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.""
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.
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.
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.
The Book the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Doesn't Want You to Read: Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Never has the case against the Stratford man been made so clear and compelling. Unsettled by the growing success of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition and its online Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon has published a book insisting that the identity of the author William Shakespeare is "beyond doubt." In this withering reply a dozen scholars expose the bankruptcy of this claim and challenge the Birthplace Trust to stand and defend its position under cross-examination in a televised mock trial. "Authorities tell us there is no doubt that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Should we trust them? This book comes at a critical time, with defenders of orthodoxy deceiving the public about how weak their case really is. It is time for a serious re-examination of the evidence. This book does just that." - Richard Waugaman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry; Faculty Expert on Shakespeare for Media Contacts, Georgetown University, Washington, D. C.
The debate over the true author of the Shakespeare canon has raged for centuries. Astonishingly little evidence supports the traditional belief that Will Shakespeare, the actor and businessman from Stratford-upon-Avon, was the author. Legendary figures such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud have all expressed grave doubts that an uneducated man who apparently owned no books and never left England wrote plays and poems that consistently reflect a learned and well-traveled insider's perspective on royal courts and the ancient feudal nobility. Recent scholarship has turned to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford-an Elizabethan court playwright known to have written in secret and who had ample means, motive and opportunity to in fact have assumed the "Shakespeare" disguise. "Shakespeare" by Another Name is the literary biography of Edward de Vere as "Shakespeare." This groundbreaking book tells the story of de Vere's action-packed life-as Renaissance man, spendthrift, courtier, wit, student, scoundrel, patron, military adventurer, and, above all, prolific ghostwriter-finding in it the background material for all of The Bard's works. Biographer Mark Anderson incorporates a wealth of new evidence, including de Vere's personal copy of the Bible (in which de Vere underlines scores of passages that are also prominent Shakespearean biblical references).
The contents of the Shakespeare canon have come into question in recent years as scholars add plays or declare others only partially his work. Now, new literary and historical evidence demonstrates that five heretofore anonymous plays published or performed during his lifetime are actually his first versions of later canonical works. Three histories, The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, The True Tragedy of Richard the Third, and The Troublesome Reign of John; a comedy, The Taming of a Shrew; and a romance, King Leir, are products of Shakespeare's juvenile years. Later in his career, he transformed them into the plays that bear nearly identical titles. Each is strikingly similar to its canonical counterpart in terms of structure, plot and cast, though the texts were entirely rewritten. Virtually all scholars, critics and editors of Shakespeare have overlooked or disputed the idea that he had anything to do with them. This addition of five plays to the Shakespeare canon introduces a new facet to the authorship debate, and supplies further evidence that the real Shakespeare was Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
