NYT Covers Authorship Debate at London’s Globe Theatre
An August 21, 2004 article (Arts Section) by William Niederkorn covers the new policy of the Globe Theatre, the premiere Shakespearean performance venue in London, of supporting inquiry and debate on the authorship question. The Globe has sponsored two authorship conferences and plans to host such conferences on a regular basis. “We each have a different idea of who Shakespeare was,” proclaims a Globe program. “Whoever you imagine him to be, you are most welcome here.” Globe Director Mark Rylance is an authorship agnostic, critical of the orthodox view of Shakespeare but willing to consider the cases which has been made for Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and the Earl of oxford, among others. According to Neiderkorn’s article, the Globe is slated to become home to a research library of 600 books on the authorship question owned b the Shakespeare Authorship Trust, the successor organization to the original Shakespeare Fellowship, founded in 1922 by Sir George Greenwood and John Thomas Looney.