User:Softlavender/Old stuff/DJ

Shakespeare authorship involvement

Jacobi has been very publicly involved in the Shakespeare authorship debate. He has publicly come out in support of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship — the assertion that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford wrote the Shakespeare works. In October 2005, Jacobi wrote the foreword to Mark Anderson's book, "Shakespeare" by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare.

On 8 September 2007, Jacobi and fellow acclaimed Shakespearean actor and director Mark Rylance unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, after the final matinee of I Am Shakespeare, a play investigating the bard's identity, performed in Chichester, England. The Declaration named 20 prominent doubters of the past, including Mark Twain, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud and Charlie Chaplin. The document was sponsored by the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and has been signed by over 1,700 people, including over 300 academics, to encourage new research into the question. Jacobi and Rylance, who was featured in the authorship play, presented a copy of the Declaration to William Leahy, head of English at Brunel University, London.

Jacobi has given an address to the Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre promoting Oxford as the Shakespeare author, and in international media he has been frank about his repudiation of Stratfordian authorship claims. Jacobi narrates the Prologue of the forthcoming Oxfordian film, Anonymous.