By William Shakespeare: With Additional Dialogue

Abstract

SHAKESPEARE had scarcely achieved his immortality before doubts that he had known his business began to affect the production of his plays. No less a person than his reputed godson, Sir William Davenant, was among the first to evince such doubts by rewriting some of his godfather's works. Recent film treatments of Shakespeare indicate that the doubts are by no means settled; in fact, if Orson Welles's Macbeth be taken as the latest example, the doubts seem to have reached the point of denying to Shakespeare any dramatic or theatrical sense whatsoever.