English Professor Emeritus Martha Andresen, a seven-time winner of Pomona’s Wig Award for excellence in teaching, has been keeping quite busy since her “retirement” in 2006. Pomona Web Editor Laura Tiffany reports the Shakespeare scholar has been lecturing and working on a book, Caught in the Act: A Passion for Shakespeare, among other pursuits. On Oct. 4, the Shakespeare Center of L.A. honored Andresen with a special Crystal Quill Award “for her stellar international reputation for Shakespeare scholarship, publications and teaching.”
Also receiving Crystal Quills were attorney Bert Fields, author of Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare, and film director Roland Emmerich, who also has waded into the who-wrote-Shakespeare? debate with his new film Anonymous. “Both Emmerich and Fields suggest that someone other than the celebrated man from Stratford might have written Shakespeare’s plays,” notes LAStageTimes.com.
But Andresen is having none of that, telling Tiffany: “Not the Earl of Oxford, not Frances Bacon, Lord Stanley, or Queen Elizabeth, but William Shakespeare, playwright and actor, wrote William Shakespeare’s plays!”
Shakespeare Center founding Artistic Director Ben Donenberg told LAStageTimes.com that Andresen’s “position that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare also added a nice dimension to the awardees, but the primary reason is her contribution to the legacy of Shakespeare enthusiasts that she cultivated in many walks of life.”