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Scholars conclude ‘beyond doubt’ that Shakespeare was main author of Edward III

Exclusive: Play anonymously published in 1596 was collaboration between Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, according to computer analysisDramatic new evidence concludes that the play Edward III should be added to William Shakespeare’s canon, and also that it was a major collaboration with his contemporary rival Christopher Marlowe.The history was published anonymously in 1596, and it has long been thought that Shakespeare wrote at least a few scenes. However, Dr Rory Loughnane, a leading scholar and co-author of the research, told the Guardian that computerised textual analysis pushed the case “beyond any reasonable doubt” that the Stratford-born playwright was the principal writer. Continue reading...

Dalya AlbergeWilliam ShakespeareChristopher Marlowe

GuardianOct 18Preview

‘Shakespeare was a Black woman’: the playwright’s under-recognized connection to Black culture

A new Washington DC exhibition examines how Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and more used the Bard’s work to help tell their own stories“William Shakespeare was a black woman.” In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote speech at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia’s speech from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29 “for” her; how else could he have so a

Kaitlyn McNabExhibitionsArt