The question of “Shakespearean authorship” is raised in books or articles with monotonous regularity. It is getting to the point where there seems hardly a member of the Elizabethan nobility who has not been proposed as a possible author of Shakespeare’s works. It must be standing room only at Shakespeare’s place in the afterlife with all the nobly-born candidates who are seen as being more “appropriate” to the role of great literary figure. The complex reasoning which goes to justify the various candidates is fascinating. Even death, it seems, as in the case of Marlowe and Oxford, who died before…