Author rstritmatter
One emphasis of this developing blog and website is on forensic method, a topic I’ve long studied and recently written about in the Journal of Forensic Document Examination (Vol. 27, 2017). One way I’ve developed an understanding of forensic methods… Continue Reading →
On the Page With the Names of all the Actors Guest post by William S. Niederkorn In regard to the page with “The Names of All the Principall Actors in all these Playes” in the Shakespeare folio editions,… Continue Reading →
Guest post by William Ray The Norton Facsimile of the First Folio of Shakespeare is one of the most respected publications in English scholarship. After a fulsome preface with particular reference to W.W. Greg as the greatest influence on his… Continue Reading →
Guest Post by William S. Niederkorn. After the recent post on Hypnerotomachia, I downloaded the first edition of that book (1499) from archive.org courtesy of the Boston Public Library and upon opening it, saw that the text block pattern of… Continue Reading →
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 →