Shakespeare authorship question

Tom Regnier – The Law of Evidence and the Shakespeare Authorship Question

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• published: 08 Dec 2015
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Over the centuries, Anglo-American law has developed rules of evidence that are useful in evaluating and weighing evidence for legal purposes. While the Shakespeare Authorship Question (SAQ) is more a literary-historical question than a forensic one, the legal rules of evidence are instructive in examining the evidence in the SAQ. This presentation explores such legal concepts and their relevance to the SAQ as: “evidence” vs. “proof,” relevant evidence, direct vs. circumstantial evidence, presumptions, contemporary vs. posthumous evidence, motive to fabricate, hearsay, and expert witnesses. This presentation will also touch on the debate concerning circumstantial evidence that occurred in the “Comments” section of the December 29, 2014 Newsweek article on the SAQ. (http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/campaign-prove-shakespeare-didnt-exist-293243.html). A talk given at the 2015 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship Conference in Ashland, OR. Tom Regnier, JD, LLM, President of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, is an appellate attorney working in South Florida. He received his J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Miami School of Law, and his LL.M. from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan F. Stone Scholar. He has taught at the University of Miami School of Law (including a course on Shakespeare and the Law) and at Chicago’s John Marshall Law School. Tom has frequently spoken at authorship conferences on aspects of law in Shakespeare’s works, and he wrote the chapter on Shakespeare’s legal knowledge in Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? (2013). He has performed in seven Shakespeare plays. In 2014, Tom spoke at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C. on “Hamlet and the Law of Homicide: the Life of the Mind in Law and Art.”