Volume 34, Number 2 · February 12, 1987
Fingerprinting Shakespeare
By E.A.J. Honigmann
Shakespeare's Lost Play: 'Edmund Ironside'
edited by Eric Sams
St. Martin's Press, 383 pp., $37.50
'This manuscript,' Eric Sams writes, 'may yet come to be acknowledged as in every sense the most valuable in the world, as being not only [by] Shakespeare but, by powerful arguments, holograph.'The anonymous Edmund Ironside is one of a collection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century manuscript plays now known as MS. Egerton 1994 in the British Library. In his avowedly polemical edition Mr. Sams is not backward in praising his own goods, even though he is aware that E.B. Everitt, who argued for Shakespeare's authorship in 1954, 'was pilloried for his pains by pundits far his inferior in learning and insight.' It is not easy to give a fair hearing to an over-aggressive advocate who seems convinced that the Shakespeare establishment, mulish and blinkered, will inevitably kick him down, but it can be said immediately that Mr. Sams advances new evidence and deserves to be heard.
Review, 3597 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |