Bonus Feature: Video - Keir Cutler "Shakespeare Authorship / Crackpot to Mainstream"

Keir Cutler has allowed us to upload the presentation he made at this year's Shakespeare Authorship Conference in Toronto. The title: Shakespeare Authorship / Crackpot to Mainstream

Enjoy (and comment)!

Shakespeare Authorship: Keir Cutler Responds to Joel Fishbane

[Editor: Keir Cutler sent us this article in response to Joel Fishbane's Theatre For Thought of October 22]

The True Story of Shakespeare

The Stratford-upon-Avon billion dollar tourist industry is perhaps the main reason there is such unwillingness to even look at the evidence that Shakespeare did not write his famous works.

By Keir Cutler

The movie Anonymous with its theme that “Shakespeare was a fraud” opens this week and it is bound to renew interest in the Shakespeare Authorship Question.  Those like myself who question who wrote the great works will be viciously condemned, showered with insults and labeled as elitists, fools, conspiracy theorists or worse, as in the case of Joel Fishbane of The Charlebois Post, compared to Nazis and eugenicists (Shakespeare and the other 99%).  The one thing you will not hear from the defenders of the orthodoxy is the true story.  So here it is.

Theatre For Thought, October 22, 2011

SHAKESPEARE AND THE OTHER 99%

...the canon is a symbol for the ultimate possibilities of artistic thought and for the universality of the human condition.

joel fishbane

Hate laws are being re-examined in this country, but I’m going to come out and say it: I hate the movie Anonymous and I don’t care that I haven’t seen it. The film, which opens October 28, is to the movies what Keir Cutler’s  Teaching Hamlet was to the Montreal Fringe: a story that springs from the perpetual and irritating Shakespeare authorship debate. As if Shakespeare’s work wasn’t abused enough, now its very parenthood is being called in question, which is sort of like discussing whether Alexander the Great lied on his entrance exam to the Greek army. Even if you could prove it, which you can’t, it amounts to little more then a historical footnote. Attributing authorship would be a valiant task if there were any descendants left to sue for royalties: since there are not, discussing who “really” wrote Shakespeare’s plays is nothing but a parlour game for intellects.