oxford question?
18:50 What are your predictions for the coming year?
24:50 Why are we supposed to believe that the "Dark Lady" of the Sonnets is just ONE woman?
32:30 Where might the next significant breakthroughs on the Shakespeare attribution be found?
33:00 Alex's Authorship 101 video was posted 3 months ago and now it has 10k views.
37:35 Does the view of Elizabethan England as akin to a modern police state make the need for a front man more likely?
46:40 Why are many poems written from the view of the woman?
48:00 Where to find Peregrine Bertie's summary of his 3 months in Denmark?
48:40 Isn't Heminges’ and Condell’s First Folio letter personal testimony connecting the man from Stratford to the plays?
59:25 Comment on Audley End please?
1:00:50 Thoughts on the Ostler-Heminges lawsuit that says the Shakespeare shareholder was dead in 1615?
1:02:55 Do you think we will ever find out what caused the death of Oxford?
1:04:20 Do you believe Oxford had collaborators even during the last 12 years of his life? If so, who?
Recorded live on December 5, 2023. Learn more at shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org
Articles mentioned:
- Report from the Folger Library's conference on "Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography": shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...
- An Hour with Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...
- The Persistent Mystery of Oxford’s Annuity: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...
- Oxfordians List Their Favorite Books: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...
- Six Shaky Signatures: What’s the Proof That Shakespeare Wrote Them?: shakespeareoxfordfellowship.o...

[@rosezingleman5007]

I really look forward to these discussions.

[@Nope.Unknown]

Another WONDERFUL conversation!! I SO look forward to these. Thank you so much SOF!!

[@FGoodman114]

Thank you for watching, and for your support!! Jonathan

[@DNBon.an808]

To answer the question, who’s watching this; I’m an uneducated middle aged artist who’s interested in the effects of syncretism and how it affects history. From that interest, I found Alex Waugh’s work and never looked back. Also it’s nice to think of theories that have no political implications. I haven’t even read all that much Shakespeare, I just love the clues and riddles and discussions.

[@benc8834]

I guess you mean the discussions have no ties to current politics....one way to escape the insanity of modern media discourse! It's definitely that way for me...

[@betttrbeth]

Also, in the beginning, you talk about the success of the Tavern, and I thought I could give you feedback. This format is entertaining, the speakers have great insights and the group seems very friendly. I am not working, I take care of my parents & autistic daughter, and I sometimes feel like I need to watch intellectual people. You help me keep my brain active. I appreciate you guys!

[@Short-Cipher]

Being a caregiver is not an easy thing, especially a nonprofessional caring for family. I'm glad you can find some reprieve here. Good luck to you.

[@FGoodman114]

Thank you so much. Hearing that means a lot. That might be my favorite compliment that we've received. Best, Jonathan

[@betttrbeth]

I have an English degree and my Shakespeare professor said on day one~ Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. My question is this: would the authorship question get in the way of reading and understanding the plays and sonnets? Is that why some teachers refuse to entertain the authorship question?

[@wynnsimpson]

On the contrary, if scholars embraced Edward DeVere, the entire field would explode with publications!

[@matthewbbenton]

To them, it’s like saying the earth is flat. Why consider such a preposterous notion? That’s what I would have said - until I saw the man’s signatures. He could barely write his own name. I don’t know who the real author was, but it wasn’t him. If you still have your “Complete Works of Shakespeare” from college, read the essays before the plays and see how they struggle to shoehorn William of Stratford into everything. Their suppositions around the sonnets are just painful to read. So, yes, questioning the author means rethinking everything - and most academics aren’t interested in that. Not to be unkind, but we’re not talking about scientists here. This is the humanities. They may have memorized a ton of received information about their subject, but by and large they’re incurious people. That was my experience with them in college, anyway.

[@duncanmckeown1292]

Yay! Back again pre-Xmas! This pub is becoming as regular a visit for me as my local drinking hole! Nowell! Nowell! (the name of one of Oxford's tutors AND seasonal). How's that for a segue??

[@FGoodman114]

Thank you! Jonathan

[@tomgoff6867]

Also, kudos to that great book on / of Oxford's letters by William Plumer Fowler, which I have...

[@flippetskater]

Regarding who's watching these - I'm an almost-librarian, a class-and-a-half away from my MLIS, with an old undergrad in English Lit. I'm not sure how videos on the authorship question started crossing my feed (probably the algorithm bouncing off of me watching things like the Tennant/Tate Much Ado, Tennant's Hamlet, etc.), but it is something that I don't recall hearing about before, and it has been fascinating diving down the rabbit hole. (It also provides a nice distraction from my homework, but that's neither here nor there!) I think I started with the David Shakespeare videos on the Pregnancy Portrait and Henry Wriothesley Tower Portraits - well. After that introduction, you just can't leave it there, you know? So I've pretty much been mainlining whatever pops up on my feed from there, and of course your videos are a lot of them. I've kind of just been picking them at random, but I feel I've (hopefully) ended up taking a path where the videos and information are building on each other in an understandable fashion, and not totally leaving me in the dark wood. Because there's so much information, and so much of it needs such a volume of thorough explanation, I imagine it's difficult to put together a 'single' video on an introduction to the authorship question for the layperson, but I feel that I've done an okay job of discovery so far, even if it is piecemeal. One of the most fascinating bits of this, for me, is how it just opens up not only literature, but history. I don't know how we've all been limping along without this correct information that ties it all together.

[@MrAbzu]

It is my belief that Oxford played an outsize role in the formation of the core material, however, more as a producer than the menial job of a writer. Some observations. Everybody who was anyone who sought to influence popular opinions of the day had a scriptorium. Plays were the newspapers of the day and scriptoriums were how the Lordly class had their propaganda inserted into the plays. Some characters in the plays were used to lampoon public figures in sly and subtle ways by borrowing lines and actions from real life. With new innovations constantly being inserted, the plays were in a constant state of flux. The plays of that time were intended to be a fluid manner of communication to the public which no single author could possibly keep up with. This form of public discourse was slowly replaced by newspapers and other printed material as literacy and wages improved. The First Folio is a beautiful homage to a unique moment in time. Good show.

[@Irish.migrant]

🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇺🇲 and Shakespeare 😁😁💪💪

[@brendanward2991]

1:00:50 - First I heard of Ostler-Heminges. Googled it. The Folger Library's Shakespeare Documented site has a page devoted to it. Not surprisingly, they fail to even mention the fact that the case reveals that Shakespeare was dead in 1615.

[@Jeffhowardmeade]

It doesn't say that.

[@Northcountry1926]

Expansion … Wonderful !

[@MaHa-um5sv]

Was that Stratford house a "mansion" or an inn? Any documentation on that, because it is not a location for a mansion, right? I'm wondering if he moved back to Stratford to be an innkeeper.

[@niemann3942]

I've recently heard that too ... that it was so large it was likely an inn or boarding house.

[@Short-Cipher]

I think Bonner's comments regarding the six so-called Shakespeare signatures makes more sense than anything I've heard on the matter. Namely, each signature is Shakespeare holograph despite each being completely different, and the shakiness was likely because he was ill or dying, hence--chicken scratch. _Or_ ... the signatures are actually the different clerks/scriveners who worked up the will. Hmm, that's *never* made sense; Stratforians who go by that theory have never explained how a _clerk_ , make that _clerks_ , could have such horrible penmanship.😳 I like Bonner's theory. 🤔

[@EverTheTwain]

I love everything Bonner does, James Warren too

[@FGoodman114]

Bonner is brilliant ... always solid and rigorous. And one of the nicest people!

[@thomridgeway1438]

As a novice to this fascinating subject can somebody tell me why Stratfordians claim that Heminges and Condell are the absolute proof (the smoking gun) of Shax-spere of Stratford being the author. You only have to look at the lives and characteristics of actors today to realise that they are a pretty tight group. Work is naturally insecure and they tend to stick together and look after each other. It's admittedly a general statement but actors are nomadic by nature. Many are usually loud, self confident, laddish, convivial, boisterous, talkative; part of a heavy drinking culture. They always have projects or ideas on the go, but they are not the type to keep secrets and few are actually good writers, although the more successful they are - the more they are happy to promote and set up productions and then collaborate with writers - often claiming part royalties - quite rightly so. What I am trying to say is that Shax-speere, Heminges and Condell were clearly actors. That is fact! But that dose not mean that Shax-speere was ever a writer. Now they may say that Ben Jonson makes the inference but even that doesn't mean anything - because an actor can improvise and change a line of a play forever, so much so - that the playwright then changes the work to suit and notes the contribution. They may even improvise an entire soliloquy but that doesn't allow them to claim 39 plays and some of the greatest poetry ever conceived. Otherwise we would have many pieces of literature credited directly to Olivier, Richardson, Gielgud, Burton and even Branagh! Surely the lack of any historic paper trail for the Avon man makes it very obvious he was an actor more than ever.