In this intriguing study, Stephanie Caruana examines the use of the expression “em” and “them” in the Shakespeare Canon. She discovers several curious things about the frequency of occurrence of these terms in the works of Shakespeare and makes a few interesting speculations about what they mean for the authorship question.
In the Winter 1996 Ever Reader we published a paper by Charles Boyle on Twelfth Night, which was to be presented at the combined SAA and World Shakespeare Congress in Los Angeles in April. Well, present it he did, but what occurred at the Seminar on Elizabethan Theatrical Enterprise was more of a lesson on the authorship debate than on Twelfth Night.
Although it is now well known the Funeral Elegy was written by John Ford, not Shakespeare, this article still contains some interesting information. It should be noted that an article by Prof. Gilles Monsarrat which put to rest the assertion that Shakespeare wrote Elegy was informed by Richard Kennedy, an Oxfordian and the first to correctly attribute the poem to John Ford.
In the first issue of Apostrophe, a new publication from the University of South Carolina in Beaufort, editor Sheila Tombe talks with Charlton Ogburn about his life-long mission to convince the world of the Edward de Vere’s authorship of the Shakespeare Canon.
This article by Peter Moore first appeared on the Oxfordian page of The Shakespeare Newsletter (Fall, 1991). While it deals only in part with the dating of The Tempest, it does help to remind readers that the dating of Shakespeare’s plays has been, and continues to be, a problem for all scholars. There is no certainity in any of it, but rather only speculation which must be based on careful consideration of all the facts and all the sources.
A common objection to the Earl of Oxford as the author of Shakespeare’s works is that he died in 1604, while perhaps a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays are said to be written after that date. This article briefly examines this aspect of the authorship controversy.
Roger Stritmatter takes a close look at Terry Ross’s essay on “What George Puttenham Really Said” in The Arte of English Poesie, and concludes that Mr. Ross is himself more guilty of a “carelessness with evidence” than the Oxfordians he rails against.
Andy Hannas examines a key element of Terry Ross’s analysis of “The Arte” (who are “the rest”?), and finds, here too, Mr. Ross has missed the mark.
