News & Events

Declaration of Reasonable Doubt.
Press release, following the first signing event
in the UK on 23 September 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. on September 8th at Chichester. “This puts the total well over 1,000 our initial, pre-launch goal,” said SAC chairman John Shahan.

Jacobi and Rylance were joined by Dr. William Leahy, Head of English at Brunel University in West London, plus five others representing UK-based authorship societies supporting the candidacies of Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. Two Stratfordian organizations (supporters of the traditional author from Stratford-on-Avon) declined their invitations.

The signing event followed a performance of Mark Rylance’s new play about the authorship issue, ‘The BIG Secret Live - I am Shakespeare - Webcam Daytime Chat-Room Show’ at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester. A poster-sized copy of the Declaration was presented to Dr. Leahy in recognition of his launch of a new master’s degree programme in Shakespeare Authorship Studies at Brunel University. The event was well-covered in the media after being picked up by the BBC and Associated Press.

At the time of the post-play signing event in Chichester, 287 signatories had signed the Declaration. Following the event, an additional 788 had signed by today, bringing the total signatories up to 1075. The next official update of the SAC’s lists of Declaration signatories, which are updated periodically on its website at www.DoubtAboutWill.org, will take place on the morning of Monday, October 15.

A breakdown of signatory characteristics will be provided then, but they continue to include many academics and others with advanced degrees in their fields, including English, according to Shahan.

“The main thing that’s different about this group of signatories is their geographic diversity,” he said. Many are from the UK and US, but news of the events in the UK clearly went all over the world. Signers came from all parts of Europe, both Western and Eastern; several Middle Eastern countries; India; Pakistan; China; Japan; the Philippines; Australia; Canada and also Latin American countries.

“We’ve gotten off to a good start,” Shahan said, “but the real test will be whether more colleges and universities follow the lead of Brunel University in West London, and also Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, in opening up the issue and allowing curricula in Shakespeare authorship studies.” The stated goal of the Claremont, California-based Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC) is to legitimise the Shakespeare authorship issue in academia by 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of the death of the traditional author, Stratford’s William ‘Shakspere’ – as his name was often spelled.

According to its website home page, the SAC “has nothing against the man from Stratford-on-Avon, but we doubt that he was the author of the works. Our goal is to legitimise the issue in academia so students, teachers and professors can feel free to pursue it. This is necessary because the issue is widely viewed as settled in academia and is treated as a taboo subject. We believe that an open-minded examination of the evidence shows that the issue should be taken seriously. Your signature on the declaration will help us make the case that there is reasonable doubt about the author.”