Conspiracy theories being unavoidable these days, I wasn’t surprised to learn a few years ago that there are those who question Shakespeare’s authorship of what we know as his works. Dalrymple discusses this (registration required), via a look at The Bacon-Shakespeare Anatomy, by W. S. Melsome (1865-1944), in this week’s British Medical Journal:

Can anyone resist an interminable controversy that is not capable of being settled, has no practical consequences, and is argued with all the resources of erudition?