Contested Will (50 page)

For the vote of confidence in Allen, see the
Shakespeare Fellowship
Newsletter
(March 1946). For Stephen Greenblatt on speaking with the dead, see the opening of
Shakespearean Negotiations
(Berkeley, 1988). For more on Hester Dowden, see Edmund Bentley,
Far Horizon: A Biography of
Hester Dowden, Medium and Psychic Investigator
(London, 1951). Percy Allen recounts his séances and discoveries in
Talks with Elizabethans: Revealing
the Mystery of ‘William Shakespeare
' (London, 1947?), which reprints the sonnet quoted here on its title page.

For the fortunes of the Oxfordian movement, see, in addition to Ogburn,
The Mysterious William Shakespeare: Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly
5 (1944);
Shakespeare Authorship Review
7 (1962);
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
, 15 December 1966; and
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
, 25 May 1966.
For the challenges to Barrell's claims about the Ashbourne portrait, see Schoenbaum,
William Shakespeare, Records and Images
. For the decline of the Oxfordian movement in the 1960s and 1970s, see
Shakespeare Oxford Society
Newsletter
, 28 February 1969; Shakespeare
Oxford Society Newsletter
, 31 March 1970;
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(Fall 1976); see too the prefatory page in memory of Charlton Ogburn Jr,
The Oxfordian
2 (1999), as well as Charles Vere's comments in the
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(1994). Louis B. Wright's remarks appear in ‘The Anti-Shakespeare Industry and the Growth of Cults',
Virginia Quarterly Review
35 (1959); and see Schoenbaum,
Shakespeare's Lives
.

For more on Ogburn, see
Shakespeare Matters
(Summer, 2007); Charlton Ogburn, ‘President's Message',
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(Fall 1976); and the
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(30 March 1966). For the Fairness Doctrine, see Fred W. Friendly,
The Good Guys, The Bad Guys and
The First Amendment: Free Speech vs. Fairness in Broadcasting
(New York, 1976), and Steven J. Simmons
The Fairness Doctrine and the Media
(Berkeley, 1978). For Ogburn's efforts, see, in addition to
The Mysterious
William Shakespeare: Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(Winter 1979), and his ‘President's Message'.

For the moot court in Washington DC, see James Lardner, ‘Who Wrote Shakespeare?', the
New Yorker
, 11 April 1988, and ‘Washington Talk: Briefing; In Re Shakespeare',
New York Times
, 10 September 1987. Kreeger hoped to have the justices prepare by reading Schoenbaum's
Documentary
Life
and Ogburn's
Mysterious William Shakespeare
. This didn't work out, and they relied primarily on the arguments of two American University law professors: Peter Jasri for Oxford, James Boyle for Shakespeare. For a full transcript, see
American University Law Review
37 (Spring 1988), pp. 609–826. Ogburn's letter of complaint appears in the
Shakespeare Oxford Society
Newsletter
24 (Spring 1988). And see the interview with Charlton Ogburn, conducted by Dr Sheila Tombe, in
Apostrophe
(Spring/Summer 1996). Also see Kreeger's ‘Preface',
American University Law Review
37.3 (Spring, 1988). Justice Stevens was even more explicit in suggesting how the Oxfordians should pursue their case five years later in an address he gave at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. By then he had come around almost completely to Oxfordian assumptions about the autobiographical nature of the plays as well as their aristocratic bias. See US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, ‘The Shakespeare Canon of Statutory Construction',
University of
Pennsylvania Law Review
140 (1992).

For the moot court in London, see David J. Hanson, ‘A Wildcatter Reports on the London Moot Court Hearing in an Open Letter to Russell des Cognets',
The Shakespeare Newsletter
(Spring–Summer 1989). Lord Ackner ended on a witty note, quoting James Barrie: ‘I know not whether Bacon wrote the words of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me he missed the opportunity of his life' – from a transcript of the moot court case in the archives of the International Shakespeare Globe Centre, ‘Shakespeare Globe Trust, Shakespeare Moot, Judges Summing Up' (file ‘1988 Moot'). See too Gordon C. Cyr, ‘Let the Real Debate Begin! Legalisms of “Moot” Format Obscure the Authorship Question',
The Shakespeare Oxford Society
Newsletter
25 (Winter 1989). See as well the Shakespeare Moot of 26 November 1988: ‘Appraisals from Anonymous Sources' that follows Cyr's account. For Hunt's financial support and for additional background into the relationship of these two British organisations, see Charles Beauclerk's correspondence in the Brunel University library archives, Shakespeare Authorship Trust, Box 0033. And for the British edition of Ogburn's book, see Charlton Ogburn,
The Mystery of William Shakespeare: An Abridgement of
the Original American Edition
, ed. Lord Vere (London, 1988).

For the number of viewers, see ‘News Items of Interest from Gary Goldstein', in
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
25 (Summer 1989); WGBH-TV in Boston also reported that it was their most popular Frontline series that season. For more on the restored fortunes of the Oxfordian movement, see: the
Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter
(June 1992); and Lewis H. Lapham, ‘Notebook: Full Fathom Five',
Harper's
Magazine
(April 1999). The poll is cited from cnn.com, 15 June 1997. On Westminster, see Nathan Baca, ‘Commemorating Marlowe',
Shakespeare
Matters
2 (Fall 2002); and see
Shakespeare Matters
(Summer 2003) for fundraising efforts.

On William Niederkorn's agnosticism, I quote from his unsolicited email to me of 9 January 2007. For more on Niederkorn, see
Shakespeare Matters
1 (Summer 2002) and
Shakespeare Matters
4 (Winter 2005). See too, William S. Niederkorn, ‘The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas from the Traditional Camp',
New York Times
, 30 August 2005. For a helpful analysis of Niederkorn on Shakespeare, see Ron Rosenbaum, ‘The Shakespeare Code: Is
Times
Guy Kind of Bard “Creationist”?',
New York Observer
, 19 September 2005. And for a critique of Niederkorn's conclusion that each side has its own story to tell, see my ‘Happy Birthday, Whoever You Were',
Telegraph
(23 April 2006). For National Public Radio and Renée Montagne, see ‘The Real Shakespeare: Evidence Points to Earl',
NPR
, 4 July 2008. The
award was given to her at the 13th Annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference in 2009. For Oxfordians on the US Supreme Court, see Jess Bravin, ‘Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion on Who Wrote Shakespeare's Plays',
Wall Street Journal
, 18 April 2009. For a sense of recent Oxfordian scholarship, see Richard Malim, ed.,
Great Oxford
. And for a representative Oxfordian edition of Shakespeare's plays, see William Shakespeare,
Macbeth
, edited and ‘Fully Annotated from an Oxfordian Perspective', Richard F. Whalen (Truro, Mass., 2007).

I quote from the introduction to Stritmatter's dissertation at www.shakespearefellowship.org/virtualclassroom/intro.pdf. For criticism of his argument, see Kathman's ‘Oxford's Bible', which I have drawn on and quoted above, accessible at www.shakespeareauthorship.com. See too, Tom Veal's online critiques at stromata.tripod.com/id288. htm and stromata.tripod.com/ id459.htm. See, as well, Scott Heller, ‘In a Centuries-Old Debate, Shakespeare Doubters Point to New Evidence',
The Chronicle of Higher
Education
, 4 June 1999, where Alan Nelson is quoted. For Justice Stevens, see Bravin, ‘Justice Stevens Renders an Opinion',
Wall Street Journal
.

Part of the revival of interest in Marlowe has also been spurred by director Michael Rubbo's documentary,
Much Ado About Something
, created in response to seeing the 1989 Frontline documentary that had ignored Marlowe's candidacy and focused on Oxford's (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/fine). See, too, for example, ‘The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection' (marlowe-shakespeare.blogspot.com); ‘Marlowe's Ghost' (marlowesghost.com); ‘The Marlowe Lives! Association' (www.marlovian.com); and Peter Farey's home page (www2.prestel.co.uk/rey). See, too, the introduction to
Hamlet
, by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, ed. Alex Jack (Becket, Mass., 2005) and William Honey's privately printed
The Life, Loves, and Achievements of Christopher
Marlowe, Alias Shakespeare
(London, 1982). For Jarmusch on Marlowe, see Lynn Hirschberg, ‘The Last of the Indies',
New York Times
, 31 July 2005.

For Moore's remarks, see Peter Moore, ‘Recent Developments in the Case for Oxford as Shakespeare',
Ever Reader
(No. 4, Fall 1996/Winter 1997). And see William Boyle, ‘Books and Book Reviewers',
Shakespeare
Matters
2 (Fall 2002). For the ‘Beginner's Guide', see www.shakespeareoxford.com/?p=35. Shahan's remarks appear in
Shakespeare Matters
(Fall 2007). For the latest tally of those who have signed the ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt', see www.doubtaboutwill.org.

For facts about editions of the plays and poems, see Andrew Murphy,
Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing
(Cambridge, 2003). For Buc's acquaintance with the Earl of Oxford, see Charles J. Sisson,
Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans
(Cambridge, Mass., 1933). My account of Buc's encounter with Shakespeare draws on Alan H. Nelson, ‘George Buc, William Shakespeare, and the Folger George a Greene',
Shakespeare Quarterly
49 (1998), pp. 74–83; see too, James Shapiro, 1599:
A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
(London and New York, 2005). For more on typesetting, see Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, ‘The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text',
Shakespeare Quarterly
44 (1993), pp. 255–83; Randall McLeod, ‘Spellbound: Typography and the Concept of Old-Spelling Editions',
Renaissance and Reformation
, n.s. 3 (1979), pp. 50–65; and, forthcoming, Adam G. Hooks, ‘Shakespeare and Narrative of Authorship: Biography, Book History, and the Case of Richard Field'. On the origins in the 1870s of the myth that Elizabethan aristocratic poets were averse to publishing their work, see Steve W. May's definitive essay, ‘Tudor Aristocrats and the Mythical “Stigma of Print”',
Renaissance Papers
10 (1980), pp. 11–18.

The kind of specificity offered by the 1604 performances is highly unusual for court payments, which are usually limited to naming the sharers who came to collect the money owed them (so that, for example, Kemp, Burbage and Shakespeare are named as those who were paid in 1595 for their company's recent performances at court), as noted in Chambers,
William Shakespeare: Facts and Problems
. For a helpful discussion of what dramatists knew about stagecraft, see Stanley Wells,
Shakespeare and Co
. (London, 2006).

See Chambers,
William Shakespeare: Facts and Problems
, for what other writers at the time said about Shakespeare. For Beaumont and Fletcher, see Aubrey's
Brief Lives
, as quoted in Philip Finkelpearl's entry on Beaumont in the new
Dictionary of National Biography
. And for more on the dating of Beaumont's poem, see Peter R. Moore, ‘The date of F.B.' s Verse Letter to Ben Jonson',
Notes & Queries
(September 1995), pp. 347–52. For an illuminating discussion of the Pavier quartos, see Sonia Massai,
Shakespeare and the
Rise of the Editor
(Cambridge, 2007). See too John Jowett,
Shakespeare and
Text
(Oxford, 2007). I am indebted for the suggestion about why the King's Men visited Stratford to Deelman,
The Great Shakespeare Jubilee
. And for the annotations on the Huntington copy of Camden's
Britannia
, see Paul Altrocchi, ‘Sleuthing an Enigmatic Latin Annotation',
Shakespeare Matters
2 (Summer 2003), as well as Alan Nelson's research into Hunt's background, and for his translations too (see web.archive.org/web/20051226113826/socrates.berkeley.edu/~ahnelson/Roscius.html). Nelson and Altrocchi have a collaborative article on this, ‘William Shakespeare, “Our Roscius”', forthcoming in
Shakespeare Quarterly
. And see Diana Price,
Shakespeare's
Unorthodox Biography
.

For the Jacobeans on film, see Ronald Hutton, ‘Why Don't the Stuarts Get Filmed?' in
Tudors and Stuarts on Film: Historical Perspectives
, ed. Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman (New York, 2009), pp. 246–58. I quote from the script of Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard,
Shakespeare in Love: A
Screenplay
(New York, 1998). For more on Elizabeth and Shakespeare, see Helen Hackett,
Elizabeth and Shakespeare: The Meeting of Two Myths
(Princeton, 2009), as well as Rowe's
Life of Shakespeare
. For King James's letter to Shakespeare, see
A Collection of Poems … by Mr William Shakespeare
, ed. Bernard Lintott (London, 1709). For the boys' companies, the impressing of choristers, and their repertory, see Lucy Munro,
Children of the Queen's
Revels
(Cambridge, 2005). For the quotation on the boy players from scene 7 of the 1603 Quarto of
Hamlet
, see
The First Quarto of Hamlet
, ed. Kathleen O. Irace (Cambridge, 1998). For King James's angry reaction, see the letter from Sir Thomas Lake to Lord Salisbury, 11 March 1608, quoted in Irwin Smith,
Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse
(New York, 1964). For more on Blackfriars, see: Gerald Eades Bentley, ‘Shakespeare and the Blackfriars Theatre',
Shakespeare Survey
1 (1948), pp. 38–50; Leeds Barroll, ‘Shakespeare and the Second Blackfriars Theater',
Shakespeare Studies
33 (2005), pp. 156–70; Gerald Eades Bentley,
The Jacobean and Caroline Stage
, vol. 6 (Oxford, 1968); Andrew Gurr,
The Shakespeare Company: 1595–1642
(Cambridge, 2004); and
Inside Shakespeare: Essays on the Blackfriars Stage
, ed. Paul Menzer (Selinsgrove, 2006).