Curated playlist
Shakespearean scholars
- Gary Taylor (scholar)Gary Taylor was the first in his family to finish high school. He went on to reshape how the world reads Shakespeare.
- A. C. BradleyA 1926 poem imagined Shakespeare failing an exam for not reading his critic. The critic was A. C. Bradley.
- Alfred W. PollardA stammer closed teaching to Alfred W. Pollard, so he joined the British Museum. He stayed nearly forty years.
- Emma Smith (scholar)In 2016, Oxford scholar Emma Smith authenticated a newly found copy of Shakespeare's First Folio.
- George SteevensGeorge Steevens edited Shakespeare and also faked a tombstone. He carved an invented Anglo-Saxon inscription for a king.
- Stephen GreenblattStephen Greenblatt was stunned when universities sought experts in "New Historicism," a phrase he coined.
- Harold BloomHarold Bloom argued that every poet struggles to escape the shadow of earlier poets.
- James S. ShapiroJames S. Shapiro wrote Contested Will to debunk the Oxfordian theory of who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
- A. L. RowseA china clay worker's son from Cornwall claimed to name Shakespeare's Dark Lady.
- Edmond MaloneEdmond Malone worked out the order in which Shakespeare wrote his plays.
- Edward DowdenEdward Dowden dug up an unknown pamphlet by Bishop Berkeley and a record of Goethe's final days.
- Frank KermodeIn 1996, city refuse collectors carted off critic Frank Kermode's boxes of valuable books. He sued for £20,000.
- G. Wilson KnightG. Wilson Knight directed and acted in Shakespeare's tragedies to test his own ideas.