Critical Stages (Jun 2019)
The Shakespeare Authorship Debate (continued). Uncertainties and Mysteries
Abstract
Questioning the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is often seen as an eccentricity of amateur scholars, an enquiry unworthy of serious academic consideration: our understanding of the plays on the page and our appreciation of them on the stage is all that matters. The following essay argues that the exploration of the issue in a dispassionate, empirical manner has many positive and far-reaching implications both for our understanding of the plays and for our concept of literary creativity. Indeed, the whole idea of Shakespeare-as-Genius seems to have emerged as a response to a lack of knowledge about who he really was.
