Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog

We arrived back from England last night.  My co-writer and director Ted Story and I flew back from a great trip to London and Cambridge, where I performed our 90-minute one-man show SHAKE-SPEARE’S TREASON (www.shakespearestreason.com) on Thursday night (20 November) at Shakespeare’s Globe as part of the 2008 Silberrad Memorial Lectures on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, inspired and guided by Tony Award winner Mark Rylance, former artistic director of the Globe.  Introducing the show was my friend and colleague Charles Beauclerk (http://www.whowroteshakespeare.com/Bio%20page.htm), whose writings and lectures continue to inspire a growing audience.  His original and powerful voice will is destined for greatness and I look forward eagerly to see his new book on Shakespeare in print by the end of 2009.

We wrote the script of “Treason” based on my book on the Sonnets entitled THE MONUMENT (www.shakespearesmonument.com), as a way of bringing the story of Edward de Vere Earl of Oxford as “Shakespeare” to the general public.  Our theme, briefly stated, is that Oxford wrote the Sonnets to preserve “the living record” of Henry Wriothesely Earl of Southampton within a “monument” of verse for “eyes not yet created in posterity” (you and I).

This record expressed through the poetry is nothing less than the dangerous political story of Southampton as Oxford’s son by Queen Elizabeth the First and her rightful heir by blood who should have become Henry IX of England.  Within the main body of the Sonnets is a 100-verse diary of events (Sonnets 27 to 126) starting with the failed Essex Rebellion of 8 February 1601 and continuing through the more than two years of Southampton’s imprisonment until the death of the Queen and the accession of King James, followed by the earl’s release from the Tower.

Host for the night at the Globe was Dr. William Leahy of Brunel University, who leads the university’s Shakespeare Authorship MA program.(http://www.brunel.ac.uk/courses/pg/cdata/s/Shakespeare+Authorship+Studies+MA).  My thanks to Bill Leahy for guiding the evening.

Traveling for the event all the way from the west coast of the USA was Dr. Daniel Wright of Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, who hosts the annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference in April and heads up the upcoming new Shakespeare Authorship Research Study Centre to be housed in a brand new facility (http://www.authorshipstudies.org/).  Dan introduced the show on two successive nights in Cambridge University (Friday and Saturday, 21-22 November) at the Bateman Auditorium of Gonville and Caius College next to Trinity College and St. John’s College, the latter where Edward de Vere was enrolled as a youngster who would receive an honorary degree in 1564 at age fourteen.  And now my thanks to Dan Wright for making this effort and giving the great introductions.

The Cambridge shows were arranged by the indefatigable Dorna Bewley of Cambridge, for which Ted and I will always be grateful.

More on the whole experience soon.  And hey, this blog is just beginning, and it’s not going to pull any punches as we go along.  For example, I’m finally going to start answering objections from other Oxfordians to THE MONUMENT, starting with those published by my friend Mark Anderson in his terrific but ultimately disappointing book SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME (http://shakespearebyanothername.com/).  So stay tuned!  We’ve just begun!

Best wishes from Hank