Why do we need a virtual classroom?

Unfortunately, the Shakespeare authorship question is considered taboo in many literal classrooms.

Unfortunately, the experiences recounted by Bremerton, Washington educator Robert Barrett in this 1999 interview are typical of the resistance the authorship question evokes among some educators.

Unfortunately, the experiences of Charles Boyle recounted in this 1996 essay on his presentation of a paper on the fool in 12th Night are typical of the prevailing attitude within the Shakespeare industry.

John Stuart Mill, we hasten to add, would have something to say about the attitudes encountered by Barrett and Boyle.

But these anecdotes also illustrate the value of legitimizing discussion of the subject in the classroom: informed controversy is "good to think with".

Students who are taught the value of open inquiry grow up to be informed and involved citizens. Teachers who pause long enough to let their own a priori assumptions become subject for scrutiny can avoid the fate of ending their days as Professor Postmodern Dryasdust.

Furthermore, the experiences of Jason Moore, another Washington State educator on the cutting edge of authorship studies in the public school system, illustrate that progress towards rationality is gradually being made.

This portion of the Shakespeare Fellowship web-site is dedicated to these courageous educational pioneers and the many more who, we hope, will follow the trail they've blazed.

The authorship question is about censorship and ways of evading it.

This review essay by Dr. Roger Stritmatter, of Anabelle Patterson's 1984 book, Censorship and Interpretation, explores some of the theoretical interconnections btween the two subjects.

Patterson's book, writes Stritmatter, "opens new vistas in Shakespeare studies that are destined to be explored by many students of her ideas, who will, as 'time unfolds what pleated cunning hides,' more and more count themselves, overtly or covertly, as apostates to a withering Shakespearean orthodoxy." The first of many articles on issues of interpretation, history, and methodology which will be made available at the Shakespeare Fellowship site.