God knows I’ve come across some prime examples of academic schlemihlery in my day, but this just takes the cake: Kurt Kreiler, Der Mann, der Schakespeare erfand (The Man Who Invented Shakespeare). Currently topping the German bestseller lists. The eponymous inventor is (how novel!) Edward De Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, which in itself begs the question whether this poor deceased old nag really needed flogging to death all over again.
But, you see, Shakespeare couldn’t possibly have written Shakespeare, ‘cos a glover’s son would have been a drooling country bumpkin without the education to do it. I’m looking forward to Herrn Kreiler’s next two volumes, revealing the identities of the erudite noblemen who wrote the works of Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson – going by his premise, the offspring of an innkeeper and a shoemaker, respectively, obviously had to be illiterate.
