William McGuire Bryson is an American–British author of books on travel, the English language, science, and other non-fiction topics. Born in the United States, he has been a resident of Britain for most of his adult life, returning to the U.S. between 1995 and 2003, and holds dual American and British citizenship. He served as the chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011.
Sir William Empson was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first, Seven Types of Ambiguity, published in 1930.
Shakespearean tragedy is the designation given to most tragedies written by playwright William Shakespeare. Many of his history plays share the qualifiers of a Shakespearean tragedy, but because they are based on real figures throughout the history of England, they were classified as "histories" in the First Folio. The Roman tragedies—Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus—are also based on historical figures, but because their source stories were foreign and ancient they are almost always classified as tragedies rather than histories. Shakespeare's romances were written late in his career and published originally as either tragedy or comedy. They share some elements of tragedy featuring a high status central character but end happily like Shakespearean comedies. Several hundred years after Shakespeare's death, scholar F. S. Boas also coined a fifth category, the "problem play," for plays that do not fit neatly into a single classification because of their subject matter, setting, or ending. The classifications of certain Shakespeare plays are still debated among scholars.
John Payne Collier was an English Shakespearean critic and forger.
John Thomas Looney (luni) was an English school teacher who is notable for having originated the Oxfordian theory, which claims that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604) was the true author of Shakespeare's plays.
Mark James Patrick Kermode is an English film critic and musician. He is the chief film critic for The Observer, contributes to the magazine Sight & Sound, presents the BBC Four documentary series Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, co-presents the BBC Radio 5 Live show Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, and previously co-presented the BBC Two arts programme The Culture Show. Kermode is a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Kermode is a founding member of the skiffle band the Dodge Brothers, for which he plays double bass.
Sir John Frank Kermode, FBA was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing.
Anthony Holden is an English writer, broadcaster and critic, particularly known as a biographer of artists including Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky, Leigh Hunt, Lorenzo da Ponte and Laurence Olivier, and of members of the British royal family, notably Charles, Prince of Wales. He has also published translations of opera and Ancient Greek poetry as well as several autobiographical books about poker. In 2009, he was elected the first President of the International Federation of Poker (IFP).
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL, is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in a joint appointment of the College of Liberal Arts, the School of Sustainability and the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, as well as a Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College in the University of Oxford, where he holds the title of Professor of English Literature. From 2017 to 2019 he was Gresham Professor of Rhetoric in the City of London. Until September 2019 he was Provost of Worcester College, Oxford. He was knighted in 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education.
William D. Rubinstein is a historian and author. His best-known work, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since the Industrial Revolution, charts the rise of the 'super rich', a class he sees as expanding exponentially.
Hamnet Shakespeare was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, and the fraternal twin of Judith Shakespeare. He died at the age of 11. Some Shakespearean scholars speculate on the relationship between Hamnet and his father's later play Hamlet, as well as on possible connections between Hamnet's death and the writing of King John, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night.
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne was an English-born author, known principally for works of biography and history, although he also wrote novels, poetry, magazine articles and many other works. After working in Singapore and China, he moved to the United States in 1946 and became a professor of English literature. From 1954 onwards he lived as a writer in New York.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 39 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems.
Coney-catching is Elizabethan slang for theft through trickery. It comes from the word "coney", meaning a rabbit raised for the table and thus tame.
Note: In compliance with the accepted terminology used within the Shakespeare authorship question, this article uses the term "Stratfordian" to refer to the position that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the primary author of the plays and poems traditionally attributed to him. The term "anti-Stratfordian" is used to refer to the theory that some other author, or authors, wrote the works.
Bernard Mordaunt Ward was a British author and third-generation soldier most noted for his support of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship and writing the first documentary biography of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction is the most famous work of the literary scholar Frank Kermode. It was first published in 1967 by Oxford University Press.
The Nevillean theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that the English parliamentarian and diplomat Sir Henry Neville, wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare.
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), English playwright and poet, has appeared in works of fiction since the nineteenth century. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, and has been suggested as an alternative author of Shakespeare's works, an idea not accepted in mainstream scholarship. Marlowe, alleged to have been a government spy and frequently claimed to have been homosexual, was killed in 1593.
Robin William Kermode, is an English actor, author and communications coach. He is best known for his role in Never the Twain, Ffizz, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, Iron Lady, Wilde, the Norman Conquests, She Stoops to Conquer and Blithe Spirit.
