Stephen Greenblatt

Dear Readers: A recent column about a "black widow," who was taking over the substantial finances of a reader's grandfather and alienating the man from his family, sparked such interesting responses that I've devoted this week's column to them. Dear Liz: I am an elder-law attorney who read with interest your response to the reader whose grandfather is involved with a "black widow."

LIKE Hitler, Shakespeare attracts apocrypha: fake diaries, forged testaments, the textual traces of an irregular inner life. Like Hitler, Shakespeare's genesis is unknown: Both have lost years, and both demand the question of how did an apparently unremarkable childhood produce that? Like Hitler, Shakespeare stands at the extreme fringe of our culture: the most evil man, the greatest writer.

Roland Emmerich's film "Anonymous" has stoked those ancient tribal hatreds always ready to erupt over the question of who wrote Shakespeare's plays, the good old Bard of Avon or, as the lunatic fringe would have it, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Partial as I am to fact-based reality, I'm unequivocally in the Shakespeare camp. But I think the discussion sets up something of a false choice, one that perpetuates myths about the individual talent and notions about modern authorship that are anachronistic when applied to Shakespeare.

It's Shakespeare's world; we just live in it, and the living arrangement is working out fine. Eternally we're made to feel welcome. He's a music lover, which helps. In his world the songs and dances never lie low for long. They're the food and drink of love. There's always another masque around the corner, another ball, a fool or knave or clown knocking off a song graced with lyrics of almost shocking beauty.

GIVEN the recent spate of books on Shakespeare, one question is unavoidable: Was there really any reason for the prolific British writer Peter Ackroyd to perpetrate another? One can imagine Ackroyd responding to this ungracious line of inquiry with Lear's imperious "reason not the need" thunderclap to his bean-counting daughter, who wants to downsize his train of men. Yet "Shakespeare: The Biography" adds a whopping 500-plus pages to the cottage industry engulfing the Bard.

With long hair curling, Oscar Wilde-like, over his collar, playwright Tom Stoppard enters the sleek dining room of a midtown hotel, an otherworldly presence in the midst of Manhattan bustle. The contrast is drawn even more starkly when, 40 minutes into an interview, the acclaimed playwright is joined by Marc Norman, the writer and producer who co-wrote with Stoppard the screenplay for "Shakespeare in Love," the Miramax film that opened Friday to rave reviews.