Diary – 12 April 2018

If you write a book, even a novel, about Shakespeare you must at least consider the theory that Will of Stratford was not the author of the plays. The arguments for that seem nonsensical to me, but they appeal to conspiracy theorists who, a couple of hundred years from now, will probably contend that Joanne Rowling could not possibly be the author of the Harry Potter books because she’s not a recognised authority on owls. Some years ago an amateur troupe staged Twelfth Night in Charleston, South Carolina. A newspaper review next morning struck me as odd because, instead of discussing the performance, the critic wrote a brilliant essay on the authorship debate, but made no judgment on who did write the plays. The last line of the review read, ‘but whoever it was, he turned over in his grave last night’. Splendid.

Ken Ludwig, in his marvellously funny play Shakespeare in Hollywood, advances another crackpot theory of Shakespearean scholarship.