20 January 2006

Special greetings are in order to the school teachers who are taking the recently-launched Shakespeare By Another Name webcourse taught on the Blackboard Learning System.

Please make yourself at home here at SBAN's virtual home... and be sure to sign up for the free email Bulletin to keep up with the latest developments in the authorship debate in the months and years to come.

19 January 2006

[Pokes head out of warren. Looks for shadow.]

Just added a New York City-area gig to the list of forthcoming events.

[Notices no shadow... Hm. What to do?...]

25 December 2005

Xmas Still Life

The library has added a new wing of late. (Thanks in that quest to J.E. and M.E., J.A. and S.J., C.E.D., and G.R.A.)

To young and old, Democrat and Republican, Oxfordian and Stratfordian (and otherwise!), here's to a festive and rewarding Holiday season. May your days be merry and bright. Hope to see you in '06!

22 December 2005

OK. Couldn't not post a note when I saw this one. Today, USA Today did a very nice little writeup of the audiobook version of “Shakespeare” By Another Name:

'Shakespeare' by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare. Written by Mark Anderson, performed by Simon Prebble

Was the Bard of Stratford actually the greatest literary genius in history?

Probably not, says journalist Anderson. He makes a convincing argument that the brilliant, rather tormented Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford—not Shakespeare—was the dramatist who wrote so brilliantly about the world, history, Italy, and men and women of power. Anderson draws powerful connections between Shakespeare's plays and the life of de Vere.

The reader, British actor Prebble, does justice to the playwright.

For: Anyone who likes mysteries, even the Bard-resistant.

21 December 2005

Living in a Post-12/9 World

Things have been quiet on the site over the past few weeks because the proprietor has of late been enjoying—to quote the dedication to The Sonnets—“THAT.ETERNITIE.PROMISED.BY.OVR.EVER-LIVING.POET”:

On December 9, my wife Penny delivered a fabulous and exquisite baby girl. Both are healthy and doing well. All three of us are spending the month setting up our new lives together. Hope to return to some semblance of normalcy after the New Year.

4 December 2005

(Semi-)off topic: One of the most important unresolved issues in the publishing industry today concerns the making and open-searching of digital libraries. Google has begun to digitize the collections of the New York Public Library and the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, and the University of Michigan—with the intent of making millions of books full-text searchable. But there are now lawsuits pending against Google for its scanning of copyrighted materials.

A fascinating debate on this subject took place at the New York Public Library on November 17. Now free downloadable audio and video of this debate has been made available. Well worth checking out.

1 December 2005

Sent out the third SBAN Bulletin last night—including the revelation of a very interesting piece of oral history from an American descendant of a family close to the de Vere family. Wow. Hope to have more on that front in future issues of the Bulletin.

Also, today's issue of the Compass, a Connecticut-based arts and living supplement in a number of newspapers in the Nutmeg State, features a cover story on SBAN. Great stuff. e.g.:

In academic circles, and occasionally in the public eye, a battle is being waged over the identity of the author we know as William Shakespeare. Though numerous theories have been put forward, the action is mainly between “Stratfordians” and “Oxfordians.” The prevailing view: Shakespeare is himself—an actor and impressario of that name who was known to have lived in London and died in Stratford-on-Avon, where a monument of his likeness was erected in his honor.

Dissenting, “Oxfordians” claim that Shakespeare was none other than the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, a swashbuckling, cantankerous nobleman and frequent confidante of Queen Elizabeth.

After reading “Shakespeare” by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare, by Northampton, MA, resident Mark Anderson, I think all that's left is to bury the Stratfordians.

The battle is won.

In page after page, Anderson shows how characters and story lines in virtually every Shakespeare play reflect people, places, and incidents in de Vere's life; how courtly entertainments, though now lost, were likely created by de Vere and performed for the Queen—and were prototypes for Shakespeare's plays; how numerous writings by and about both de Vere and Shakespeare hint at their common identity.

21 November 2005

Sinking low beneath the weight of a few deadlines presently. But the links page has needed a little sprucing of late. Consider it (lightly) spruced. Plus, for you SBAN Bulletin subcribers (now topping 500), the next Bulletin will be sent out by week's end. Promise. Which, in the U.S. of A., effectively means Wednesday. [P.S. D'ohh! Read my lips: ETA now Sunday or early next week.]

Happy Holidays, one and all. Please consider “Shakespeare” By Another Name as the season approacheth. It actually does make a great gift. (This too.) Would these good people deceive?

11 November 2005

The Amazon.com page for SBAN now has a very cool feature—full text search of the entire book. (Endnotes and all!) You can access Amazon's SBAN search engine via this site's home page or by simply clicking here.

Note that Google is also trying to get into the full-text book-search game. (See their beta Google Print site for more.) But at the moment, there are lawsuits from both publishers and authors' organizations pending. Stanford's code warrior Lawrence Lessig, as ever, has a thought-provoking article on the subject.

Till the Google Print fooferaw is settled, then, Amazon's "Search Inside The Book" feature will be the index we'll link to here.

6 November 2005

Pixels 'n' ink: Good Sunday, this. Two very nice notices about SBAN in both the old media and the new. The books page of today's Sunday Republican in Springfield, Mass. features an article about the book and its onward progress. One Shakespeare class at the University of Minnesota has already adopted SBAN as its textbook. The instructor, Prof. James Norwood, tells The Republican

“There is no other book in print that provides as persuasive an alternative to the orthodox biography of Shakespeare as Mark Anderson's,” he said.

Norwood added that he believes the book “offers myriad examples from the plays and poems of Shakespeare that reflect the Elizabethan world and culture that spawned them. What is reflected in Shakespeare's plays and poems is the world of the Elizabethan court, not the public life in London that would have been the primary experience of the actor William 'Shakspeare' of Stratford.”

Also, a tip of the hat is due to New York Times Bestselling author Michael Prescott, who today posted an entry about SBAN on his blog. Prescott writes

Brick by brick, over the course of 380 pages, not to mention 30 pages of appendices and 145 pages of endnotes, Anderson builds an overwhelming circumstantial case for the Oxfordian position. As he admits, there is no smoking gun, no single piece of evidence that provides absolute proof—but the sum total of the evidence he submits ought to be dispositive to any open-minded reader.

I don't expect the walls of academe to come tumbling down just because Mark Anderson has blown his trumpet. The Stratfordians, stubborn defenders of orthodoxy, will resist the inescapable conclusions prompted by this book, just as they have resisted, dismissed, and laughed off the arguments of Looney, Ogburn, and others. But I now think that theirs is a rearguard action and a losing cause. The case has been made, and eventually it will carry the day.

Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. And sooner or later, everyone will know it.

4 November 2005

“He was a genius, asshole.”

Reading through some old personal journals recently and ran across this overheard verbal reaction shot that seemed to capture something of the cornered Stratfordian mentality in its more pronounced forms. The setting was a public debate on the authorship question that was, to be frank, a trainwreck. One Oxfordian advocate in particular at this event was engaging in a pet peeve of mine: Piling on all the derogatory and defamatory statements that could be conjured about William of Stratford. Illiterate this, incapable that, dunghill on his father's doorstep. Lordy, the list goes on, if one cares to ennumerate.

But why? Whose purpose does it serve to so personally denigrate the man who, for a vast majority of the audience (if the organizers of the debate have done a good job promoting the event), is also synonymous with the greatest author in the English language? Abstract truth or falsehood of the charges aside, and I do think some Oxfordians really overplay the Shakspere-was-a-dumbkopf hand, this line of argument is simply bad strategy. Unless, that is, one's strategy is to alienate and anger fence-sitters. And if the Oxfordian advocates in said debate have done a decent job presenting a compelling case, there should be a fair number of fence-sitters in the crowd before the night is through.

So in the debate I attended, after Stratford Will had received one too many tongue-lashings from Oxfordian X, a young woman sitting next to me muttered under her breath the statement that now is the title to this blog entry. Her point, though perhaps misdirected, is still well taken.

To me, Will Shakspere of Stratford is a fascinating figure in this debate, even if he wasn't the author. Illiterate? Certainly the evidence (the only samples of his penmanship are six wobbly signatures; his children were illiterate or close to it) is hardly impressive for the dispassionate historical observer. On the other hand, he was an actor, and actors did have to read scripts at some point or another.

In Love's Labour's Lost, the character Costard—who looks a lot like Stratford Will (cf. SBAN pp. 262-4)—emcees a skit written by one of the play's authorial characters (Don Armado, ibid.). The skit is called “The Nine Worthies,” about which Costard says,

For mine own part, I know not the degree of the worthy. But I am prepared to stand for him.

Now here is where an enterprising researcher would be well advised to turn to discover more about the life of Will in the World. Set aside who was “Shakespeare” for the moment... but Costard was Shakspere!

Pop kulture korner: Heard through the grapevine this week that an episode of the Fox-TV program Malcolm in the Middle featured a classroom scene during which Shakespeare was discussed, and in which one of the students pointed out that everybody knows that “Shakespeare” was a pen-name for Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Not surprising that word of de Vere continues to seep out into the popular culture. But still... this latest incident is news to us. If anyone has seen or even taped that particular episode (MitM episode guide here), please drop us a line at feedback at shakespearebyanothername dot com.

It joins a curious assortment of other recent nods to de Vere in some unlikely places: the 1997 Showtime docudrama Elvis Meets Nixon (in which Dick Cavett informs us that Edward de Vere, writing under the pen-name “Shakespeare,” wrote Richard III) and a 1995 episode of the cult TV favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 (in which a de Vere-as-Shakespeare action figure is displayed as part of the show's quirky “invention exchange” segment).

29 October 2005

Looking at Shakespeare, in 3 Different Ways

This is the headline on an article by Charles McGrath in the Arts section of today's New York Times. And the headline is certainly true... if, that is, one uses the word “Different” as another way of saying “Extremely Similar.”

The opening sentence sets the tone for the rest of the piece:

If we actually discovered something new about Shakespeare, it might put an end to an entire publishing industry.

Evidently, for some, words don't really have to mean anything. A writer can just say stuff! Who cares if it makes any sense? For the rest of us, however, this bizarre statement is followed up by a glad-handling of three (3) recent orthodox Shakespeare biographies—two out of the three of which were capably covered by the Times' William Niederkorn in the Aug. 30 edition of the paper (“The Shakespeare Code, and Other Fanciful Ideas From the Traditional Camp”).

Niederkorn's article also suggested that conventional Shakespeare biographies being cranked out of the Stratford mill these days seem to be built upon so much faerie dust. The word “fantasy” was even bandied about. (See the blog entry for Aug. 29, below.)

It may also bear consideration that The Times suggesting that something was rotten in the state of Stratford inspired the weekly New York Observer to run a front-page story in September accusing The Times of promoting outlandish conspiracy theories.

Interesting, then, that today's Times story contains one and only one sentence on the authorship question:

A lot of Shakespeare commentary... emanates from the grassy knoll where the conspiracy theorists—who belive that William Shakespeare was merely a front for the 'real author'—point knowingly to people like Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Oxford and the latest to be unmasked, Sir Henry Neville, a courtier who was actually a distant relative of Shakespeare.

So, then. Back to the “conspiracy” pigeonhole to all you Shakespeare-wasn't-Shakespeare people!

If Mr. McGrath's words, words, words inspire any reaction, reaction, reaction... please consider letting The Times know. Information on sending letters to the editor at The Times is here.

24 October 2005

So the Tour, she ees fully complete. Held the final reading/booksigning in Northampton, Mass. last Wednesday and, bright and early Thursday, took off for Camden, Maine for a long weekend covering the PopTech conference for Wired News (the online daily edition of Wired magazine). Article here.

Also, spoke to a high school English class in Deerfield, Mass. this morning about some of the many layers of autobiographical meaning in Hamlet. One reference made that, in case any of the students are reading this, should be followed up on: The book that Hamlet appears to be holding in his hand as he recites his most famous soliloquy is Cardanus Comforte, a book that de Vere had published and wrote prefatory materials for in 1573. The case for Cardanus as Hamlet's book is made quite persuasively right here.

14 October 2005

The Tour, She Ees Complete! (Almost) Let us, then, hang the logo from the rafters, like the jersey of an all-star athlete:

So much to say about one intense month of readings, interviews, signings, talks, book sales, reviews, and countless conversations with readers from coast to coast. Thank you to all who came to, who broadcast or wrote about, who otherwise helped to publicize these book events and make them happen.

Highlights 'n' curios (in no particular order): Doing a radio interview for an alt.rock/pop music show that sandwiched a 10-minute discussion about Edward de Vere and Elizabethan England between songs by the Dead Kennedys and Fountains of Wayne; doing a couple signings in the wake of a famous author, who, via the good graces of kindly employees at a bookstore down the line, was handed his own copy of SBAN; flyering cafes, libraries, record stores, and bookstores in Seattle and Portland like an underground rock'n'roll band publicizing a club gig; garnering the “Oxfordian of the Year” award from the Ashland Authorship Conference (thank you, fellow heretics!)—and serving as a contestant on an up-and-coming new game show called “Oxfordian Jeopardy.”

Good question...: “I just bought a copy of Scott McCrea's [anti-Oxfordian] book The Case for Shakespeare. What should I know before I read it?”; “Sidney, Wyatt, and Surrey were all Tudor-era poets of high social station who published works under their own name. How do you reconcile that?” “What is the deal with Greenblatt's Will In The World anyway?” “Could you write another book, only this time arguing that Francis Bacon was the author?”

Audiobook of choice for the long car trips: The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips, narrated by Gianfranco Negroponte, Simon Prebble, Gerard Doyle, and Bianca Mato.

Emblematic journal excerpt: “Sept. 10, 2:20 a.m. BOOK TOUR EVENT #1. BIG SUCCESS. Could not ask for better. Did a radio interview in the morning. Very cool station—but” [Entry ends abruptly. Fatigue won.]

Unsolicited endorsement time: Amy's Organics frozen foods plus a microwave. What touring scribbler could ask for more?

And you seriously believe that?: “You see, education spoils an author. Look at Sir Philip Sidney. He was an extremely learned man—but his poetry was stilted and artificial. Now Shakespeare on the other hand...”; “Ben Jonson wouldn't deceive us.”; “The nice thing about the Shakespeare story we have is that he had working-class roots.”; “Shakespeare was a magpie. He probably just heard about this de Vere fellow and wrote about him in his plays.”

Finally, many thanks to SBAN Tour hosts, handlers, and helpers across the country: Isabel Holden; Stephanie von Hirschberg; Adam Welsch; Joe Eskola; George Anderson & Catherine Wengler; Louise Anderson; Jon Alberts & Sara Jackson; Malcolm Hooper & Lara Whitley-Bender; Earl Showerman; Mary Daugherty; Randall Sherman; and Rima, Malcolm, and Maya Greenhill.

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11 October 2005

Jet-lagged author. Photos now; text tomorrow. [Oct. 13 postscript: No, really... tomorrow.]

Thanks to the photographers who so obliged: Seattle/Malcolm Hooper; San Francisco/Malcolm Greenhill; Chicago/George Anderson

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6 October 2005

A few other talks and signings have moved from the future to the past tense: A sowing-sedition-amongst-the-youth event at a Nevada City, Calif. high school... and a Sacramento reading and signing at a Border's bookstore that came just after the completion of the latest battle in the War of The Soxes.

What War of the Soxes, you say? Well, as ever, it's the House of the White versus the House of the Red. Lancastrians/Yorkists; Bostonians/Chicagoans. Really, what's the difference?

This author holds divided sympathies on the latest White v. Red conflict: My grandfather lived and died a disappointed White Sox man. (“The Slops” was his term of art for his team.) But I've been a Massachusetts resident for the past 15 years... and what's not to love about the boys o' Fenway?

Idle chit-chat, really. Especially when the Shakespeare mystery has, at last, been solved once and for all. (Oxfordians and Stratfordians—as well as Marlovians and Baconians—are herewith instructed to turn off the lights when they're done.)

A hearty welcome to the Sir-Henry-Nevillians, who I see already have their own entry on Wikipedia's “Shakespeare Authorship” page. Good show, folks. See you all in the trenches.

2 October 2005

It's been a tremendously successful joint Shakespeare Oxford Society / Shakespeare Fellowship conference in Ashland, Oregon this past weekend—uncovering new frontiers in research on de Vere and “Shakespeare” as well as making some important inroads at the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Tomorrow (Monday) at 1:30 p.m. PDT, the Nevada City, California radio station KVMR will be featuring a live interview about “Shakespeare” By Another Name on its weekly “BookTown” program. Listen to the live webcast here.

30 September 2005

Reporting in from the road—Ashland, Oregon, in particular... home of the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Two nights in a row have seen two readings/signings (Wednesday night in Portland, last night in Ashland) drawing crowds in the 90-100 range. By popular demand, we've added a second book signing in Ashland for Sunday. Details here.

24 September 2005

From the why-wasn't-this-thought-of-before department: Tip of the hat to one of my hosts in Seattle, Jonathan Alberts, who suggested yesterday, “Have you tried posting notice of your book signing events on Craigslist?” (For those not familiar, Craigslist.org is a website that is to bulletin boards what ebay is to auctions.)

Well, then. Brilliant idea.

Seattle/Elliott Bay event tonight: check.
Portland/Powell's Books event Wednesday night: check.
Sacramento/Borders event on Oct. 5: check.
San Francisco/Cody's & Stanford Bookstore events on Oct. 7: check.

21 September 2005

Pleased to note that the American Program Bureau is testing the waters for some “Shakespeare” By Another Name speaking engagements later this year. If your library, town hall, college or other organization is looking for an entertaining and engaging speaker to talk about the “Shakespeare” mystery, please contact Trinity Ray at the APB.

Addendum: The letters column of this week's New York Observer features yours truly's response to Ron Rosenbaum's recent column taking the New York Times to task for daring to consider the authorship controversy. Since the letter-writer could not make the definitive argument for de Vere in 250 words or less (the NYO's word limit on letters), Mr. Rosenbaum sniffs a hearty I-told-you-so, takes a cheap shot or two, and closes with the note, "Sad."

Poor dear. If just 250 words can bring on the blues, he'd probably be best kept far, far away from, say, something as long as a sample chapter.

19 September 2005

Say, the book tour. Hooray, the book tour. Today...and tomorrow, the book tour. Good turn-out and engaged and enthused crowds to report so far in Minneapolis; Northfield, Minnesota; Chicago; and Madison, Wisconsin.

A few highlights of the journey to date include incorporating excerpts from the podcasts in the readings/book signings where the audio setup can accomodate it, hearing out so many great questions (whether people have been pro- or con- on this issue, the Q&A sessions have always been lively and never lacked for material to discuss), and meeting and chatting with readers who not infrequently have their own curious tales to share on where their interest lies re de Vere and the “Shakespeare” question.

Take, for instance, the actress who plays Mary de Vere (Edward's sister) in a Milwaukee/Chicago area Renaissance fair. Came to the reading and book signing in Madison Saturday. She reports that when the fair is in season (July through Labor Day), she performs a running gag with the actor who plays the role of Will Shakespeare in which her character regularly gets on Will's case for pilfering so many of her brother's plays. “Hey... Edward wrote that!”

12 September 2005

Tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 10 a.m. CDT, Wisconsin Public Radio will be featuring an hourlong call-in radio program on SBAN on its Conversations With Kathleen Dunn show. Link to listen to the show live is here. It seems this program also puts streaming audio of its archives online. Once a link becomes available, will update the media page accordingly.

P.S. [September 13] Great program this morning. Much fun and many good questions—with two out of the five callers boosting the case for Kit Marlowe as Shakespeare! Glad to see the Marlovian contingent out there and fighting the good fight... Here is the link to the audio archive of the SBAN show. (Requires RealPlayer installed on your computer. RealPlayer can be downloaded for free here.)

10 September 2005

The first night o' the tour is now complete. Standing-room-only crowd at the suburban Minneapolis Barnes & Noble: With a few celebrity exceptions, this was, we were told, about as big a crowd as they've ever drawn for a non-political, non-fiction author. (Except for the fact that Shakespeare is all about politics... politics of the Elizabethan variety, granted. But politics all the same.)

A hearty thank you to all who filled the B&N space to capacity and then some. And to the Gods who determine book tour turnouts—no doubt a lower order in the menagerie of deities, probably in the same company as the demigods who handle pregame sports team prayers—we say... Keep 'em coming!

P.S. Just added a third (or fourth, if one counts Northfield, Minnesota) Twin Cities area booksigning at the Bookcase of Wayzata on Monday, Sept. 19 at noon. Information here.

9 September 2005

Probably an exercise in futility at this point (3:45 CDT)... but at 4:50 CDT Mary Lucia will be featuring an interview and short feature on SBAN on the Minnesota Public Radio station The Current. Here's the link to the live stream. The interview is to advance tonight's reading and booksigning at the Galleria Barnes & Noble in Edina, Minnesota.

8 September 2005

Book tour begins in earnest this week with events in the Twin Cities area tomorrow and Sunday. A couple tips of the hat in regional and national press to note. Dara Moskowitz of the City Pages writes

Anderson sets out to prove that the Shakespeare canon was in fact written by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, one of the best educated men of his day, who also happens to have experienced about 60 bazillion biographical bits and pieces that explain various lines and plots in the famous plays. Like what? Like having his ship overtaken by pirates, after which he was discarded naked, on the beach, just like Hamlet. Like knowing dudes named Rosenkrantz and Guldenstern. Like how the shrew that got tamed bears a frightening resemblance to de Vere's fireball sister Mary. And on and on and on.

Also, the October issue of Macworld magazine discusses columnist Jason Snell's favorite podcasts... one about baseball, one about news, one about science, and one that he dubs a “fascinating deconstruction of the Bard.”

That deconstruction zone can be found here.

2 September 2005

OK. Work continues.

Maura Lerner of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote a fine feature story about SBAN for the Sunday Arts section of the paper. (i.e. Sept. 4) Check out the article here. For those so inclined, letters to the editor can be addressed here.

1 September 2005

One more off-topic entry on New Orleans, the (still dry) downtown area of which one blogger inside the city now compares to Mogadishu: “It's the wild kingdom. It's Lord of the Flies. That doesn't mean there's murder on every street corner. But what it does mean is that the rule of law has collapsed, that there is no order, and that property rights cannot and are not being enforced. ... The Iberville Housing Projects got pissed off because the police started to 'shop' after they kicked out looters. Then they started shooting at cops. When the cops left, the looters looted everything. There's probably not a grocery left in this city.” See for yourself.

31 August 2005

Must call a momentary time-out from a 400-year-old controversy when the images of devastation from one of America's grandest and most unique cities simply overwhelm the senses. Parts of New Orleans, it seems, will be flooded for many weeks to come—and then the Crescent City's cleanup effort begins. Lordy. Please be generous.

(The present entry had previously linked to this donation page for the Southeastern Louisiana chapter of the Red Cross. But the page linked to below is a more comprehensive clearinghouse for the various relief organizations, including the Red Cross, working in the disaster area.)

29 August 2005

Tomorrow's New York Times will be carrying an article by the venerable William S. Niederkorn, reviewing the oft-outlandish suppositions and speculations that Stratfordian biographers (such as Stephen Greenblatt, James Shapiro, and Claire Asquith) must make and the “myriad” connections that “Shakespeare” By Another Name establishes between Edward de Vere and the Bard's works. Niederkorn writes

“The controversy over who wrote Shakespeare's works has reached a turning point of sorts. A new biography of the Earl of Oxford improves on the unorthodox argument that he was Shakespeare, while fantasy has now been firmly established as a primary tool of other, more traditional Shakespeare studies. ...

As Mr. Anderson shows, there are myriad Shakespeare authorship connections for de Vere. For example, the youngest of de Vere's three daughters, Susan, whom Mr. Anderson finds to be associated in a contemporary epigram with King Lear's youngest daughter, Cordelia, married Philip Herbert, the Earl of Montgomery, after an effort to marry William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, failed. The compilers of the First Folio, the original source of many Shakespeare plays, dedicated it to these two earls.”

For the record, as SBAN points out (e.g. p. 314), it was Susan de Vere's sister Bridget who suffered the failed attempt at being married off to William Herbert, later Earl of Pembroke. This, of course, is small beer. But an email was sent off to the journalist this evening, and hopefully the Times will be correcting the minor error. In any event, it's wonderful to see the Paper of Record acknowledging the often fantastic leaps-of-faith that conventional Shakespeare biographers must make. Kudos to Mr. Niederkorn.

And, while we're at it, a recent trip to Toronto netted a couple press interviews, one of which was posted today here.

UPDATE (11:50 p.m.): New York Times story has been corrected; the Times's web version of the article has the correct info... which makes it fair game for the acclaim page!

22 August 2005

First my curtsy, then my speech: Cheers to the playwright, artist, and San Diego Opera Artist-in-Residence ML Hart and to the arts writer and Assistant Business Editor at the Palm Beach Post Greg Stepanich, both of whom give prominent mention of “Shakespeare” By Another Name. (Indeed, Hart's fulsome and generous praise left us here at the SBAN bunker with a mild—and much appreciated!—case of the vapors.)

Actually, there's no speech to follow up on that. Just a link to a review from yesterday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune that... well... the critic paraphrases Hamlet as his closing salvo. Let us parry with another line from the Great Dane: “Let it work; For 'tis the sport to have the enginer hoist with his own petar.” (a.k.a. Give 'em enough rope...)

12 August 2005

Couldn't have asked for a better first stop on the book tour. The “Shakespeare” By Another Name tour bus (er... well... if by “bus” one means a late-'90s model Ford station wagon) pulled into Boston for two days of interviews and a well-attended book signing at the Brookline Booksmith. (Photo from the event below-left)

One TV interview ran live on Wednesday night—“Nitebeat” with Barry Nolan on the regional New England cable network CN8. Barry presented a spirited defense of the conventional Stratfordian theory, making for an enjoyable exchange. (Screenshot from the show below-right.) No Novak moments to report—just seven minutes of lively verbal sparring that, I'm told, made for some good television.

Other Boston-area television and radio programs that will soon be airing features about “Shakespeare” By Another Name include

• “The Literati Scene” with Smoki Bacon and Dick Concannon
• “Books and Authors” with Diane Goshgarian on BATV
• “Pages to People” with Rob Mitchell on WBNW 1120 AM. This half-hour interview is slated to air Sat., Aug. 13 sometime during the 6-7 p.m. EDT timeslot. Listen here (using RealPlayer).

8 August 2005

Book's out. (BOOK'S OUT!!!) Today. Should now be in your local bookstores. (IN YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORES!!!) Wow.

Kind of funny non-review here, plus a positive review in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

28 July 2005

The release date approacheth... and the staff at SBAN HQ are now gearing up for the beginning of The Big Push. Finalizing the first issue of the Shakespeare By Another Name Bulletin—which we hope to have out by early next week. So we'll save the announcements and to-do for the copy therein.

This one couldn't wait, though. Highbridge Audio, who will be releasing the audiobook version of “Shakespeare” By Another Name, devoted the cover of their fall releases catalog to SBAN. It's a great close-up of the cover montage, one that I'll probably be taking on tour when a simple and straightforward visual is needed that makes the case for de Vere as the Bard. On the left is the Bard. On the right is de Vere. Same guy. That, in one plain phrase, is the story of the book.

3 July 2005

Apple's iTunes Music Store has begun carrying podcasts -- and the Shakespeare By Another Name audio series (a.k.a. "Shakespeare-upon-iPod") is already loaded up. If your computer has iTunes, click the icon below for a link to the iTunes page with the Shakespeare By Another Name audios. If you'd like a free copy of iTunes, click here.

24 June 2005

Posting a few photos from the Second Annual Dutch Shakespeare Authorship Conference in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The conference, held on June 15-16, was a great success, and many thanks are due to the organizers Jan Scheffer and Sandra Schruijer.

Upper left: Schruijer presents her paper, “Street Wisdom on the Man 'Shakespeare'”
Upper right: The conference venue, Leeuwenbergh, on the Stadsbuitengracht (the “canal outside town”)
Lower left: Scheffer and Schruijer enjoying Friday afternoon's Utrecht canal tour
Lower right: Conference participant Dr. Charles Berney (Watertown, Mass.) and yours truly toasting to the promising future of Shakespeare authorship studies in Holland.

23 June 2005

This fall's Shakespeare By Another Name book tour is now in the offing. Please check the listings for an event near you!

10 June 2005

New confirmed book tour dates are on the book tour page -- and new audios keep on moving down the assembly line. The Shakespeare By Another Name audio series will, by the end of the summer, be available on CD. Details forthcoming.

27 May 2005

Pleased to note that Michael York just sent in an endorsement of the book. In other news, Shakespeare's not the only paradigm in need of a little shifting these days...

25 May 2005

Big week in webland. This past seven days has seen the launch of Episode 3 of the SBAN Audio Series (“France! Italia! Commedia!”)—the best episode yet! Do check it out. Other thing is: Excitement, thrills and audio 'n' video to boot all await in the form of a little semi-regular email news magazine I'll be rolling out this summer titled the Shakespeare By Another Name Bulletin. Please join us. (It's a free subscription.)

9 May 2005

The first book tour dates have now been posted on the author page. Many more engagements yet to announce!

3 May 2005

Made some updates to the audio page this week: A retooling of the Podcasts to provide overviews of and discussion about the book, not readings from it. Will still be featuring the spirited Shakespearean readings recorded in the sessions pictured below... these outputs of the Workaround Sound Mobile Unit will be featured in episodes 2-9, which will be posted to the audio page beginning May 7.

25 Apr. 2005

Today's edition of PodcastingNews.com features a story on the Shakespeare By Another Name Podcasts.

22-24 Apr. 2005 (one long weekend)

Both the "Shakespeare" By Another Name mp3 audio excerpt/Podcast series and the full-on SBAN website have now launched! Kudos to web designers Robert Kempe and Penny Leveritt and to Chris Collingwood, Stephen Eldredge, Timothy Holcomb, Christine Stevens, and Brad Thayer — who made the Podcasts possible. Thank you thank you thank you, all.

On Friday, April 22 at the Harvard University Faculty Club, Mark did a live reading of two book excerpts, as part of an evening titled "The Real Will in the Real World: A Response." This mini-symposium offered up a reply to Harvard Prof. Stephen Greenblatt's recent biography Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. Also speaking at the Faculty Club on Friday evening were author Hank Whittemore (The Monument) and Prof. Daniel Wright (director of the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference).

16 Apr. 2005

Been doing lots of recording for the audio excerpts lately. Also some freelance writing. Below are three snaps from both Workaround Sound (a.k.a. the home studio of musician and SBAN Podcast engineer Chris Collingwood) and from the Workaround Sound Mobile Unit™ on location in Amherst, Mass.

Top-left: Engineer and author ponder the subtleties of proper microphone placement.
Top-right: Workaround Sound Mobile Unit™ wranglers Brad Thayer and Chris Collingwood monitor the feed while actor Stephen Eldredge gives his all.
Bottom: Actors Timothy Holcomb and Christine Stevens go tete-a-tete, and the Mobile Unit is there to capture the moment.

25 Mar. 2005

Posted a new endorsement from Prof. Kristin Linklater. Working presently on mp3 audio excerpts of the book that will be appearing in this site in a little under a month. [24 Apr. UPDATE: Here they are.] Also... took another turn as in the photo below proof-reading another draft of the book — this time, it was the laid-out pages as they'll actually be appearing in the book. A friend noted that the font looks authoritative. I think this is a good thing.

29 Dec. 2004

Oh, the copy-edits. 513 pages of mainbody text (in the latest far-from-final layout format) plus 1700 endnotes have made for a fun November and December. I was fortunate to have a very thorough copy editor working on this book — which has effectively meant a lot of sitting at the nearby easy chair with colored pencil in hand doing this.

As for the "excitement" promised in the Nov. 22 entry, I am pleased to announce that beginning in April, ShakespeareByAnotherName.com will be hosting audio excerpts of the forthcoming book in downloadable mp3 format. New downloads will be posted on a regular basis to the site and offered for free—distribute these mp3s widely, please! Drop them on your iPod or other mp3 player, burn the recordings onto CD or just listen at the computer.

Also, in January, the website begins its extreme makeover (web edition) to transform this virtual ramshackle shanty into the dream home the owners have long imagined it to be.

Much, much to come in 2005, even before the August release date... keep the dial set.

22 Nov. 2004

Yes, the release date is now April 2005 August 2005. The production schedules (copy-editing, type-setting, proof-reading, and other hyphenated things that need to be done before a book comes to market) on a book of this size have all taken longer than first anticipated. We figured best not to cut corners. This past week has been an intense one, involving filing four green pencils down to nibs as I went through each line-edit on the manuscript. Surprising how, in 2004, so much of the production process is still done the old fashioned way: with (somewhat) carefully arranged piles of paper, pencil sharpener at the ready, and an almost parental amount of solicitude about this hulking stack of pages that represents the culmination of so many months of hard work.

More excitement is yet to come by year's end... watch this space for more snapshots and more developments...

22 Oct. 2004

For a little more on the back-story to the cover art, see the related entry in the book design blog Foreword.

13 Oct. 2004

OK. Book cover now officially unveiled. Plus the addition of a most gracious blurb about the book by Sarah Smith.

9 Oct. 2004

Here begins a blog of sorts...This site still has yet to officially launch, but there was a fine little milestone passed today that I wanted to recognize on the website: The book now actually exists in a form that can be measured the old-fashioned way: pages of manuscript, not megabytes on a computer. These days, the eleven chapters plus introduction plus epilogue add up to 590 pp. — followed by lots of endnotes. (They're the clipped sheaf of papers to the right of the actual manuscript.) Still some tweaking remains to be done, both of the jacket and of those stacks of paper to the left of it.