Shakespeare – Confronting the Vexed Authorship Question

Professor Philippa Sheppard

Dr. Philippa Sheppard received her MA in Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon and a D.Phil in English Renaissance Drama from the University of Oxford where she was a Commonwealth Scholar. Since then, Dr. Sheppard has taught both Renaissance drama and Modern Drama for 18 years at Memorial University in Newfoundland, University College Dublin, and currently, with the Department of English at University of Toronto.

Dr. Sheppard’s book, Devouring Time: Nostalgia in Contemporary Shakespearean Screen Adaptations, is coming out in May 2017. She published chapters in a number of books including Latin American Shakespeares and Who Hears in Shakespeare. She has articles about Shakespeare and adaptation printed in the journals, The Shakespeare Bulletin, and Literature/Film Quarterly.  Dr. Sheppard has given talks and written programme notes for the Stratford Festival since 2007, always a highlight of her year.

Shakespeare – Confronting the Vexed Authorship Question

Until the 1800s, no one seriously questioned the idea that William Shakespeare, a glover’s son from Stratford-on-Avon, wrote the 37 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems and several other poems that together are considered some of the finest writing in the English language. Since then, the anti-Stratfordians, as the conspiracy theorists are known, have made up for lost time. Elizabethan lawyer and philosopher Francis Bacon, rival playwright Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth I and most popular today, the Earl of Oxford have all been put forward as candidates for authorship. Drawing on recent research done by such experts as James Shapiro, Dr. Philippa Sheppard will demonstrate the ill-founded nature of the anti-Stratfordian position.  

This event is part of the Spring 2017 Speaker series.