The Case for Shakespeare

The Case for Shakespeare
Author: Scott McCrea
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2005-01-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Demonstrates that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon really did write the plays and poems attributed to him via a literary forensics case that puts all other authorship theories to rest.

Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography

Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography
Author: Diana Price
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

It successfully argues that "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of an aristocrat, and that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was a shrewd entrepreneur, not a dramatist."--BOOK JACKET.

Contested Will

Contested Will
Author: James Shapiro
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2011-04-19
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1416541632

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.

The Apocryphal William Shakespeare

The Apocryphal William Shakespeare
Author: Sabrina Feldman
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2011-10
Genre: Authorship, Disputed
ISBN: 1457507218

Sabrina Feldman manages the Planetary Science Instrument Development Office at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Born and raised in Riverside, California, she attended college and graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, where she enjoyed the wonderful performances of the Berkeley Shakespeare Company, studied Shakespeare's works for a semester with Professor Stephen Booth, and received a Ph.D. in experimental physics in 1996. She has worked on many different instrument development projects for NASA, and is the former deputy director of JPL's Center for Life Detection. Her scientific training, combined with a lifelong love of literature and all things Shakespearean, gives her a unique perspective on the Shakespeare authorship mystery. Dr. Feldman lives in Pasadena, California with her husband and two children. This is her first book. If William Shakespeare wrote the Bard's works... Who wrote the Shakespeare Apocrypha? During his lifetime and for many years afterwards, William Shakespeare was credited with writing not only the Bard's canonical works, but also a series of 'apocryphal' Shakespeare plays. Stylistic threads linking these lesser works suggest they shared a common author or co-author who wrote in a coarse, breezy style, and created very funny clown scenes. He was also prone to pilfering lines from other dramatists, consistent with Robert Greene's 1592 attack on William Shakespeare as an "upstart crow." The anomalous existence of two bodies of work exhibiting distinct poetic voices printed under one man's name suggests a fascinating possibility. Could William Shakespeare have written the apocryphal plays while serving as a front man for the 'poet in purple robes, ' a hidden court poet who was much admired by a literary coterie in the 1590s? And could the 'poet in purple robes' have been the great poet and statesman Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a previously overlooked authorship candidate who is an excellent fit to the Shakespearean glass slipper? Both of these scenarios are well supported by literary and historical records, many of which have not been previously considered in the context of the Shakespeare authorship debate.

AKA Shakespeare

AKA Shakespeare
Author: Peter Andrew Sturrock
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Authorship
ISBN: 9780984261413

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

Shakespeare Beyond Doubt
Author: Paul Edmondson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1107017599

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? This authoritative collection of essays brings fresh perspectives to bear on an intriguing cultural phenomenon.

Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts

Early Shakespeare Authorship Doubts
Author: Bryan H. Wildenthal
Publisher: Zindabad Press
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2019-06-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781732716605

This book examines dozens of early authorship doubts before the 1616 death of William Shakespeare of Stratford, including five separate indications that the true author of the works of ""Shakespeare"" (whoever that was) died years before 1616. This is the most sensational literary mystery of all time. The denial of these doubts by most orthodox scholars is an academic scandal of the first order. Wildenthal brings fresh insights and rigorously impartial scholarship to this controversial subject. He shows that these doubts were an authentic and integral part of the time and culture that produced the works of ""Shakespeare."" His book has been hailed by acclaimed author Alexander Waugh: ""Professor Wildenthal's witty and forensic tour de force examines the evidence of Shakespeare's contemporaries and what they really thought of him. Seldom is the argument against conventional opinion so devastatingly articulated.""

In Shakespeare's Shadow

In Shakespeare's Shadow
Author: Michael Blanding
Publisher: Hachette Books
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0316493287

The true story of a self-taught sleuth's quest to prove his eye-opening theory about the source of the world's most famous plays, taking readers inside the vibrant era of Elizabethan England as well as the contemporary scene of Shakespeare scholars and obsessives. What if Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare . . . but someone else wrote him first? Acclaimed author of The Map Thief, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of renegade scholar Dennis McCarthy and Elizabethan courtier Sir Thomas North. Unlike those who believe someone else secretly wrote Shakespeare, McCarthy argues that Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before. In Shakespeare's Shadow alternates between the enigmatic life of North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theater, and academic outsider McCarthy's attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a captivating drama, upending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his "singular genius." Winner of the 2021 International Book Award in Narrative Non-Fiction

The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion

The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion
Author: Gary Taylor
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 776
Release: 2017-02-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0192517600

This companion volume to The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works concentrates on the issues of canon and chronology—currently the most active and controversial debates in the field of Shakespeare editing. It presents in full the evidence behind the choices made in The Complete Works about which works Shakespeare wrote, in whole or part. A major new contribution to attribution studies, the Authorship Companion illuminates the work and methodology underpinning the groundbreaking New Oxford Shakespeare, and casts new light on the professional working practices, and creative endeavours, of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We now know that Shakespeare collaborated with his literary and dramatic contemporaries, and that others adapted his works before they reached printed publication. The Authorship Companion's essays explore and explain these processes, laying out everything we currently know about the works' authorship. Using a variety of different attribution methods, The New Oxford Shakespeare has confirmed the presence of other writers' hands in plays that until recently were thought to be Shakespeare's solo work. Taking this process further with meticulous, fresh scholarship, essays in the Authorship Companion show why we must now add new plays to the accepted Shakespeare canon and reattribute certain parts of familiar Shakespeare plays to other writers. The technical arguments for these decisions about Shakespeare's creativity are carefully laid out in language that anyone interested in the topic can understand. The latest methods for authorship attribution are explained in simple but accurate terms and all the linguistic data on which the conclusions are based is provided. The New Oxford Shakespeare consists of four interconnected publications: the Modern Critical Edition (with modern spelling), the Critical Reference Edition (with original spelling), a companion volume on Authorship, and an online version integrating all of this material on OUP's high-powered scholarly editions platform. Together, they provide the perfect resource for the future of Shakespeare studies.

Necessary Mischief

Necessary Mischief
Author: Bonner Cutting
Publisher:
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-08-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692158593

For more than two hundred years, the authorship of the works known as the Shakespeare canon has been called into question. Each chapter in this book explores an issue that has not been closely investigated, bringing new depth to the Shakespeare Authorship Question. For example, the man from Stratford -upon-Avon was rich: he owned five houses. Yet he fails to support his wife in her widowhood; all he could bring himself to leave her in his will was his second best bed. In the chapter on his Last Will and Testament, he leaves nothing to the Stratford Grammar School -- something that a local lad who was an important person in London (if the story was true) would surely have done. No school classmate recalled him. No teacher that he might have had remembered him. The Stratford man's daughters were illiterate, as were his wife and his parents. No writer or educated person records meeting him. No one loaned him a book; he makes no mention of books in his will. No one paid tribute to him when he died. In short, there is no hard evidence to show that he even had a cultivated mind or led a cultured life. But if this man from Stratford did not write the great literary masterpieces attributed to him, then who did? When people have searched for a better candidate, they have looked at historical figures with memorable biographies. Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was forgotten. His name was extracted from the dustbin of history by a Shakespearean profile. De Vere (called "Oxford") was discovered because a few of his short poems survived. There was, according to a 19th century editor, "an atmosphere of graciousness and culture about them that is grateful." About the author, he noted "that somehow a shadow lies across his [Oxford's] memory." As we have learned more about Oxford's unusual life, we find that he fits the Shakespeare profile with startling specificity.