Shakespeare beyond Doubt: Evidence, Argument, Controversy

Front Cover
Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells
Cambridge University Press, Apr 18, 2013 - Literary Criticism
Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? The authorship question has been much treated in works of fiction, film and television, provoking interest all over the world. Sceptics have proposed many candidates as the author of Shakespeare's works, including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. But why and how did the authorship question arise and what does surviving evidence offer in answer to it? This authoritative, accessible and frequently entertaining book sets the debate in its historical context and provides an account of its main protagonists and their theories. Presenting the authorship of Shakespeare's works in relation to historiography, psychology and literary theory, twenty-three distinguished scholars reposition and develop the discussion. The book explores the issues in the light of biographical, textual and bibliographical evidence to bring fresh perspectives to an intriguing cultural phenomenon.
 

Contents

SCEPTICS
1
SHAKESPEARE AS AUTHOR
61
IO What does textual evidence reveal about the author III
111
Shakespeare and Warwickshire
121
Shakespeare and school
133
Shakespeare tells lies
145
A CULTURAL PHENOMENONI DID SHAKESPEARE
161
Regendering Bacon
178
The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt
201
Heroic authorship
215
The Shakespeare establishment and the Shakespeare
225
Afterward
236
A selected reading list
241
Notes
249
Index
279
Copyright

Fictional treatments of Shakespeares authorship
189

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About the author (2013)

Dr Paul Edmondson is Head of Research and Knowledge and Director of the Stratford-upon-Avon Poetry Festival for The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. His publications include: Twelfth Night: A Guide to the Text and Its Theatrical Life, and (co-authored with Stanley Wells), Shakespeare's Sonnets, Coffee with Shakespeare, and Shakespeare Bites Back (an e-book about the Shakespeare Authorship Discussion, published in October 2011). His other publications include work on Shakespeare and the Brontės, the poetry of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and the musicality of Shakespeare's words. He is curator of 60minuteswithShakespeare.com, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's response to the authorship debate. He is also a priest in The Church of England.

Stanley Wells, CBE, is Honorary President and Former Chairman of the Trustees of Shakespeare's Birthplace, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, of which he was for many years Vice-Chairman. He was for nearly twenty years the editor of the annual Shakespeare Survey, and writes for The New York Review of Books and many other publications. He has edited The New Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies and is General Editor (with Gary Taylor) of The Complete Oxford Shakespeare. His most recent books are Shakespeare For All Time; Looking for Sex in Shakespeare; Shakespeare and Co., and Is It True What they Say About Shakespeare?. His Shakespeare, Sex, and Love was published in 2010.

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