Press release from Saturday September 18, 2010
SAC News Releases
- February 15, 2018
- University of London now offers free online Shakespeare authorship course
- December 9, 2016
- SAC News: What we've accomplished; what's next after the 400th anniversary?
- November 22, 2016
- Droeshout engraving in First Folio has Shakspere wearing impossible doublet!
- May 4, 2016
- Doubts about Shakespeare go international for the 400th anniversary
- April 25, 2016
- Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance revive the debate over Shakespeare's identity in an interview with NPR's Renée Montagne.
- April 24, 2016
- Doubters claim victory on Shakespeare 400th Anniversary, and renew their challenge to Stratfordians to participate in a mock trial.
- March 23, 2016
- The SAC at Age 10; Six New Notables; 400th Anniversary International Events
- December 27, 2015
- Declaration of Reasonable Doubt still un-rebutted after more than eight years
- November 22, 2015
- Droeshout engraving in First Folio has Shakspere wearing impossible doublet!
- May 31, 2015
- RSC removes Stanley Wells' article on “Authorship Debate” from its website!
- September 28, 2014
- SAC Update through September, 2014
- December 6, 2013
- SAC challenges the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust to a mock trial, to prove that Shakspere wrote Shakespeare, offering a £40K donation to the winning side.'
- November 21, 2011
- Actor Michael York and Shakespeare Authorship Coalition challenge the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon with new reasons to doubt the identity of the author William Shakespeare in the wake of Sony Pictures’ heretical film, Anonymous.
- April 30, 2011
- Over 2,000 sign Declaration of Reasonable Doubt
- September 18, 2010
- Theater professionals sign Shakespeare Authorship Declaration
- April 20, 2010
- Happy Birthday and Retirement, Justice John Paul Stevens!
- April 19, 2010
- Shakespeare Authorship Coalition updates Declaration signatory lists
- November 15, 2009
- U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor (retired) sign the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.
- April 13, 2009
- Award-winning Shakespearean actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance joined by growing list of declared Shakespeare authorship doubters. Michael York joins fellow actors as SAC Patron. Shakespeare Authorship Coalition marks 2nd aniversary of Declaration of Reasonable Doubt. Seven signatories added to SAC “notables” list.
- November 17, 2008
- Huntington Library staff sign Declaration.
- June 3, 2008
- Sir Derek Jacobi joins the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition as a SAC patron.
- December 1, 2007
- First annual report of the Shakespeare authorship coalition: the Coalition’s strategy is working! Over 1,200 people have signed the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt, and we’ve attracted enormous attention to the authorship issue. With each new signatory, it becomes more difficult for orthodox scholars to continue claiming that there is “no room for doubt” about the identity of William Shakespeare.
- September 23, 2007
- Nearly 800 additional signatories have signed the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare” in the two weeks since prominent Shakespearean actors Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, former artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, gave the Declaration its launch in the U.K.
- July 2, 2007
- SAC adds 100 signers to the list of signatories of the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt”.
- April 23, 2007
- SAC releases its first list of signatories of the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt”, on the 391st anniversary of William Shakspere's death.
- April 14, 2007
- SAC and the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable hold a signing ceremony to issue the “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt”
- April 11, 2007
- SAC and Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable to issue historic “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt”
SAC contact person: John Shahan at (909) 896-2006, or online.
Ashland, Oregon, September 18, 2010 — Ten prominent theater professionals sign Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.
Today at the annual joint conference of the Shakespeare Fellowship and the Shakespeare Oxford Society at the Ashland Springs Hotel in Ashland, Oregon, ten prominent theater professionals participated in a signing ceremony of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare. The event featured Paul Nicholson, Executive Director of the prestigious Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and James Newcomb, long-time actor with the OSF Company. Both of them addressed the audience of nearly 200 people about why they doubt that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works.
Nicholson, one of the most prominent Shakespeare festival directors in the United States, said “The Shakespeare authorship question is a great mystery, and I love great mysteries… I'm proud to have the opportunity to sign the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.”
In an interview last year reported in the annual Prologue magazine, which goes to 16,000 OSF members, Nicholson said, “Shakespeare simply didn’t have the background… whereas Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, or some other high-ranking man or men — that makes sense.”
Newcomb, now in his fourteenth season with the OSF, in addition to appearing at many other Shakespearean venues, said “the works themselves defy the story — the myth that the Stratford man was the author.”
The other Declaration signers were Chris Coleman, Artistic Director, Portland Center Stage; Canadian actor and playwright Keir Cutler, Ph.D.; Christopher DuVal, Assistant Professor of Performance, University of Idaho; Livia Genise, Artistic Director, Camelot Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; Felicia Londré, Ph.D., Professor of Theatre, University of Missouri at Kansas City; Stephen Moorer, Artistic Director, Pacific Repertory Theatre, Carmel, California; Mary Tooze, theatre arts and library patron, Ashland, Oregon; and Hank Whittemore, award-winning actor, author and playwright.
Conference Chairman Earl Showerman, in presenting the beautifully-framed poster of the Declaration to Nicholson, said that, “While the academy remains prejudicial against any serious consideration of the Shakespeare authorship question, the theatre arts community has proven to be far more open-minded, and has demonstrated courage, leadership and creativity in pursuing what is arguably one of the great literary mysteries of our time.”
The “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” is neutral about the true identity of the author. It argues that there is enough room for doubt that the question should now be regarded as a legitimate subject for research and publication in academia, and an appropriate topic for instruction and discussion in classrooms. The Declaration can be read and signed online at the website of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition
The Declaration was first issued in April 2007, in signing events at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, CA, and at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, host of the annual Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference. Then, on September 8, 2007, famous actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance held a signing event at the Chichester Festival Theatre in Chichester, West Sussex, following a performance of Rylance’s play, I Am Shakespeare. The event coincided with the start of a master’s degree program in authorship studies at Brunel University in West London. The combination gained worldwide media attention.
Over 1,820 people have now signed the Declaration, including 324 current and former academics. The largest number by academic discipline is those in English literature, followed by those in theater arts. A list of twenty prominent past doubters named in the Declaration includes Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William and Henry James, John Galsworthy, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, Charlie Chaplin, and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Harry A. Blackmun and Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
The list of Notable Declaration signatories at the SAC website includes such luminaries as former U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor, plus Shakespearean actors Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, Jeremy Irons and Michael York. Paul Nicholson and James Newcomb will now be added, making a total of twenty-two.
SAC contact person: John Shahan at (909) 896-2006, or online.