"Is there a Shakespeare problem?" So questioned Sir Granville George Greenwood in 1916. It would appear to be a purely rhetorical question on his part, for he had some eight years earlier written a lengthy volume in which he "restated" the Shakespeare problem. A perusal of this earlier work makes it clear that the author is in no doubt as to the existence of a problem. In the later volume, after almost three hundred pages in which he treads lightly but firmly on the toes and sensibilities of those who uphold Shakespeare as the author of the plays, he says: |"It may, no doubt, be easier to believe what one wishes to believe; but there are some things which, with all the good will in the world, I have found it impossible to believe, and one of those things is the assertion that the Stratford player was the author of the works of Shakespeare. . . . It is this fact which constitutes the real 'Shakespeare Problem. '"
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