When asked what it looks like to be an editor at the nonprofit publisher Library of America, I often say two things: first, that my job is as much research as it is editing, and second (with tongue in cheek), that most of the writers I edit are dead. There have been a handful of exceptions to this, one of whom is Wendell Berry.

Why do we return again and again to Shakespeare’s plays, why do we keep rewriting them? Is it in hope that some of his genius will rub off? Are we searching for new possibilities for interpretation, hoping to mine new ore out of well covered ground? Or are we going toe-to-toe, trying our strength against the acknowledged genius of English literature?

The history of women interacting with Shakespeare's plays is also the history of women's rights, suffrage, and of the feminist movement. Shakespeare has been, and is, an uneasy ally.

Why would Shakespeare involve himself in trying to patch up a play already rejected by Tilney for containing dangerous material, and not only be involved, but agree to write one of the stickiest scenes in the play? It certainly challenges popular conceptions of Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare hasn’t had a new play since 1612. But Arden—one of the most respected publishers of scholarly editions of Shakespeare’s plays—published a “new” play by Shakespeare, edited by Brean Hammond: Double Falsehood, a play that has been lost and found and lost again.