The Beginner's Guide to the Shakespearean authorship Question.

This is the place to begin if you are wondering why there is a Shakespeare authorship question.

Charlton Ogburn's "Shakespeare's Self Portrait".

This 15-page pamphlet is a perfect introduction to the authorship question in general and to the case for Oxford's authorship.

Mr. Ogburn remains one of the clearest writers on the subject of Shakespearean authorship. He is able to accurately and fairly assess the cumulative impact of testimony from relevant disciplines.

Ogburn, who worked many years for the U.S. State Department, and is known as the author of The Marauders -- the true story of the 3,000 U.S. Army Infantrymen who traversed the Burmese Peninsula during WWII -- and many acclaimed books of natural history, has the mind of a skilled diplomat. He can forge relevant connections from the isolated republics of history, textual evidence, the history of ideas, and psychology. His pen is always ready to lead the reader on to the next idea or question.

John Thomas Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified.

Have you ever been tempted to put the name "Shakespeare" under quotation marks? This book by J. Thomas Looney, made available in this free online edition from the Shakespeare Fellowship, may help to explain the impulse.

An Essay on Censorship.

How does the authorship question fare in the average classroom setting? At professional conferences supposedly dedicated to the principle of free and open inquiry, and not merely the professional advancement of the most conformist minds? Read some answers in our Censorship section.

Twenty-Five Connections: why Oxford is Shakespeare.

Wow. This one really blew our socks off. Some amateur techno-sleuth in California, without the slightest professional qualification to his name -- one of those much maligned "amateurs" and cranks --put the top 25 reasons to think that Oxford was Shakespeare into a single Powerpoint presentation.

The thing is quite a gem. The evasive and dishonest conversation on HLAS would benefit from a very thorough immersion course in this free online version of Twenty-Five Connections.

This link will only work with the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser, version 5.x or higher.

Classroom Resources for the Secondary Educator.

This, dear reader, is where our heart lies.

The bottom line about the authorship question is that it is fun.

We think of the subject in the same terms that e.e. cummings did his sweet-heart when he wrote: "you and me may not hurry it baby, but all the policemen in the world can't stop it."

Anyone who has had the chance to discuss this topic within a classroom has learned something: students thrill to real controversy. Students are ready to get down to brass tacks and study the debate. Without any prompting they understand that this is a subject on which to refine the mind to higher points of perception and study the task of becoming a citizen -- a public participant in matters of historic and hence public consequence.

Like I said, this is where our heart lies.

Our time is frequently consumed by the need to earn a living. (Some of us are housepainters, some storytellers, some journalists, some doctors or lawyers or teachers, but all of us have to earn a living and purchase our time to study Shakespeare through other occupations).

If we don't get around to updating this section often enough, please send us your suggestions for improvement or clarification.

The Shakespeare Skeptics Hall of Fame (flash presentation).

Not to be partial here, we think this one is really fun. We'd love to hope that within a year, hundreds of High School English students and teachers will be visiting this flash-animated history of the many great authorship skeptics.

Who were they? You've heard their names, we warrant. Someone just forgot to tell you what they thought about the Bard.

A Brief History of the Authorship Question.

Want arguments and not testimony from distinguished authority? (Yes, distinguished authority does matter, Virginia).

Here is a synoptic history of the authorship question. Again, this is a tiny synopsis from a huge subject, important in its own right, of how the generations after the reign of Elizabeth I (d. 1603) coped with the problems their ancestors had passed on to them.

Shakespeare and Law.

O boy. This is a big one.

From the 1987 Washington D.C. moot court, which led Supreme court Justices Stevens and Blackmun, among others, to publically endorse the Oxford case, to the 19th century accomplishments of legal amateurs like Edmund Malone, lawyers have always been "into" Shakespeare. Anyone ever wonder why? To plunder him for good quotes?

Well, sure. But that's not the whole story. Read about the whole story in our continuing series of articles on this subject of immense historic, philosophic, legal and dramaturgic signifance.

The "State of the Debate".

A few years ago, a fellow named Marty Hyatt decided it was time to have a real public debate about the authorship question. Marty already knew what happens in the classrooms under the all-watchful gaze of Professor and Professora Dryasdust; he was hoping for something better if we just cleared a public space in the wilderness and invited the pilgrims to a pow-wow.

So Marty proposed the Usenet group Humanities.Lit.Authors.Shakespeare, with the idea in mind that this site could become an electronic mecca for Oxfordians and the merely curious. After due debate, and with just one or a few "nay" votes from Stratfordians alarmed by this unauthorized outbreak of public discussion on Shakespeare, the Usenet community voted to sanction the group's existence.

Alas. The Internet is a dangerous tool in weak minds. Our "state of the debate" section offers a running commentary on the practices of some of the more rambunctious defenders of the status quo who hang their hats in Marty Hyatt's old clubhouse.

Shakespeare and The Bible.

To Law, add Theology. Shakespeare possesses a theological and cosmological mind of the first order.

Interest in the subject has balooned as a result of Roger Stritmatter's 2001 discovery and analysis of the de Vere Geneva Bible. Three chapters of Stritmatter's disseration are now available here and more are coming soon.

Topics in the History and Theory of Authorship

Here is an astounding and important article by Dr. Merilee Karr, Portland M.D. and award-winning contemporary playwright, on the semiotics of authorship.

Added 7/10/06. Alex McNeil analyzes the strange but revealing life of the Portuguese poet and heteronymic genius, Ferdinand Pessoa. And you thought Shakespeare was strange! Available only in pdf.

Book Reviews.

This new section of the classroom contains a selection of reviews of some of the most important books in Shakespeare and Elizabethan scholarship which have appeared in the last ten years. Currently four reviews are available, but we hope to expand this resource considerably in coming weeks.

The Chronology of the Shakespeare Plays.

A bone of some contention. Some orthodox scholars still haven't realized how weak the evidence for a 1611 composition date for the Tempest actually is or how impressive the cumulative evidence for a date about seven years earlier.

And the overall pattern of publication of the play quartos, Bullough's list of sources (only five "possible"after 1605), and many other indications suggest that the comprehensive pattern of evidence (even if one thinks of the Tempest as an anomoly) starkly contradicts the presumed artistic career of the Stratford bourgeois.

How many Stratfordians have paused long enough from their labors to realize that of the 19 plays published before the 1623 folio, fifteen were published during the years 1591-1604, and only four (Lear (1608), Troilus (1609), Pericles (1609), and Othello (1622) from 1605-1616, although the latter are presumed by orthodox scholars to have been the most productive years of the author's career? The answer is, very few.

Minerva Britanna.

Well, this is the really fun stuff. Want to go treasure hunting? Minerva, a 1612 puzzle book by the artist/poet/astronomer and math whizz Henry Peacham invites you to follow and find. "By luck or by labor," you may be the one to decipher Peacham's enigma.

Is there a de Vere connection to Minerva Britanna? While the case remains circumstantial and hypothetical, the book itself is full of rich portents of self-knowledge and human curiousity, a dazzling display of hermetic ingenuity from the son of the author of one of Elizabethan England's most sophisticated books on rhetorical figures, Henry Peacham the elder.

Tragedies. Well, we are still working slowly on Hamlet. Commentary on more plays to come as our resources develop.

Comedies. A couple of tidbits here to get you thinking about Shakespeare's wit.

Histories. "Shakespeare's" retelling of history locates the author as one with a mystical partiality for the de Vere name in history. More on this to come.