“Listen to many, speak to a few.”

Penguin Audio Books illustration by Talha Nazim

"No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft." — H.G. Wells

"Many of the [Shakespeare's] plays existed in a number of versions: all needed to be edited and prepared for the press. Neither [John] Heminges nor [Henry] Condell [the actors who published Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies after his death] had produced a book before, nor would they afterwards. And it is unlikely that the backers of the Folio, the printers Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, would have risked putting such an expensive project in their hands. As one expert puts it: 'it is doubtful' whether they would be capable of such 'exacting work.'…

     New technology has changed scholarship. Whereas previous generations of experts have sought to reconcile the differences between quarto and Folio, current thinking highlights the difficult relationship between the various incarnations of Shakespeare's texts, something made easier by the availability of rare Shakespeare quartos in digital databases such as Early English Books Online.
     The scholar Eleanor Prosser thus detects 'considerable evidence' for the elimination of metrical and stylistic 'irregularities' in the Folio: short lines are lengthened to 10 syllables, verbs agreed with subjects, double negatives resolved. In addition, a range of unusual words are added to the text, words not used elsewhere by Shakespeare. Prosser concludes: 'somewhere behind the Folio … lies a conscientious and exacting editor with literary pretensions,' albeit one 'more experienced in the transcription of literary than of theatrical works.' But who was it?"
— Saul Frampton, The Guardian
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Shakespeare Shakeout

"A group of 22 of the world's leading Shakespeare scholars have come together to produce a book that details what they consider to be definitive evidence that the Bard really did write his own plays.

     Since the 1850s, 77 people have been suggested as the likely author, with Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere – the 17th Earl of Oxford – and Christopher Marlowe the most popular candidates, and Queen Elizabeth I among the most outlandish. The academics feel the anti-Shakespeare campaign has intensified lately, and that the elevation of Shakespeare authorship studies to master's degree status has been the final straw."
— Dalya Alberge, The Guardian
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Bad Bard

Source image: Tax Lawyer's Blog

"According to [Leslie] Hotson’s researches, Shakespeare was an energetic, quick-witted but only sketchily educated country boy—perfect qualifications for someone trying to make his way in the bohemian and morally dubious world of the theater. That world was far from respectable in those days; that is why London’s playhouses were clustered on the south bank of the Thames, in the borough of Southwark, outside the jurisdiction of the City of London–and why the document Hotson discovered lies with the Surrey writs and not among those dealing with London proper.
     As a newcomer to the big city, Hotson realized, Shakespeare was obliged to begin his career on a lowly rung, working for disreputable theater people—which, at that time, was generally regarded as akin to working in a brothel. Theaters were meeting places for people whose interest in the opposite sex did not extend to marriage; they were also infested with crooks, pimps and prostitutes, and attracted an audience whose interest in the performance on stage was often minimal. This, of course, explains why the Puritans were so quick to ban public entertainments when they got the chance. [...]
     There is plenty of evidence elsewhere that Shakespeare was somewhat less than a sensitive poet and entirely honest citizen. Legal records show that him dodging from rented room to rented room while defaulting on a few shillings’ worth of tax payments in 1596, 1598 and 1599—though why he went to so much trouble remains obscure, since the totals demanded were tiny compared to the sums that other records suggest he was spending on property at the same time. He also sued at least three men for equally insignificant sums. Nor was Will’s reputation among other literary men too good; when a rival playwright, Robert Greene, was on his deathbed, he condemned Shakespeare for having  'purloined his plumes'—that is, cheated him out of his literary property—and warned others not to fall into the hands of this 'upstart crow.' "
— Smithsonian
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