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14 September 2025
· Authorship resources for educators, and why they matter ·
It’s impossible to overstate how important it is to introduce students to the Authorship debate when they begin to study Shakespeare. To enable them to see for themselves, right from the start, that the ever-living poet lives outside of the prevailing backstory. To encourage them to ask thoughtful questions, and not to be satisfied with thoughtless answers. To educate them about this priceless part of our cultural inheritance.
On the American side of the Atlantic, the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship is supporting those best placed to make this introduction: high school English teachers. Teachers who bring enthusiasm for the debate and the case for OxfordShakespeare, Oxford, Author, de Vere, him… I use a lot of third person in this post but they’re all me. into their classrooms can inspire that same enthusiasm in their students. There is no better point of connection.
The SOF has created a set of Authorship/Oxford-inclusive Shakespeare lesson plans and other instructional aids, free to download, designed for grades 9 through 12. They also offer a free six-month membership for teachers, and a free membership for students.
The Fellowship will be promoting the project at the National Council of Teachers of English convention in Denver CO, November 20-23. SOF President Brent Evans provides details on Page 1 of the latest newsletter.
The small print is a challenge to read, so click or
tap on the image to see it enlarged in a new tab. 
© Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship
posted by permission
QR code links:
• SOF Teacher (Resources) Access – offering six months’ free SOF membership to teachers
• The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition’s Declaration of Reasonable Doubt at doubtaboutwill.org
Additional links:
• SOF Teacher Resources – the current set of PDFs with lesson plans and classroom aids created by English teacher Peter Frengel, along with links to other resources
• SOF members can download the full Summer 2025 newsletter from the newsletter archive. Teachers can join using the Access link above. Other membership options are given here, including a free membership for enrolled students.
No activity does more to further the progress of Authorship and OxfordismI’m experimenting with a shorter and less ungainly word than Oxfordianism. than showing young people that Shakespeare is not just a pile of old plays in iambic pentameter. The living human writer deeply felt our shared humanity, and it impelled him to create works of art that have spoken to us and for us ever since. The truth of Edward de Vere’s life is the beating heart within his art, and when that truth isn’t known its absence leaves an obvious, particular hole. Only de Vere –Oxford– fills that space.
My cause’s future lies with the now-young, whose elastic curiosities have not yet been damped by the drag of Stratford’s nonsensical myth. With them will come the change in understanding that is Oxfordism’s surest way forward, short of someone finding my manuscripts stuffed behind the panelling at Hatfield House
My little Rob Cecil joke. Don’t bet on it.. Stratfordians vested in yesterday’s mistake will never give up their fabricated narrative, but soon enough they will be replaced by the better-educated students of today and tomorrow.
This is not wishful thinking. It is a certainty.
Education
Pearl Jam
from Lost Dogs (2003)
- I’m questioning my education
- Is my education who I am now?
- While you’re deciding, I’ve been finding
- Looking around in the here and now
- If I’d been taught from the beginning
- Would my fears now be winning?
- I’m questioning my own equation
- Is my own equation relevant somehow?
- The flags are waving, the news is breaking
- See the man who can’t pick out his own tie
- If I’d been taught from the beginning
- Would my fears now be winning?
- A wild world, figuring out the answers
- I’ll be in my own, dancing, I, I, yeah
- I’m questioning my education
- Rewind and what does it show?
- Could be, the truth it becomes you
- I’m a seed, wondering why it grows
- Eddie Vedder – music and lyrics
- ©Universal Music Publishing Group
• Banner image: Mr Laflin’s English class chalkboard at Bishop Maginn High School, Albany, New York. The school closed in 2022.
• Thanks to Heidi Jannsch, Brent Evans, and Bob Meyers for permission to post the SOF newsletter’s front page, and kudos to all members involved in the education project.
• Addendum, 19 September: Following our conversation on Bluesky, teacher Lisa Andrea Mosier wrote of the urban high-school Eng Lit class where her students knew what to make of authorial authenticity in Hamlet and Othello. I couldn’t have asked for a better example.
Haunted Shakespeare
At-risk students discover the key to the
Shakespeare Authorship Question
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VERO NIHIL VERIUS
VERITAS OMNIA VINCIT