Irvin Leigh Matus
Encyclopedia
Irvin Leigh Matus was an independent scholar, autodidact and author. He is best known as an authority on Shakespeare, but also wrote about aspects of Brooklyn's history such as the Vitagraph Studios
, and developed a method of modelling baseball statistics. He was based in Washington, D.C.
.
His father was manager of the Western Union
office in Times Square
. The late congressman Stephen J. Solarz
was his cousin. He was a scholar-in-residence
at Shepherd University
for the academic year 1992-1993
, New York
, where he lived until 1971. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School
in 1958, and briefly studied commercial art at the Pratt Institute
in New York. His primary interests at the time focused on baseball
, American history and rhythm and blues
, his musical interests being influenced by his early friendship with Alan Freed
. Together with his brother Paul he ran an urban transport business until he was drafted in 1965. Stationed on Staten Island
, he won the Army Commendation Medal
for meritorious service.
, though Matus would distinguish his own methods from the mechanical computerized techniques of contemporary sabermetrics, an approach he characterises as 'the baseball version of Oxfordianism
'. The article analysed pitching stats on 162 scorecards for one year, 1976 to examine the view of pitching coaches at the time that 135 pitches (15 per innings) was the average for a complete game. Tom Seaver
relied on this standard yardstick in evaluating a pitcher's performance, that he is doing well if he throws about 15 pitches per innings. By a close break-down of statistics, based his analysis on average of 14 pitches per inning after six innings, Matus showed that the contrary was the case, and concluded:-
At the time of his death, he was working on a comprehensive history of baseball.
box-score sheet. Shakespeare classes tortured him for the impression they gave that Shakespeare wrote footnotes. Yet one day, while walking down Flatbush Avenue, a line - "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" - from Julius Caesar
floated to mind and seemed to sum up the appearance of the crowd he encountered: He suddenly realised that, unwittingly, he had been memorizing large swathes of Shakespeare. He became a dedicated Shakespearean shortly afterwards, on watching Richard Burton
's performance as Edwin Booth
in the film Prince of Players
, past director of the Folger Shakespeare Library
, that the artifacts and physical environment of Shakespeare's life were poorly represented. In 1983, impressed by reading a book on English architecture, he scoured the libraries to find information linking on Elizabethan buildings
to Shakespeare, only to find that virtually no good reference books had been written. After a brief trip to England
for roughly 6 weeks in 1984, he and his brother Paul sold their home on Long Island
, and Matus used his proceeds to finance his research project on this topic, — which entailed a second 6-month journey in a camper van—to examine buildings on-site and interview archivist
s, preservationist
s, and historians. Returning to the United States in November 1985, he moved to Washington
to finalize his research by reading in the Folger Library. There Samuel Schoenbaum
, the doyen
of Shakespearean biographers, assisted him in securing access to its restricted collections
.
Almost wholly self-financed, Matus eked out a living by working part-time jobs, while finding accommodation as a house-sitter
. In June, 1987, he received a $2,500 grant that allowed him to buy a $650 word processor
and begin his writing. Shakespearean scholar Richard Dutton read his manuscript, and submitted it to Macmillan
, remarking that:
In the meantime he published an article, 'An Early Reference to the Coventry Corpus Christi Pageants
in Shakespeare?' suggesting a possible source for Shakespeare's metaphor, in The Tragedy of King Richard III
, of the 'worm of conscience' in the Doomsday play of the Drapers' Guild in 1561.
The resulting book, Shakespeare, the Living Record , published by Palgrave Macmillan in 1991, took the form of a travelogue of modern day England pertaining to persons and places associated with Shakespeare or mentioned in his plays.
and was invited to speak to the membership in Los Angeles about his findings. Matus, according to Jonathan Bate
, came to the controversy as an agnostic. Up until this particular research interest emerged, his interest in Shakespeare had been almost entirely focused on the plays, not their author. He flew to Los Angeles
in August 1989 and spent two months there. His visit culminated in an address he delivered to members of the Roundtable in September, in which he remarked that, though he found the members honest, thoughtful, gracious, and cordial, his research found much fault with Oxfordian scholarship
and led him to the conclusion that William Shakespeare was the true author of the works.
Matus then turned to write a comprehensive book on the Shakespearean authorship question. He returned to England in 1993 for another 5 months, primarily to research in the British Library
. In Matus's view, the long history of the debate in public controversy and both amateurish and professional speculation had been usually ignored by scholars. He defended his method by arguing for the following principle:
He took the "Stratfordian" perspective, advocating the orthodox view that William Shakespeare
of Stratford-on-Avon, was the primary author of the plays attributed to him. Matus went on to defend this position against the Oxfordian theory
(which proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the actual author of Shakespeare's works) in the October 1991 issue of The Atlantic Monthly
as part of a print debate written by advocates of both sides. He did the same in an article published as part of a similar debate in the April 1999 issue of Harper's Magazine
.
In Shakespeare, In Fact (hardback 1994, pb.1999), Matus examined Oxfordian arguments, presenting both detailed rebuttals of the sceptical perspective and positive evidence for Shakespeare's authorship. On its publication, Shakespeare scholar Thomas Pendleton hailed the work as the most authoritative on the subject. Writer Scott McCrea has praised it for its "original and valuable scholarship", while James S. Shapiro
has recently referred "those interested in the strongest arguments in favor of Shakespeare’s authorship" to Matus's book. Gail Kern Paster, director of the Washington, D.C.
based Folger Shakespeare Library
, judging its contribution more broadly, has written that Shakespeare, in Fact is recognized as "a reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative source for what we know for sure about Shakespeare."
While working on Shakespeare, In Fact Matus also investigated a different authorship question - Charles Hamilton's claim that he had found Cardenio
- a lost play by Shakespeare. The play turned out to be the playhouse copy of Thomas Middleton
's The Second Maiden's Tragedy
, and Matus reviewed Hamilton's book for the Times Literary Supplement.
Vitagraph Studios
American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...
, and developed a method of modelling baseball statistics. He was based in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
.
His father was manager of the Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
office in Times Square
Times Square
Times Square is a major commercial intersection in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue and stretching from West 42nd to West 47th Streets...
. The late congressman Stephen J. Solarz
Stephen J. Solarz
Stephen Joshua Solarz was a United States Congressional Representative from New York. Solarz was both an outspoken critic of President Ronald Reagan's deployment of Marines to Lebanon in 1982 and a cosponsor of the 1991 Gulf War Authorization Act during the Presidency of George H. W...
was his cousin. He was a scholar-in-residence
Visiting scholar
In the world of academia, a visiting scholar or visiting academic is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university, where he or she is projected to teach , lecture , or perform research on a topic the visitor is valued for...
at Shepherd University
Shepherd University
Shepherd University, formerly Shepherd College, is a state-funded university in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, United States. The University currently serves more than 4,200 students.- Accreditation :...
for the academic year 1992-1993
Early life
Matus was born and raised in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where he lived until 1971. He graduated from Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall High School
Erasmus Hall Campus High School is a four-year public high school in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, United States operated by the New York City Department of Education....
in 1958, and briefly studied commercial art at the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...
in New York. His primary interests at the time focused on baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
, American history and rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
, his musical interests being influenced by his early friendship with Alan Freed
Alan Freed
Albert James "Alan" Freed , also known as Moondog, was an American disc-jockey. He became internationally known for promoting the mix of blues, country and rhythm and blues music on the radio in the United States and Europe under the name of rock and roll...
. Together with his brother Paul he ran an urban transport business until he was drafted in 1965. Stationed on Staten Island
Staten Island
Staten Island is a borough of New York City, New York, United States, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay...
, he won the Army Commendation Medal
Commendation Medal
The Commendation Medal is a mid-level United States military decoration which is presented for sustained acts of heroism or meritorious service. For valorous actions in direct contact with an enemy force, but of a lesser degree than required for the award of the Bronze Star, the Valor device may...
for meritorious service.
Baseball
A keen reader of baseball statistics, in 1978 he published an article anticipating what was later to be known as sabermetric analysisSabermetrics
Sabermetrics is the specialized analysis of baseball through objective, empirical evidence, specifically baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research...
, though Matus would distinguish his own methods from the mechanical computerized techniques of contemporary sabermetrics, an approach he characterises as 'the baseball version of Oxfordianism
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, popular...
'. The article analysed pitching stats on 162 scorecards for one year, 1976 to examine the view of pitching coaches at the time that 135 pitches (15 per innings) was the average for a complete game. Tom Seaver
Tom Seaver
George Thomas "Tom" Seaver , nicknamed "Tom Terrific" and "The Franchise", is a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He pitched from 1967-1986 for four different teams in his career, but is noted primarily for his time with the New York Mets...
relied on this standard yardstick in evaluating a pitcher's performance, that he is doing well if he throws about 15 pitches per innings. By a close break-down of statistics, based his analysis on average of 14 pitches per inning after six innings, Matus showed that the contrary was the case, and concluded:-
'the evidence clearly indicates that, for endurance and effectiveness in any given game, 14 pitches or less per innings as an average is preferable for most pitchers.'
At the time of his death, he was working on a comprehensive history of baseball.
Researching Shakespeare
His interest in Shakespeare dated back to high school, though he once confessed that his notion of a good read consisted back then of reading a Brooklyn DodgerHistory of the Brooklyn Dodgers
-Early Brooklyn baseball:Brooklyn was home to numerous baseball clubs in the mid-1850s. Eight of 16 participants in the first convention were from Brooklyn, including the Atlantic, Eckford, and Excelsior clubs that combined to dominate play for most of the 1860s...
box-score sheet. Shakespeare classes tortured him for the impression they gave that Shakespeare wrote footnotes. Yet one day, while walking down Flatbush Avenue, a line - "You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!" - from Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (play)
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...
floated to mind and seemed to sum up the appearance of the crowd he encountered: He suddenly realised that, unwittingly, he had been memorizing large swathes of Shakespeare. He became a dedicated Shakespearean shortly afterwards, on watching Richard Burton
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...
's performance as Edwin Booth
Edwin Booth
Edwin Thomas Booth was a famous 19th century American actor who toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time...
in the film Prince of Players
Prince of Players
Prince of Players is a 1955 20th Century Fox biographical film about the 19th century American actor Edwin Booth. The film was directed and produced by Philip Dunne from a screenplay by Moss Hart, based on the book by Eleanor Ruggles. The music score was by Bernard Herrmann and the cinematography...
Shakespeare, the Living Record
Matus would read the history plays together with biographies of the kings they featured, and discovered, from earlier period tourist brochures, an article by A.L. Rowse and one by Louis WrightLouis Booker Wright
Louis Booker Wright was an American author, educator and librarian.Wright was the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the author of numerous books about the American colonial period, and in 1928 he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.-Publications:Wright, Louis B. The Colonial...
, past director of the Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...
, that the artifacts and physical environment of Shakespeare's life were poorly represented. In 1983, impressed by reading a book on English architecture, he scoured the libraries to find information linking on Elizabethan buildings
Elizabethan architecture
Elizabethan architecture is the term given to early Renaissance architecture in England, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historically, the period corresponds to the Cinquecento in Italy, the Early Renaissance in France, and the Plateresque style in Spain...
to Shakespeare, only to find that virtually no good reference books had been written. After a brief trip to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
for roughly 6 weeks in 1984, he and his brother Paul sold their home on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
, and Matus used his proceeds to finance his research project on this topic, — which entailed a second 6-month journey in a camper van—to examine buildings on-site and interview archivist
Archivist
An archivist is a professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to information determined to have long-term value. The information maintained by an archivist can be any form of media...
s, preservationist
Preservationist
Preservationist is generally understood to mean historic preservationist: one who advocates to preserve architecturally or historically significant buildings, structures, objects or sites from demolition or degradation...
s, and historians. Returning to the United States in November 1985, he moved to Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to finalize his research by reading in the Folger Library. There Samuel Schoenbaum
Samuel Schoenbaum
Samuel Schoenbaum was a leading 20th century Shakespearean biographer and scholar.Born in New York, Schoenbaum taught at Northwestern University from 1953 to 1975, serving for the last four years of this period as the Frank Bliss Snyder Professor of English Literature. He later taught at the City...
, the doyen
Doyen
Doyen is a surname. The word doyen is derived from the French term for dean, e.g. Dean and Dean ....
of Shakespearean biographers, assisted him in securing access to its restricted collections
Special collections
In library science, special collections is the name applied to a specific repository or department, usually within a library, which stores materials of a "special" nature, including rare books, archives, and collected manuscripts...
.
Almost wholly self-financed, Matus eked out a living by working part-time jobs, while finding accommodation as a house-sitter
House sitting
House sitting is the practice whereby a landlord , leaving their house for a period of time, entrusts it to one or more "house sitters", who by a mutual agreement are entitled to live there rent-free in exchange for assuming responsibilities such as taking care of the homeowner's pets, performing...
. In June, 1987, he received a $2,500 grant that allowed him to buy a $650 word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
and begin his writing. Shakespearean scholar Richard Dutton read his manuscript, and submitted it to Macmillan
Macmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, remarking that:
"It's very thorough, archival, back-to-the-grass-roots, trust-nothing, find-the-first-sources scholarship . . And so little scholarship is like that. He's done an amazing job of collecting that sort of information."
In the meantime he published an article, 'An Early Reference to the Coventry Corpus Christi Pageants
Coventry Mystery Plays
The Coventry Mystery Plays, or Coventry Corpus Christi Pageants, are a cycle of medieval mystery plays from Coventry, West Midlands, England, and are perhaps best known as the source of the "Coventry Carol". Two plays from the original cycle are extant having been copied from the now lost original...
in Shakespeare?' suggesting a possible source for Shakespeare's metaphor, in The Tragedy of King Richard III
Richard III (play)
Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...
, of the 'worm of conscience' in the Doomsday play of the Drapers' Guild in 1561.
The resulting book, Shakespeare, the Living Record , published by Palgrave Macmillan in 1991, took the form of a travelogue of modern day England pertaining to persons and places associated with Shakespeare or mentioned in his plays.
The Shakespeare Authorship Question
In February 1989 he was asked by the Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable to investigate the scholarship of the Shakespeare authorship controversyShakespeare authorship question
Image:ShakespeareCandidates1.jpg|thumb|alt=Portraits of Shakespeare and four proposed alternative authors.|Oxford, Bacon, Derby, and Marlowe have each been proposed as the true author...
and was invited to speak to the membership in Los Angeles about his findings. Matus, according to Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate
Jonathan Bate CBE FBA FRSL is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, novelist and scholar of Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism...
, came to the controversy as an agnostic. Up until this particular research interest emerged, his interest in Shakespeare had been almost entirely focused on the plays, not their author. He flew to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in August 1989 and spent two months there. His visit culminated in an address he delivered to members of the Roundtable in September, in which he remarked that, though he found the members honest, thoughtful, gracious, and cordial, his research found much fault with Oxfordian scholarship
Oxfordian theory
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, popular...
and led him to the conclusion that William Shakespeare was the true author of the works.
Matus then turned to write a comprehensive book on the Shakespearean authorship question. He returned to England in 1993 for another 5 months, primarily to research in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
. In Matus's view, the long history of the debate in public controversy and both amateurish and professional speculation had been usually ignored by scholars. He defended his method by arguing for the following principle:
It is the rule of controversialist scholarship, the error rate of which hovers around 100 percent, that a single flaw in a work of orthodox scholarship, whether perceived or actual - or fabricated - is sufficient in their eyes to cast doubt upon the accuracy and authenticity of the entire work.
He took the "Stratfordian" perspective, advocating the orthodox view that William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
of Stratford-on-Avon, was the primary author of the plays attributed to him. Matus went on to defend this position against the Oxfordian theory
Oxfordian theory
The Oxfordian theory of Shakespearean authorship proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford , wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. While a large majority of scholars reject all alternative candidates for authorship, popular...
(which proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, is the actual author of Shakespeare's works) in the October 1991 issue of The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
as part of a print debate written by advocates of both sides. He did the same in an article published as part of a similar debate in the April 1999 issue of Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine
Harper's Magazine is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts, with a generally left-wing perspective. It is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. . The current editor is Ellen Rosenbush, who replaced Roger Hodge in January 2010...
.
In Shakespeare, In Fact (hardback 1994, pb.1999), Matus examined Oxfordian arguments, presenting both detailed rebuttals of the sceptical perspective and positive evidence for Shakespeare's authorship. On its publication, Shakespeare scholar Thomas Pendleton hailed the work as the most authoritative on the subject. Writer Scott McCrea has praised it for its "original and valuable scholarship", while James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro
James S. Shapiro is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University who specialises in Shakespeare and the Early Modern period...
has recently referred "those interested in the strongest arguments in favor of Shakespeare’s authorship" to Matus's book. Gail Kern Paster, director of the Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
based Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...
, judging its contribution more broadly, has written that Shakespeare, in Fact is recognized as "a reliable, trustworthy, and authoritative source for what we know for sure about Shakespeare."
While working on Shakespeare, In Fact Matus also investigated a different authorship question - Charles Hamilton's claim that he had found Cardenio
Cardenio
The History of Cardenio, often referred to as merely Cardenio, is a lost play, known to have been performed by The King's Men, a London theatre company, in 1613. It was attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher in a Stationers' Register entry of 1653...
- a lost play by Shakespeare. The play turned out to be the playhouse copy of Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...
's The Second Maiden's Tragedy
The Second Maiden's Tragedy
The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript. It was written in 1611, and performed in the same year by the King's Men. The manuscript that survives is the copy that was sent to the censor, and therefore includes his notes and deletions...
, and Matus reviewed Hamilton's book for the Times Literary Supplement.
External links
- Obituary in the Washington Post
- The Case for Shakespeare from the Atlantic Monthly (online)
- Irvin Leigh Matus Shakespeare website
- Article about Vitagraph Studios