AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles
from top publications available through your library. Uniquely
in the annals of English literature, William Shakespeare of
Stratford-upon-Avon was credited during his lifetime, and for
many years afterwards, with writing two large and distinct sets
of literary works. The first, conveniently described as the
"Shakespeare Canon," contains the Bard's famed works--some three
dozen plays, 154 sonnets, and several longer poems. (1) The
second set, the "Shakespeare Apocrypha," contains a dozen or so
uncelebrated plays printed under William Shakespeare's name or
attributed to him in some fashion, but excluded from the 1623
First Folio. Bridging the Canon and the Apocrypha are the "Bad
Quartos," poetically inferior versions of six or so canonical
works. Scholars don't actually know how the Apocrypha and the
Bad Quartos came into being. There is no way to disprove that
William Shakespeare wrote them (in full or in part) without
resorting to stylistic argument