What's in a name?

This book offers a vivid journey through Shakespeare’s England and provides a compelling contribution to the authorship question. It asks how we know Shakespeare was truly Shakespeare, and whether the glover’s son who left school at fifteen could have written Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest. Historian Susan Amussen answers with an emphatic yes, transporting readers to early modern England to trace Shakespeare’s path from Stratford to the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change: grammar schools opened classical education to commoners, touring players brought theatre to wider audiences, and London exposed ordinary people to courtly culture and European influences. No serious historian doubts Shakespeare’s authorship. Amussen explains why, showing that his England offered everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and fuel his imagination.