Shakespeare authorship question

If the distinguished contributors to Shakespeare Beyond Doubt hope their book will place the traditional author of Shakespeare’s canon where the title claims and settle the Shakespeare authorship question for once and for all, they are likely to be disappointed. In the hands of twenty-one eminent Shakespeare scholars, the case for William Shakespeare of Stratford sounds plausible enough, and will reassure the already convinced as well as those who would like to be. But anyone versed in the primary material of the authorship question will emerge essentially unsatisfied. Although a well-written, accessible and interesting read, it is riddled with the common misunderstandings that characterise this ‘dialogue of the deaf’ and contains factual errors that suggest certain contributors haven’t done their homework. Nevertheless it is full of fascinating information for initiate and expert alike, and (with the exception of Paul Edmondson’s final chapter), reasonable in tone.

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This month sees the publication of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge University Press), edited by Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the second book published by an academic press to address the Shakespeare authorship question.   The first was Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography (Greenwood Press, 2001), recently re-published in an affordable paperback edition.  Twelve years on, and following James Shapiro’s Contested Will, orthodox Shakespearean scholars have written an accessible academic text putting forward their side of the argument.

On April 26th at 6.30 BST, I’ll be discussing Shakespeare Beyond Doubt with Professor Wells and Dr Edmondson in a free global webcast organised by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.  If you’d like to know what we have to say to each other, you can register by clicking here   (you’ll be sent a link to the webcast).      This is separate from my live event at Stratford Literary Festival earlier in the afternoon. In this event, at 4.30,  Professor Wells and Dr Edmondson will be discussing my book, The Marlowe Papers, with reference to the lives and works of Marlowe and Shakespeare.  Both events promise to be very interesting indeed.

After six months of stalling, I have finally gone public with the short interview I did on my PhD research. It was posted today on Carlo Dinota’s Marlowe Shakespeare Connection, and is now publicly listed on YouTube. I find the YouTube thing a little scary. I’ve seen YouTube comments. A lot of those people are very angry, and many of them can’t spell.

I’m not unaware of the emotive power of this issue, and how very upset some people get at the very thought one could seriously entertain the idea that our friend from Stratford didn’t write the plays attributed to him. I have taken four years to consider my approach to this, and several months to sit on this short video largely on the basis that that on the day in question I didn’t have professional hair or make-up. But since just before Christmas, I’ve had the video quietly embedded in my Research page to see if anything bad happened. Seems the sky didn’t fall in. So I have succumbed to private persuasion and released it into the wild.

I might as well; bigger things are on their way. In the next couple of months I will be the first of four Sussex postgraduates this year who will be filmed presenting their research as part of a University pilot scheme. The 20-30 minute film will, I’m told, be hosted on the University of Sussex website. It’s a complicated business, involving multiple cameras and all kinds of gadgetry. I’m currently re-designing my Globe presentation on Keynote (borrowing a Macbook on campus) and will need two days’ rehearsal before filming starts. Exciting, though. Looks like a lot of good things are kicking off in 2011. This time around, I’m definitely going to put a little more effort into the hair and make-up.