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The anonymous Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii (“The Strife of Love in a Dream by Poliphilus”) is among the most famous books of the medieval age, with influence radiating out from Venice, where it was first published in 1499, throughout Europe and into… Continue Reading →
In April I delivered an invited lecture to a members-only meeting of the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, a British organization dedicated to exploring the authorship question, about some annotated books at the Essex Estate of Audley End. John Casson and Bill… Continue Reading →
In his 1616 epigrams Ben Jonson honors Horace Vere, the Protestant military hero and cousin to the 17th Earl of Oxford, in epigram XCI (91) WHich of thy Names I take, not only bears A Roman Sound, but Roman Vertue wears,Illustrious… Continue Reading →
Ben Jonson, the younger colleague of “Shakespeare,” is without question the most important witness for traditional scholars who insist that there is no authorship question. According to Robert Giroux, Jonson is “the man who knew Shakespeare,” and his testimony is… Continue Reading →
Leah Marcus 1988 “Puzzling Shakespeare” says that Ben Jonson’s first folio epigram “sets readers off on a treasure hunt. Where is the real author to be found?”
Here are two pages from the Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook that may be worth previewing. In the Sourcebook they come with questions for classroom discussion. I have purposefully refrained from over-interpreting the sequence for you because that’s bad teaching. Showing the… Continue Reading →
Originally posted By knitwitted on December 7, 2012 Per Naseeb Shaheen Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays (1999, 2011) pp. 38-39: “The vast majority of Shakespeare’s biblical references cannot be traced to any one version, since the many Tudor Bibles… Continue Reading →
Originally Posted By Roger Stritmatter on April 5, 2013 I just posted this review on Amazon: Reviewing some of the top-rated reviews on this Amazon site it is clear that some balance needs to be interjected into the discussion. James… Continue Reading →
Originally posted By Roger Stritmatter on June 15, 2011 “Shakespeare lived a life of allegory. His works are comments on it.” These words by John Keats, perhaps the greatest English poet after Shakespeare, distill the essence of authentic Shakespearean biography… Continue Reading →
The blog entry summarizes the experience of the Folger Library’s 2014 Conference on “Shakespeare and the Problem of Biography,” arguing that the conference was mislabeled and should have been called “Biography and the Problems of Shakespeare.”