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   Issue No. 1
August 2005   

From the editor:

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!

The “Shakespeare” By Another Name Bulletin is an email newsletter covering the latest news, reviews, feedback, and developments about the first-ever popular literary biography of Edward de Vere as author of the works of “Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare” By Another Name will be published on August 8 by Gotham Books. (Here's where to order.) Soon thereafter, Highbridge Audio will be publishing the 8-CD abridged audiobook edition. As of the last week in July, bookstore pre-orders were strong enough that the publisher ordered a second printing. More below.

These days, when books take many years to research, write, and publish — but websites, blogs, and emails go through many revisions and reiterations in a single day — a lot of confusion and even misinformation can occupy that space in between. It is hoped that this newsletter will help to clarify any murky waters that will inevitably be kicked up and moderate any debates and discussions that need moderating.

So feel free to forward this Bulletin to any and all. (If you try to forward this message and get gobbledygook, just go to the web page version of this Bulletin and either forward the page itself or forward the URL.) And, as ever, all are encouraged to sign up for a free subscription to the Bulletin at shakespearebyanothername.com/bulletin.

CONTENTS:
1) We Get Letters
2) Reviews Reviewed
3) Question, Mark: Yes, But What Does A Second Printing Really Mean?
4) Appearing in a Town—or Media—Near You
5) Masthead

We Get Letters

If you have any feedback that you would like considered for the Bulletin, please drop us a line at feedback at shakespeare by another name dot com. (A human reading the previous sentence, of course, would appreciate knowing that shakespearebyanothername is actually one word. Spam email address harvesting programs aren't so clever.) Please also indicate in your email whether we may include your name and/or town, or whether you would like your correspondence to be printed anonymously. We reserve the right to edit for style, grammar, brevity, and clarity.

From One Bardcaster to Another

Just want to let you know that I dig your podcast. I am a high school English and history teacher and will bring up your Edward de Vere argument next time I teach Shakespeare. My personal interest in Shakespeare is the base and graphic material he used to appeal to the bums in the pit. I consider myself one of those bums. I look forward to reading your take on de Vere's dirty side. I'm not one to argue with your belief that “Shakespeare” was not Shakespeare. If I wrote some of that smut I would use a pseudonym too.

If you're interested, I also have a podcast about Shakespeare, the only other one I believe. It can be found at http://ripbooks.blogspot.com.

     —Kevin Brookhouser
       Monterey, Calif.

Incidentally, the Rip Books Radio audios (a.k.a. podcasts) are an interesting and unique scene-by-scene examination of some of the plays. As the Rip Books website notes, these podcasts are “what your school hoped you wouldn't learn” about the plays. Go, Kevin!

A Book and its Cover

I am looking forward to reading your book this month. I did want to say however that your statement on your website regarding the Ashbourne Portrait that “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.” proves nothing.

You talk as if it is commonly accepted that the picture is that of Shakespeare. That is definitely not agreed upon, and the Folger Library considers it to be the Mayor of London Hugh Hammersley. Others consider it a doctored portrait of de Vere. The point is that whether the painting is Oxford, Hammersley, or Shakespeare, it does not offer any evidence as to who wrote the plays and sonnets, and your using the picture on your book cover seems misleading.

Again, I am a strong proponent of the Oxford as Shakespeare theory and look forward with eager anticipation to reading your book.

     —Howard Schumann

Thanks are due to Mr. Schumann, whose comments have already, in fact, inspired the latest round of edits of the homepage. The Hammersley-de Vere-“Ashbourne” controversy, as noted above, is also discussed in the book's Appendix D. We agree with Mr. Schumann that the “Ashbourne” controversy is ultimately a separate ball of wax from the authorship question. Nevertheless, the split-screen face offers a powerful symbol of the story of the book. That was why it was put on the cover.

Endorsements & Analogies

I am anticipating your book as eagerly as my 10 year old is anticipating Harry Potter this week. My interest began I think with either a New York Times or Washington Post article about the controversy. That was my introduction. Then a friend, hearing of my interest, rustled up a copy of the I believe now out of print Who Wrote Shakespeare?. [Ed. note: As of July 21, Amazon.com was still selling new copies of the Thames & Hudson paperback of this 1996 John Michell book.] And I was hooked.

This may seem a little unconventional but might you get/seek the endorsement of James Randi? A friend of mine thinks that when I go on about the Shakespeare thing its like denying that people landed on the moon. I might be able to get him to read the book, but if Mr. Randi said you were on the up and up, he'd be a lot less, as it were, skeptical.

I liken this controversy to the “Did Thomas Jefferson father Sally Hemming's children?” question. The people on one side of the argument were reduced to merely castigating the other side for daring to ask such a question. And the castigators lost. It seems unlikely that anyone will ever locate DNA evidence to show that de Vere wrote Shakespeare, but, all the same, I think it is entirely possible that the tide could turn here almost as quickly as it did in that matter.

     —A.E.G.



In addition to the letters printed above, there were also a couple rather vitriolic emails, unfortunately nothing that the correspondent wished to have printed even anonymously. The upshot is Scott McCrea's recent book The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question is, the correspondent claims, supposedly a final and definitive blow against the Oxfordian case.

Space does not permit for a full review here, but suffice it to say that McCrea's tome, published earlier this year by Praeger, is the latest and certainly most formidable entry in the growing world of “anti-Oxfordian” publications. McCrea scores a few points that demonstrate why the Shakespeare authorship question remains a contested topic on both sides of the orthodox-heretic divide. For instance, McCrea rightly points out that Oxfordians have over-stretched their arguments that the Shakespeare canon's references to hunting and hawking necessarily point to an aristocratic author. (This would be because lower classes were prohibited by law from enjoying these sports.) In fact, these sports appear to have been more widely practiced than most Oxfordians have claimed. Point taken.

But McCrea also goes for the jugular on a number of arguments that are either poorly researched or poorly plotted out. Or both. Case in point: He occupies eight pages making some ill-informed claims that the Shakespeare canon contains numerous “errors” in its references to Italy and France. As pointed out in both “Shakespeare” By Another Name and the book's Audio Series, Episodes 3 and 4, the Bard's references to Italy are so specific and accurate that they instead suggest that the author had some kind of a continental Grand Tour himself. Some Italian allusions in the Shakespeare canon, moreover, date specifically to the mid-1570s, when Edward de Vere was traveling there. (Listen to Episode 3 for a sampling of this latter variety.)

Finally, McCrea's polemics could certainly use to be less hysterical in places. Comparing Oxfordians to Holocaust deniers (“though obviously it lacks the same moral dimension,” he notes) is the kind of tawdry ploy that serves only to cheapen his rhetoric and anger anyone seeking a rational exploration of the Shakespeare mystery.

Reviews Reviewed

REVIEWERS NEEDED! Able-fingered urged to submit their opinions at Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.

It has come to our attention recently that the early reviews of “Shakespeare” By Another Name are in, and both Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com carry one or more of them on their SBAN pages. That would be great except for the fact that, as we here in the SBAN bunker had suspected, the pre-publication review periodicals (Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and the Library Journal) handed off their review galleys to various Shakespeare academicians and other, it seems, unbudgeable souls. Not surprisingly, said reviewers envisioned a work of heresy and tarred it accordingly—although Kirkus's closing concession (that the book “makes a spirited case, and even the staunchest anti-de Vere partisan will profit from hearing [it] out...”) provided a pleasant surprise to wary eyes.

There's nothing wrong, of course, with a little tarring and feathering. (Can't say a little wasn't done in the McCrea review above.) We've come to expect these sorts of initiation rites. But presenting just the views of dogmatic Stratfordians about an unstintingly Oxfordian book is a little like asking a clique of Republican party loyalists to provide exclusive coverage of the Democratic Convention. Or vice versa. Different agendas, different worldviews, and different priorities combine to yield a very skewed picture.

So whatever you may think about SBAN, please consider writing up your responses on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble's webpages. A greater diversity of views is much needed and much appreciated.

[Note: Just as this Bulletin was about to be emailed, the following review came in over the transom. Credit this man for his honesty: He admits he won't read the book!]

Question, Mark: Yes, But What Does A Second Printing Really Mean?

As noted above, we were very pleased to learn recently that Gotham Books has received enough bookstore pre-orders for SBAN that they've ordered a second print run.

An interesting side-note here is that the second printing and all subsequent printings will be correcting an error in the timeline. For first edition collectors, this means that the first printing, first edition of SBAN has a few distinguishing birthmarks. (For those who aren't collectors but just curious, I'd recommend this short article on the ins and outs of first edition collecting. Strange as it sounds, as this avid collector notes, “I collect first [editions] because I can't afford to collect reprints.”)

Before detailing the error, I must first say that the designers, production managers, and the editorial team at Gotham Books deserve a hearty round of congratulations for assembling an attractive package of text, charts, maps, illustrations, appendices and lots of endnotes. (They really went the extra mile for the endnotes, for which I am very grateful.) Countless person-hours have produced a gorgeous looking book.

Yet in the first printing, as anyone in publishing will tell you, typos sometimes creep in like spiders in a basement. And in this first printing, we caught six arachnids in the book's timeline. SBAN makes a number of circumstantial arguments about Edward de Vere's doings and whereabouts at various points in his life—but such arguments should, of course, not be mistaken for documented fact. Those six arachnids, however, accidentally blur the line. For instance, SBAN argues that de Vere participated in naval search-and-destroy missions against the Spanish Armada in the early summer of 1588. The timeline entry for June 1588 in SBAN's prefatory timeline should read, “De Vere part of early intercept force to engage Spanish Armada en route to England?” By accident, though, there's a period where a question mark should be.

The list of all six periods-where-question-marks-should-be is here. And those first editions are here.



Appearing in a Town—or Media—Near You

“Shakespeare” By Another Name hits the bookstores next week, which makes August prime time in North America for pushing the story of Edward de Vere as “Shakespeare” to every media outlet with an interest in books, the arts, or even just a good mystery. SBAN has already begun to generate media interest—with many thanks to the book's publicist Hector DeJean. But the story keeps moving forward, in part, with help from advocates like you. If you have contacts with one or more reporters, reviewers, columnists, hosts, producers, or other members of the media who you think should be approached and perhaps sent a review copy of the book, please let us know. You can reach me here and Hector DeJean here.

Starting in September in earnest, the SBAN Roadshow will be on the march in the midwest and western U.S. We hope to be announcing more dates in future issues of the Bulletin. In the meantime, if the Book Tour is indeed making a stop near you, please be sure to mark your calendars and bring your friends. If you need directions to the venue, that's just a click away. For most every date, too, we've drawn up flyers announcing the book tour event. Please feel free to print, xerox, and distribute the flyers as the date approaches. Thank you.

Thursday, Aug. 11: Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline, Massachusetts. Reading and booksigning. 7 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 9: Barnes & Noble, The Galleria Shops, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina, Minnesota. Reading and booksigning. 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Sept. 14: Carleton College Bookstore, One North College Street, Northfield, Minnesota. Reading and booksigning. 7 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 16: DePaul University Bookstore, 1 East Jackson Blvd., Chicago. Reading and booksigning. 12:30 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 17: Borders Books & Music, 2173 Zeier Rd., Madison, Wisconsin. Reading and booksigning. 7 p.m.

Saturday, Sept. 24: Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S. Main St., Seattle. Reading and booksigning. 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Sept. 28: Powell's Bookstore, 1005 W. Burnside, Portland, Oregon. Reading and booksigning. 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Sept. 29: Bloomsbury Books, 290 E. Main, Ashland, Oregon. 7:30 p.m. Reading and booksigning, in conjunction with the joint Shakespeare Oxford Society / Shakespeare Fellowship conference to be held in Ashland that weekend. Ground-breaking papers on Edward de Vere and Shake-speare to be presented along with performances by one of the leading Shakespeare companies in North America, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Please join us.

Wednesday, Oct. 5: Borders Books & Music, 2339 Fair Oaks Blvd., Sacramento, California. Reading and booksigning. Time 7 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 7: Stanford University Bookstore, 519 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, California. Reading and booksigning. Noon.

Friday, Oct. 7: Cody's Books (the new downtown location), 2 Stockton St., San Francisco. Reading and booksigning. 6 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 19: Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main St., Northampton, Massachusetts. Reading and booksigning. Time 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 26: Westfield Athenaeum Series, 6 Elm St., Westfield, Massachusetts. Talk and booksigning. 4 p.m.

The Shakespeare By Another Name Bulletin was edited, written, and designed by Mark Anderson. Special thanks to Penny Leveritt for her design and proof-reading feedback.

“Gentles, do not reprehend.
If you pardon, we will mend. ...
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.”


Make ye haste at any hour to