"A quarter-century ago all this was unimaginable. In fact, Stevens, along with fellow Justices Harry Blackmun and William Brennan, ruled unanimously in favor of Shakespeare and against the Earl of Oxford in a celebrated moot court in 1987. The objection to Oxford's authorship was obvious: Because he died in 1604, he could not have written, sometimes in active collaboration with other dramatists, 10 or so plays after that (including 'Henry VIII,' described by contemporaries as 'new' when staged in 1613).
"What then accounts for the reversal? The facts haven't changed; what has is our comfort level with conspiracy theory as well as our eagerness to seek authors' lives in their works."
In the Los Angeles Times, James Shapiro wades into debates over William Shakespeare's authorship.
Jeremy McCarter in The New York Times reviews three new books, including Shapiro's, about Shakespeare.
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On the contrary, the "facts" have changed. Those ten plays that were supposedly "new" when "staged in 1613" (where on earth did you get those figures?) a view based solely on end dates like publication, were in fact written much earlier, some decades earlier, as has been known for a long time but ignored because it doesn't fit with the Stratford biography. If you'd like to know more about the real facts, check out www.politicworm.com.
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