Since this book is being published posthumous, please allow me to share what I remember about my dad, the author. Russell Storrs Hall was the third son born to Olive Agar Hall and Bertine Anderson Hall on February 4th,1917 on the south side of Chicago, Illinois. I believe he was a very serious, sensitive, studious young man growing up, who was constantly reading and searching for answers. He possessed a high intellect and a profound curiosity. He attended college in Chicago, but soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, enlisted in the Army. At some point in time, his Company was sent to serve in Panama, Central America, where he became ill from the effects of the jungle. He received a medical discharge in 1943 and returned home to convalesce. On August 5th, 1945 he married my mother, Hildegard H. Bergt. When I was young, my father worked as an insurance underwriter for George F. Brown Insurance and LLoyds of London. In 1960, after sitting for a civil service exam, he changed careers and became a Postal Carrier. My parents divorced in 1968, and dad later remarried in 1971 to Lorraine R. Lawler. In 1982 he retired from the downtown Chicago Post Offifi ce as supervisor. My father’s lifetime passion and hobby was researching for this manuscript, and he dedicated his retirement years to writing this book. His wife Lorraine was his source of encouragement. He fifi nally completed his book only a few months before his death, February 10th, 1998. I am very proud to be his daughter, yours truly, Janice Gold-Orland.

The controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare is two centuries old, and the doubters were numerous: Mark Twain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, Sigmond Freud, Charlie Chaplin, even Orson Welles questioned the veracity of Shakespeare as author. For starters, the man had no known education. He was raised by illiterate parents in a rural farm village, where the local school only had three grades. But even that much schooling is in doubt, because there is no evidence he was ever registered there (or anywhere) as a student. He signed his wedding certificate with an 'x'. His will included no books—not even a bible—and his gravestone epitaph is superstitious and illiterate. So, who was the true author? Once again, the evidence is extensive and conclusive and points in a single direction, to a man forced to live in exile sending plays from Italy to the Globe, where Shakespeare, whose three roles in the company (actor, producer and 'author') assured that he would be first to receive anything, then he simply stamped his name on them. Four centuries of grave injustice cannot easily be overcome. But this is a start...

Excerpt from The Greatest of Literary Problems: The Authorship of the Shakespeare Works; An Exposition of All Points at Issue, From Their Inception to the Present Moment God does not ordain the vilest among men to be his messen gers of peace and enlightenment to mankind - and, certainly, the men to whom our pretentious guides have introduced us were among the vilest of their kind. No wonder the world is awakening to the necessity of a higher criticism than that with which it has hitherto been cloyed, and turning to one incomparable genius, who, voicing the primal strains of the Renaissance in Tudor England, bore them on with ever swelling majesty to the close of the grand symphony which ended with his life. This great genius I hope to Show was Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. Time was when I should have dismissed this thesis with impatience, but I am hoping that my readers will weigh the evidence I adduce before condemning me as a mere theorist. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Printer's copy for this published work (Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson), consisting mainly of the author's autograph but with many printed slips pasted in. The printed book shows many small variations, probably the result of proof reading, but appears not to contain additional listings.

Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.