Table of Contents

Part 1 The country background: reading and writing; the family home and trades; religion, school and Latin; the early theatre; poverty; butchery and by-products; John Shakespeare's Catholic testament; Lancashire; the law clerk; Lucy and his deer; marriage and departure; theatre, work and company; the battle of the books; wits and their butts - Marlowe, Greene, Nashe, Lodge, Peele, Lyly. Appendices: allies - Harvey and Spenser; the Parnassus plays; Willobie his avisa; the sonnets; the actor-playwright of the 1590s. Part 2 Style - the noted weed: Ur Hamlet; Hamlet 1603; the taming of a shrew; the troublesome reign; contention and true tragedy; faire em and locrine; man's wit and the dialogue of dives; early start and revision; "Bad Quartos" and "Memorial Reconstruction by Actors"; "Source Plays", "Derivative Plays" and plagiarism; dating and "Collaboration"; "Stylometry"; handwriting; documents.

About the Author

Eric Sams has published over one hundred articles, essays, and reviews on the subject of dating and identifying Shakespeare's plays and is the editor of Shakespeare's Edmund Ironside, which he identified as Shakespeare's lost play. He is also a musicologist and world authority on lieder.