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"Describes William Shakespeare as a dramatist who worked in collaboration with other writers for the professional theatre" through the use of stylistic analysis, arguing that "this picture conflicts utterly with anti-Shakespearians' usual preferred candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's plays, who are usually aristocrats such as the Earl of Oxford or Francis Bacon who had no day-to-day dealings with the theatre and its dramatists."

"Aims . . . to describe certain kinds of quantitative tests that differentiate Shakespeare's writing from writing by his co-authors and those 'Shakespeare claimants' who have left poems or plays for comparison."

Illustrates how details in the texts of Shakespeare's plays, such as plotting which facilitates the doubling of roles, demonstrate that the writer must have been a theater professional intimately familiar with the workings of the stage, and therefore could not have been "an amateur, aristocratic playwright hiding his authorship behind the false front of an illiterate player, as Oxford is imagined by his supporters to have done."

Addresses arguments that the author of Shakespeare's works was too cultured and educated to have resided in Stratford-upon-Avon. Describes the Stratford-upon-Avon of Shakespeare's day as well as Shakespeare's educated Warwickshire friends, and discusses references to Stratford in Shakespeare's plays which suggest that the playwright did indeed hail from that area.

Describes the education that Shakespeare would have received if he attended the free grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon and discusses the likelihood that Shakespeare actually did attend the school.

Illustrating how the Shakespeare canon is characterized by mistruths represented in the texts, argues that "the propensity for the author to 'tell lies' means that the works evade and at the same time challenge any apparently straightforward biographical readings by anti-Shakespearians, and, indeed, by Shakespearians themselves."

"Discusses how and why anti-Shakespearian stories are told" as well as "their political, cultural and psychological dynamics."

Provides an account of the influence of Delia Bacon on Hester Dowden, presenting the two as intellectuals limited by the patriarchy and frustrated in their academic pursuits. Discusses why the subversive nature of anti-Shakespearianism might appeal to marginalized female scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Analyzes the portrayal of Shakespeare as "the man from Stratford" in anti-Stratfordian fiction, focusing on how his early depiction as a fool has more recently "given way to a sense of indeterminacy, in the face of missing historical evidence and enduring conspiracies."

Describes the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition's "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt," discussing its aims, "evaluat[ing] its success," and "look[ing] more closely at the people who have signed it, particularly academics."