Short answers, pulled from the story.
Gary Taylor is an American academic born in 1953, currently Robert Lawton Distinguished University Professor of English at Florida State University. He is best known as joint editor of The Oxford Shakespeare, The Oxford Middleton, and The New Oxford Shakespeare, and for his work as a textual critic and editorial theorist.
Taylor and Stanley Wells accepted and publicized a manuscript attribution of the poem "Shall I die?" to Shakespeare during the Oxford Shakespeare project (1978-86). That attribution has since been almost universally rejected by scholars and remains a frequently cited example in debates about editorial judgment.
Taylor argued that Middleton deserved recognition as "our other Shakespeare." His 2007 Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, co-edited with John Lavagnino, included the full texts of Macbeth and Measure for Measure on the theory that Middleton revised both plays after Shakespeare originally composed them.
Four of Taylor's works appear on the Random House list of the hundred most important books on Shakespeare. No other non-British author has placed more titles on that list.
Taylor has held positions at Oxford University, Catholic University of America, Brandeis University (where he chaired the English department), the University of Alabama (where he directed the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies from 1995 to 2005), and Florida State University, which he joined in 2005.
Taylor has received fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, all in recognition of his work as an editor, textual critic, and editorial theorist.