Shakespeare, More or Less: A.W. Pollard and Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Editing

Abstract

Those who have disputed Shakespeare's authorship of the plays and poems usually attributed to him have been inclined to name the eminent Shakespeare scholars who have vilified the anti-Stratfordian cause. In the Preface to his 1908 book The Shakes-peare Problem Restated, the urbane Sir Granville George Greenwood quoted Sidney Lee, then chair of Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust, mocking the Baconian theory as "foolish craze,' morbid psychology,' madhouse chatter" (vii) and John Churton Collins, chair of English Literature at the University of Birmingham, denouncing it as "ignorance and vanity" (viii). More recently, Charlton Ogburn has listed among the detractors of the Oxfordian theory Louis B. Wright, former director of the Folger Shakespeare Library (154, 161, 168); S. Schoenbaum, author of Shakespeare's Lives, which devotes one hundred pages "to denigration of...anti-Stratfordian articles and books" (152); and Harvard Shakespeare professors G. Blakemore Evans and Harry Levin (256-57). In view of the energy and labour expended by numerous prominent scholars defending Shakespearean authorship, it is not surprising to discover that this defence has influenced reception of Shakespeare's works and their editorial reproductions. This essay deals with the very successful resistance movement against the anti-Stratfordians that was led by A.W. Pollard from 1916 to 1923, and with the peculiar influence that Pollard's efforts have continued to exert, even upon today's Shakespeare editors.