I see there are some more people who have signed up to read my musings. Do feel free to introduce yourselves if you wish. I may not be able to friend you back, simply due to lack of time, but I will probably drop in on you from time to time – especially if you post comments.
(Partly lifted from
Thanks for your comments. As noted above I have unfortunately lost my own copy of the book. But on the first and third points, I don’t think you represent Shapiro fairly. On the first point, my memory is that he doesn’t claim scholarly priority for solving the Wilmot-Cowell forgery, he is writing more about how he discovered it for himself.
Your third point is an obvious straw man. You criticise Shapiro for not coming to a conclusion with which you disagree; the poor guy can’t win. As for evidence of collaboration, for The Two Noble Kinsmen at least there is the title page.
On hyphenation, while I am uninformed about the specifics of Venus and Adonis, I have read enough original material from the period to know that there is absolutely no story there; sometimes long names get hyphenated, sometimes they don’t. I don’t buy the argument that slugs to space the letters are the obvious solution for the printer either; no doubt some printers might use them, but that makes two words out of one which is a step too far for most people. Kathman and Ross summarise the evidence of hyphenation well here