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The Annual General Meeting of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship was held at the Hyatt Centric Hotel in New Orleans from 9:00 to 10:30 AM on Saturday, November 11, 2023. It [...]

This article examines a letter written after a meeting that took place in London on April 8, 1603; it was signed by seventeen persons. It appears that Oxford was present [...]

In a letter in the last issue of the Newsletter, Gary Goldstein commented on our article, 'Does the 17th Earl of Oxford 'lieth buried in Westminster'?' (Summer 2022 Newsletter), which [...]

The annual General Meeting of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship was called to order by President Robert Meyers at 10:00 AM Pacific time on Sunday, September 25, 2022. Forty-one members were [...]

Margaret Wood Doty Robson died July 29, 2022, at her home in North Palm Beach. Florida, at the age of 93. Born in Daytona Beach, Florida, and raised in Oelwein, [...]

In Chapter 7 of Necessary Mischief: Exploring the Shakespeare Authorship Question, I discuss the 1,000 [pounds sterling] annuity that Queen Elizabeth gave Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. [...]

[Editor's Note: This article is part of Cheryl Eagan-Donovan's report from her trip to England supported by a research grant from the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.] A handwritten manuscript about the [...]

Many laws were on the books in Tudor England to control the spoken and written word. These laws empowered the Elizabethan and later, the Jacobean authorities to censor writing that [...]

The annual general meeting of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship was convened on Saturday, October 2, 2021, at 10:00 AM (Pacific). Approximately sixty-two members joined via Zoom. Opening with his President's [...]

The epic poem Venus and Adonis was the first work of Shakespeare’s to be printed, yet there was no author’s name on the title page. The name William Shakespeare only appeared at the end of a dedication of the poem to Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton. A year later, another epic poem was published, the 1600-line Rape of Lucrece. Almost as popular as Venus and Adonis (which was printed nine times in less than a decade), Lucrece went through six printings in a slightly longer time frame. Again here, the author’s name was not on the title page, only appearing in yet another dedication to Southampton. Of interest, never again did “Shakespeare” (whoever he or she was) dedicate anything else to anyone else. Nevertheless, on the strength of these two remarkable dedications, Shakespearean orthodoxy has put forth that Southampton must have been Shakespeare’s “patron” and possibly even the “fair youth” mentioned in Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Yet despite centuries of searching for such a connection, no evidence at all has emerged connecting Will Shakspere of Stratford with Southampton. The fact is, when Venus and Adonis was published in 1593, Southampton was himself only 19 years old, living on a very small income that had to be doled out to him by his guardian, William Cecil (Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s Master of the Royal Wards). At this point in time, Southampton was clearly in no position to be a patron to anyone. Indeed, how would the Stratford man have even gotten to know him? It would be two more years before Southampton would reach his majority and be able to “sue for livery” – the legal process that required payment to the crown for an heir to obtain any inheritance from his deceased father’s estates. This paper explores the historical circumstances of these major epic poems and what the author’s personal motivation might really have been behind choosing young Southampton as dedicatee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Henry Tudor ascended the throne of England as Henry VII in 1485, he found his royal coffers empty and set about to remedy this by asserting his right to [...]

In his Last Will and Testament, William Shakespeare's sole bequest to his wife of some thirty-three years was my second best bed with the furniture.' (1) These words, with their [...]

Secret Whispers: Searching for the Truth of Shakespeare, edited by David Gowdey (Traveler Books, 2017) When Secret Whispers arrived in the mail, I looked over the index and was a [...]

Summer Storm: A Novel of Ideas by James A. Warren (CreateSpace, 2016; 396 pp.) James Warren, a diplomat by profession (and board member of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship), has written [...]

Dear Editor, As an in-depth, scholarly journal devoted to delving full fathom five into 'Shakespeare' as the creative output of the Court poet-playwright Edward de Vere, THE OXFORDIAN is without [...]