Shakespeare's sister: Digital archives reveal insights into unknown sibling

...which according to my wife is an awesome book (she is reading it right now).

The reigning monarch during much of shakespeare and his sister's life was queen elizabeth - a woman.

The quote you give, is a nice example to see how history, historical research, etc has everything to do with setting the scene for the present, and not much to do with the past.

History is a present day activity. It is akin to the background scenery in a play - it provides the context for the present, it sets up our current stories. It's all to do with interpretation, and that is only ever present.

> on the money here.

Or, maybe not, according to the article. But "Stay" is still an amazing piece of art.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCYaALgW80c

Apparently the band was named after the song by the Smiths, which in turn was named after the essay by Virginia Woolf.

What is the relevance?

Like all alternative authorship theories, this one is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, that being that "great art" is necessarily biographical or reflects the "soul" of the artist. Once you've made that error, you can trivially point out that Shakespeare wrote about people, places, and situations that the Stratford man wouldn't have been personally familiar with, and then you can pick anyone else you like from the era that you think might match your profile better. This exact process has been used for Bacon, Derby, Oxford, and dozens of other claimants; nobody has offered a truly new argument against Shakespeare for decades.

I recommend the book _Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?_ by James S. Shapiro as the definitive work examining, explaining, and debunking alternative authorship theories. It's thoughtful and well-written, not the dry diatribe one might expect.