Shakespeare Fellowship

The Shakespeare Fellowship is an organization devoted to promoting Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, as the true author of the works of William Shakespeare.

Two organizations by this name have existed. The first, originally devoted to the study of the Shakespeare authorship but endorsing no particular candidate, was founded in England in 1921 by J. Thomas Looney, Sir George Greenwood, and others. It maintained worldwide membership, chiefly in the UK and the United States.

In the United States, the Shakespeare Fellowship was incorporated in 1945. Oxfordian author and attorney Charlton Greenwood Ogburn provided legal assistance in incorporating the organization. Oxfordian scholar and journalist Charles Wisner Barrell was secretary and treasurer of the group during the 1940s, and also was editor of two of the group's publications, the Shakespeare Fellowship Newsletter (1939-1943) and the Shakespeare Fellowship Quarterly (1944-1948).

In the United States, the organization was superseded for many years beginning in 1957 by the Shakespeare Oxford Society. In 2001 the Shakespeare Fellowship was revived in the U. S. as a non-profit educational foundation.

The Shakespeare Fellowship (2001)

The goals of the new Fellowship include bringing the Shakespeare authorship debate to a world-wide audience via the Internet and stimulating a wide-ranging dialogue on the relevance of Shakespeare to the 21st century. The group is dedicated to these specific objectives[1]:

  • To promote and endow research and education in the Shakespearean authorship question, with special emphasis on the theory first proposed by J. Thomas Looney identifying Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), as the true author of the Shakespeare canon;
  • To promote and endow the reading, performance, study, and enjoyment of the works of Shakespeare;
  • To encourage and support the revision of literary history inaugurated by Looney in 1920, making the case for de Vere's authorship available to students, teachers and all who are interested in literature and history;
  • To promote and endow research and education in the European Renaissance in general: its culture, philosophy, history, literature, politics and music, with a particular emphasis on the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth I;
  • To further the debate over the relevance of Shakespeare in the 21st century;
  • And to establish and promote a variety of related activities -- a quarterly newsletter, regional speakers' bureaus, conferences, and other educational and scholarly initiatives addressing the authorship issue and the recognition of Edward de Vere as Shakespeare.

The group publishes a quarterly journal, Shakespeare Matters[2], maintains an active website, and sponsors an annual essay contest on the Shakespearean question.

References

  1. ^ http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/mission_popup.html
  2. ^ http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/Newsletter/NewsletterMain.htm

External links