ABSTRACT
In recent years, several prominent scholars have expressed interest in, and support
for, the possibility that Shakespeare spent several of his immediate post-grammar
school years in Lancashire, where he may or may not have commenced his theatrical
career. E.A.J. Honigmann has been the standard bearer of this argument for many
years; more recently, Stephen Greenblatt, in Will in the World, endorses the existence
of the “Lancashire connection,” as does Richard Wilson in Secret Shakespeare.
