"Leo Daugherty is the best literary detective I Know. His discoveries here will change the ways we think about Shakespeare and his times."---Professor Steven Shaviro, wayne State University --Book Jacket.

Presenting striking new evidence, this book shows that "William Shakespeare" was the pen name of William Stanley, son of the Earl of Derby. Born in 1561, he was educated at Oxford, travelled for three years abroad, and studied law in London, mixing with poets and playwrights. In 1592 Spenser recorded that Stanley had written several plays. In 1594 he unexpectedly inherited the earldom--hence the pen name. He became a Knight of the Garter in 1601, eligible to help bear the canopy over King James at his coronation, likely prompting Sonnet 125's "Wer't ought to me I bore the canopy?"--he is the only authorship candidate ever in a position to "bear the canopy" (which was only ever borne over royalty). Love's Labour's Lost parodies an obscure poem by Stanley's tutor, which few others would have read. Hamlet's situation closely mirrors Stanley's in 1602. His name is concealed in the list of actors' names in the First Folio. His writing habits match Shakespeare's as deduced from the early printed plays. He was a patron of players who performed several times at court, and financed the troupe known as Paul's Boys. No other member of the upper class was so thoroughly immersed in the theatrical world.

Shakespeare's Books contains nearly 200 entries covering the full range of literature Shakespeare was acquainted with, including classical, historical, religious and contemporary works. The dictionary covers works whose importance to Shakespeare has emerged more clearly in recent years due to new research, as well as explaining current thinking on long-recognized sources such as Plutarch, Ovid, Holinshed, Ariosto and Montaigne. Entries for all major sources include surveys of the writer's place in Shakespeare's time, detailed discussion of their relation to his work, and full bibliography. These are enhanced by sample passages from early modern England writers, together with reproductions of pages from the original texts. Now available in paperback with a new preface bringing the book up to date, this is an invaluable reference tool.

Who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare?

Although best known for his plays, William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was also a poet who achieved extraordinary depth and variety in only a few key works. This edition of his poetry provides detailed notes, commentary and appendices resulting in an academically thorough and equally accessible edition to Shakespeare’s poetry. The editors present his non-dramatic poems in the chronological order of their print publication: the narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece; the metaphysical ‘Let the Bird of Loudest Lay’ (often known as The Phoenix and the Turtle); all 154 Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint. In headnotes and extensive annotations to the texts, Cathy Shrank and Raphael Lyne elucidate historical contexts, publication histories, and above all the literary and linguistic features of poems whose subtleties always reward careful attention. Substantial appendices trace the sources for Shakespeare’s narrative poems and the controversial text The Passionate Pilgrim, as well as providing information about poems posthumously attributed to him, and the English sonnet sequence. Shrank and Lyne guide readers of all levels with a glossary of rhetorical terms, an index of the poems (titles and first lines), and an account of Shakespeare’s rhymes informed by scholarship on Elizabethan pronunciation. With all these scholarly resources supporting a newly edited, modern-spelling text, this edition combines accessibility with layers of rich information to inform the most sophisticated reading.

A dazzling and "highly readable" (Guardian) portrait of Shakespeare as a young artist, revealing how his rich and complex queer life informed the plays and poems we treasure today “Was Shakespeare gay?” For years the question has sent experts and fans into a tailspin of confusion. But as scholar Will Tosh argues, this debate misses the point: sex, intimacy, and identity in Elizabethan England were infinitely more complex—and queer—than we have been taught. In this incisive biography, Tosh reveals William Shakespeare as a queer artist who drew on his society’s nuanced understanding of gender and sexuality to create some of English literature’s richest works. During Shakespeare’s time, same-sex desire was repressed and punished by the Church and state, but it was also articulated and sustained by institutions across England. Moving through the queer spaces of Shakespeare’s life—his Stratford schoolroom, smoky London taverns and playhouses, the royal court—Tosh shows how strongly Shakespeare’s early work was influenced by the queer culture of the time, much of it totally integrated into mainstream society. He also uncovers the surprising reason why Shakespeare veered away from his early work’s gender-bending homoeroticism. Offering a subversive sketch of Elizabethan England, Straight Acting uncovers Shakespeare as one of history’s great queer artists and completely reshapes the way we understand his life and times.

Despite various influential writers' and critics' high praise of the poetry of Richard Barnfield (1574-1620/26?), his work has long been marginalized in English literary history because of its pervasive homoeroticism. Current interest in literary representations of gender and sexuality, in dissent from dominant ideologies, and in the early modern possibilities of same-sexual subjectivities, accounts for the renewed interest in Barnfield's poetry. This new collection of essays seeks to provide a forum for his evaluation and reinterpretation in accord with his topicality for literary studies today.