Was the most famous poet and writer of all time a fraud and a plagiarist? Was Shakespeare the "upstart crow" described by Greene as strutting in borrowed feathers, or Jonson's "Poet-Ape" who patched plays together from others' work? These questions have been debated ever since the eighteenth century, when the writing styles of Marlowe and other playwrights were discerned in such plays as Titus Andronicus. The orthodox view is that the author of the...