ABSTRACT
A different approach towards satisfying the Victorian appetite for information about William Shakespeare was to describe the context in detail. That Charles Knight was indulging his imagination was immediately recognised by a reviewer in The Athenaeum who criticised his building "hypothesis upon hypothesis," wishing he would "confine his fancy within the bounds." While Knight, de Quincey, and various other writers simply speculated about Shakespeare's life, a few went further and forged documents to support their views of Shakespeare. Victorian writers held Shakespeare in such great reverence that in 1901 Bernard Shaw coined the term 'bardolatry' to dismiss the indiscriminate eulogies of the National Poet. In 1903, the novelist Henry James wrote a satirical short story called The Birthplace mocking it as "the most sacred known to the steps of men, the early home of the supreme poet, the Mecca of the English-speaking race."
