by Linda Theil Georgetown University psychiatry professor Richard M. Waugaman, MD, says eighteenth century deification of Shakespeare is partially responsible for twenty-first century resistance to authorship inquiry. In his article coauthored with Roger Stritmatter, “Who was ‘William Shakespeare’?”, in the current issue of the Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review ( Vol. 32, nr. 2 – 2009, pp 105-115) Waugaman says: Anyone who questions the traditional belief about Shakespeare’s authorship often encounters an unusual degree of opposition, which sometimes has the intensity of a religious war. This is not accidental. It is as though people’s faith is being questioned. We believe that there are, in fact, covert religious undertones to these reactions. Before 1769, there was relatively little interest in biographical facts about Shakespeare. But in that year, the great Shakespeare actor David Garrick organized a “Jubilee” in Stratford. This event put Stratford on the map as a tourist a...
a Michigan group dedicated to the study of the works of William Shakespeare with particular interest in the authorship question