Arden Shakespeare Arden Shakespeare The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries. There have been three distinct series of the Arden Shakespeare over the past century, and the third series has not yet been completed. Arden was the maiden name of Shakespeare's mother, Mary, but the primary reference of the enterprise's title is named after the Forest of Arden, in which Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is set. The first series was published by Methuen. Its first
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship "Alias Shakespeare," argued that in 1607 William Barksted, a minor poet and playwright, implies in his poem "Mirrha the Mother of Adonis" that Shakespeare was already deceased. Shakespeare scholars explain that Sobran has simply misread Barksted’s poem, the last stanza of which is a comparison of Barksted’s poem to Shakespeare’s "Venus and Adonis", and has mistaken the grammar also, which makes it clear that Barksted is referring to Shakespeare’s "song" in the past tense, not Shakespeare himself. This context is obvious when the rest of the stanza is included. Against the Oxford theory are several references to Shakespeare, later than