Waking Caliban

A 400-year-old puzzle, a modern-day hunt to the death.

The world’s greatest-ever literary figure died, leaving no public record of his life apart from a few scant notes from friends and acquaintances. Ever since, scholars have pondered the mysteries of his existence: what he was doing during the ‘missing decade’ before he began working as an actor in London; who were the shadowy people he wrote about in his poems; why did he throw it all away to return to a small provincial town when he was barely fifty years old?

But what if Shakespeare did leave a record, an explanation of his times? What if he left it hidden, along with his own editions of plays that are known today only through the secondhand recollections of the players who appeared in them? What would scholars and fans give to get their hands on such a trove? And what would it be worth?