BrokenTune

So, just to confirm yet again that I definitely tend to lean towards non-fiction when travelling. I guess, this is because being forced to sit on a plane or train with nothing much else to do forces me to focus on the book...not that the extra effort is needed or that the book is boring or hard to digest. It isn't! It's the lack of distractions more than anything. Nothing else I could or should be doing instead. So, ... might as well sink into the discussion of whether Shakespeare was Shakespeare.

Anyway, I have made a fair dent into the book and so far have one main question:

The author asserts that the discussion of the authorship problem with Shakespeare (i.e. whether the man who lived in Stratford really wrote all or any of the plays, sonnets, etc.) is not really discussed in academic circles and that it has been left to enthusiastic amateurs to flesh out the argumentation for and against the hypothesis that Shakespeare may not have existed in the way that most biographers present. 

So, why is that? Is this still a valid assertion?

The book was first published in 2001 and the edition I am reading is from 2012. 

I'm really enjoying the book. There seems to be a thorough-ish (as far as I can tell from the references) literature review of the available material and clear argumentation.

And one other point of interest, I picked the book on a recommendation from Derek Jacobi who is an anti-Stratfordian and mentioned the book in a talk to the Oxford student union. The joys of rabbit holes enabled by youtube...