Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the document-based biography of Shakspere. It looks at the rare parallels between the Gesta Grayorum and Love’s Labour’s Lost, many of which arise in fictional speeches that Francis Bacon wrote for the revels. The book explores the defects of hapax legomena as authorial markers, pointing out that they give a deceptive impression of rarity. In reaction to the untenable assumption of Shakspere as single-originator, a number of conspiracy theories have arisen, mainly out of the fact that the work relies on a knowledge of classical literature that the non-university-educated Shakspere cannot be shown to have had. The best method of identifying the contributors to a text is through a stylistic test, but Shakspere has no independent prose works or extant letters to make a comparison with.