Do yourself a good turn and hie over to novelist Michael Prescott’s blog to read “Graham Holderness Clarifies His Position” wherein — in a hilarious commentary on the nature of fame in the third millenium — Shakespearean scholar Holderness says:
My name is Graham Holderness, and my position on the Shakespeare Authorship Question is that I am interested in reasonable doubt, but not in alternative certainty.
Although Holderness speaks gentlemanly at length on his acceptance of the Stratfordian hypothesis, I’m not sure he understands what a breath of fresh air his humor and relative freedom from dogmatism bring to the authorship discourse. As a starting point for those who question the Stratfordian attribution of Shakespeare’s works, I could whole-heartedly support the Holderness Creed.
Note:
Graham Holderness and Katherine Scheil edited the current issue – Shakespeare and ‘the personal story’, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter 2009 — of the journal Critical Survey published by Berghahn Journals. The journal “. . . addresses central issues of critical practice and literary theory in a language that is clear, concise, and accessible, with a primary focus on Renaissance and Modern writing and culture.” Readers may view the full text of the Scheil and Holderness introductory essay, “Introduction: Shakespeare and ‘the personal story'”.
From their introductory article:
Shakespeare scholars since Edmund Malone have tried toconstruct a biography based on the historical evidence, and to explore links between the man and his works. There is of course massively more information about the latter than the former, but the two are notoriously difficult to connect.
