Two leading Shakespearean scholars fronting a campaign in defence of Shakespeare’s authorship of his works are to deliver two lectures in Ireland this week.
Prof Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson will give a free public lecture entitled Shakespeare Bites Back at the West Wing in University College Cork at noon on Thursday.
Provoked in part by Roland Emmerich’s film Anonymous, the scholars will discuss the rise of “anti-Shakespearianism”, demonstrate its fallacies, and propose strategies to counter it.
Later on Thursday, they will discuss Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the Senses at a lecture in the Boole Auditorium UCC.
The film Anonymous sought to establish a dramatic angle for Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, as the secret author of the plays, who uses the humble actor Will Shakespeare as his front in the escapade. Wells and Edmondson say that, as the film presents itself as history, something needs to be said against it.
The scholars have co-authored and co-edited a number of publications, most notably the highly acclaimed Shakespeare’s Sonnets (OUP, 2004