K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols., 1930.) Since that testimony comes from Shakespeare’s enemies and theatrical competitors as well as from his co-workers and from the Elizabethan equivalent of literary journalists, it seems unlikely that, if any of these sources had known he was a fraud, they would have failed to record that fact.

Books About Shakespeare’s Theater

Useful scholarly studies of theatrical life in Shakespeare’s day include: G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (1941–68), and the same author’s The Professions of Dramatist and Player in Shakespeare’s Time, 1590–1642 (1986); E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (1923); R. A. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage, 1580–1642 (1985); Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 3rd ed. (1992), and the same author’s Play-going in Shakespeare’s London, 2nd ed. (1996); Edwin Nungezer, A Dictionary of Actors (1929); Carol Chilling-ton Rutter, ed., Documents of the Rose Playhouse (1984).

Books About Shakespeare’s Life

The following books provide scholarly, documented accounts of Shakespeare’s life: G. E. Bentley, Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook (1961); E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. (1930); S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A CompactDocumentary Life (1977); and Shakespeare’s Lives, 2nd ed. (1991), by the same author. Many scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s complete works print brief compilations of essential dates and events. References to Shakespeare’s works up to 1700 are collected in C. M. Ingleby et al., The Shakespeare Allusion-Book, rev. ed., 2 vols. (1932).

The Texts of Shakespeare

AS FAR AS WE KNOW, only one manuscript conceivably in Shakespeare’s own hand may (and even this is much disputed) exist: a few pages of a play called Sir Thomas More, which apparently was never performed. What we do have, as later readers, performers, scholars, students, are printed texts. The earliest of these survive in two forms: quartos and folios. Quartos (from the Latin for “four”) are small books, printed on sheets of paper that were then folded in fours, to make eight double-sided pages. When these were bound together, the result was a squarish, eminently portable volume that sold for the relatively small sum of sixpence (translating in modern terms to about $5.00). In folios, on the other hand, the sheets are folded only once, in half, producing large, impressive volumes taller than they are wide.