Primrose Road

Brunel University in London is offering the first MA in Shakespeare Authorship Studies this term, and Mark Rylance and Sir Derek Jacobi, two of the (very, very good) Shakespearean actors behind the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, are, of course, excited about the program.

First, let me say that actors are (generally) awesome. I wouldn't be able to do what I do -- I wouldn't be fascinated with what I do -- if it weren't for actors. The guys and gals up on stage can force us to think, make us want to change the world or our lives, or can make us stop breathing for just one spectacularly suspended moment.

Thanks to Early English Books Online, actors and armchair Shakespearians can learn from primary sources how production and printing worked back in the English Renaissance. (OK, they'd need to visit a university library with a subscription to EEBO, but it's still to some degree accessible.) Or go to any library, read a couple of scholarly monographs and essay collections, and learn about how there's not only not really a "Shakespeare vs. other guy issue" but also how, in spite the straw man that the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt relies on, academic-types are actually against treating Will Shakespeare like an untouchable god.