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Diary

Alexander Waugh's diary: Shakespeare was a nom de plume — get over it

Plus: If I were a panda I'd rather be extinct; Dame Edna's show sent me to hospital

2 November 2013

9:00 AM

2 November 2013

9:00 AM

Researching a new book on Shakespeare’s sonnets, I stumbled upon an astonishing piece of hitherto unnoticed evidence in a 16th-century book by a sex-maniac clergyman from Cambridge. I shall not bore you with the details; suffice it to say that William Covell (the author and S-MC in question) revealed in words not especially ambiguous by Elizabethan standards that ‘Shakespeare’ was a nom de plume used by the courtier poet Edward de Vere.

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Alexander Waugh’s books include Fathers and Sons: the Autobiography of a Family, The House of Wittgenstein: a Family at War, and God.

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