Hank Whittemore's Shakespeare Blog

The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference held annually in April at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, under the directorship of Dr. Daniel Wright, has been moved this year to Wednesday August 31st  – Saturday September 3rd.  Does the new time frame have something to do with release of Roland Emmerich’s film Anonymous in late September?  We don’t know, but we have our suspicions!

Roland Emmerich (left) on the set of "Anonymous"

After all, this major motion picture represents the first time that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) is to be portrayed on the big screen as author of the works attributed to William Shakespeare.    If only one person out of a hundred has heard of Oxford to this point, surely that number will rise — to three out of a hundred?  Five?  More?  Whatever the case, the whole authorship question will be taken out of the hands of the tiny group of academics who, over the past several generations, have elected themselves as the supreme authorities in this matter — and yet they’ve been wrong!

Time for a revolution!  Stay tuned for more information as it comes in.  Meanwhile, here’s what Dr. Wright has up on his website about the conference:

The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference is the world’s largest convocation of academicians and scholars to gather annually for the purpose of sharing new research on the life and works of the Elizabethan era’s premier poet, playwright and wordsmith. The conference is especially dedicated to the presentation of publishable research that thoughtfully addresses, affirmatively or negatively, the possibility that a writer other than the orthodox candidate—a butcher’s apprentice from Stratford-Upon-Avon—was the pseudonymous author of the Shakespeare canon.

The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference, as an academic assembly, is also dedicated to providing a forum that contextualizes study of the writer who called himself Shakespeare by its solicitation of research that explores the character of and conditions for anonymous and pseudonymous writing in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. Studies that advance our understanding of other writers of the time, e.g., George Peele, Robert Greene, Francis and Anthony Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Kyd, et al are featured as well.

We invite all to attend who are interested in exploring the circumstances that led to the creation and publication of the Shakespeare canon. Stay tuned for information about our conference in 2011.