' Gentle Shakespeare ' ... ' Sweet Swan of Avon'? or 'The drunken illiterate clown of Stratford-upon-Avon'?
Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? Could this be, as Henry James remarked, ' the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised upon a patient world'? On his birthday, the programme explores the facts we have about Shakespeare. Are there enough to confirm his authorship? Mark Twain and Freud didn't think so. Who else could have written the works of the Bard?
Robert Robinson talks to Professor Sam Schoenbaum of the University of Maryland about Shakespeare and to supporters of the many alternative candidates: Francis Bacon , Edward de Vere and Christopher Marlowe.
Director TONY TYLEY
Producer ADAM LOW
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