Acclaimed as the greatest dramatist of all time, William Shakespeare needs little introduction. Or does he? Going beyond Shakespeare the writer and actor, Graham Holderness explores the fact and fiction, tradition and myth, surrounding Shakespeare's life. Combining biography and fictional narrative, Holderness takes a fresh critical approach to the problem of piecing together a definitive account of Shakespeare's life and work from scant historical information. Instead, this study builds upon and examines the many theories that surround the life of this well-known, yet remarkably unknown man. Nine Shakespeares are presented: writer, player, butcher boy, businessman, husband, friend, lover, Catholic and portrait. By carefully critiquing these biographies and reimagining these nine men, Nine Lives of William Shakespeare creates a unique picture of how this playwright became Shakespeare as he is understood today. Shakespeare Now! is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source – the most living language imaginable – and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.

'The Shakespeare Controversy', otherwise known as 'Who Wrote Shakespeare?', has been a literary problem for generations. Countless attempts have been made to show that someone other than Shakespeare, or some group of people, wrote the Plays and The Sonnets. Peck's method of solving this problem was to look for cipher (secret writing) that might reveal the real author. Rather than searching the thousands of lines of The Plays and The Sonnets for ciphers, he singled out the odd original epitaph on Shakespeare's tombstone as a possible source of a concealed message. The peculiarities of the inscription had coaxed others before him to grapple with its strange context. In this exciting book, the author has demonstrated the importance of mathematical probability in support of ciphers. The math is simplified by interesting explanations. With the ciphers, he then answers the question of authorship while tying Sir Francis Bacon to the Tudor family.

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.

Reprinted from 1st pbk. ed., published in 1999. Originally published in hardcover in 1996.

Francis Bacon's Contribution to Shakespeare advocates a paradigm shift away from a single-author theory of the Shakespeare work towards a many-hands theory. Here, the middle ground is adopted between competing so-called Stratfordian and alternative single-author conspiracy theories. In the process, arguments are advanced as to why Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623) presents as an unreliable document for attribution, and why contemporary opinion characterised Shakspere [his baptised name] as an opportunist businessman who acquired the work of others. Current methods of authorship attribution are critiqued, and an entirely new Rare Collocation Profiling (RCP) method is introduced which, unlike current stylometric methods, is capable of detecting multiple contributors to a text. Using the Early English Books Online database, rare phrases and collocations in a target text are identified together with the authors who used them. This allows a DNA-type profile to be constructed for the possible contributors to a text that also takes into account direction of influence. The method brings powerful new evidence to bear on crucial questions such as the author of the Groats-worth of Witte (1592) letter, the identifiable hands in 3 Henry VI, the extent of Francis Bacon’s contribution to Twelfth Night and The Tempest, and the scheduling of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the 1594–5 Gray’s Inn Christmas revels for which Bacon wrote entertainments. The treatise also provides detailed analyses of the nature of the complaint against Shakspere in the Groats-worth letter, the identity of the players who performed The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn in 1594, and the reasons why Shakspere could not have had access to Virginia colony information that appears in The Tempest. With a Foreword by Sir Mark Rylance, this meticulously researched and penetrating study is a thought-provoking read for the inquisitive student in Shakespeare Studies.

TWO QUESTIONS HAVE ALWAYS PLAGUED HISTORIANS: HOW COULD Christopher Marlowe, a known spy and England's foremost playwright, be suspiciously murdered and quickly buried in an unmarked grave just days before he was to be tried for treason? HOW COULD William Shakespeare replace Marlowe as England's greatest playwright virtually overnight when Shakespeare had never written anything before and was merely an unknown actor? Historians have noted that the Bard of Stratford was better known at that time for holding horses for the gentry while they watched plays. The Shakespeare Conspiracy is a historical novel that intertwines the two mysteries and then puts the pieces together to offer the only possible resolution. The novel, a wild romp through gay 16th Century Elizabethan England, is a rapidly unfolding detective story filled with comedy, intrigue, murder and illicit love. And most importantly, all recorded events, persons, dates and documents are historically accurate. You will Get the scandalous view of the real William Shakespeare, with his sexual peccadilloes, illegitimate children and mistresses Wander through the gay world of Christopher Marlowe, when it was acceptable to be homosexual just so long as one stayed within one's own class as did Kings like James I, Edward II, and others Observe Inspector Henry Maunder matching wits with Christopher Marlowe's patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham one cleverly hiding the facts and other cunningly discovering the truth Watch the arguments unfold, showing the actual reasons that many historians believe that it could only have been Christopher Marlowe writing all those great works. It's a tale of murder, mayhem and manhunts in the underbelly of London as the Black Plague scourges the country and the greatest conspiracy plot of all time is hatched. It's The Shakespeare Conspiracy!

Who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare?

Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? This authoritative collection of essays brings fresh perspectives to bear on an intriguing cultural phenomenon.