The 1623 Shakespeare First Folio: A Minority Report (2016): A Special Issue of Brief Chronicles

This volume gathers in one place several highlights from the rich scholarly tradition of post-Stratfordian thinking on the 1623 First Folio. This tradition identifies the Shakespeare First Folio as the key artifact in the concealment of the real author, behind the mask of the Droeshout portrait. Whatever their differences, real or imagined, all these contributors share a common rejection of the Stratford myth. They show, moreover, how impossible it is in the end to reconcile the contents and symbolic design of the Folio with Stratfordian belief. Contents: • What’s Past is Prologue, Roger Stritmatter • Branding the Author: Feigned Neutrality and the Folger Folio Tour, Shelly Maycock • Shakespeare’s Impossible Doublet, John M. Rollett • “Look Not on this Picture”: Ambiguity in the First Folio, Richard Whalen • From Ben Jonson and Shakespeare (1921), Sir George Greenwood • First Folio Fraud, Katherine Chiljan • “Bestow, When and How You List”: The de Veres and the 1623 Folio • Roger Stritmatter; Shakespeare’s Son on Death Row, William Boyle • Puzzling Shakesperotics, Roger Stritmatter • “Publish We This Peace,” Roger Stritmatter • Literary Criticism and the Authorship Question, James A. Warren • Looking Not on His Picture, but His Books, by Michael Dudley.