Eric Rasmussen is reluctant — really, really reluctant — to draw any big conclusions from his newly unearthed manuscript that might have been written in pen and ink by William Shakespeare.
Even so, Rasmussen believes the single handwritten page he purchased at an auction of antiquarian documents not long ago holds promise to help scholars understand some of the mysteries surrounding the life and work of one of the world’s most famous playwrights.
Rasmussen, regents teaching professor and foundation professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, is among the world’s preeminent scholars on early texts of Shakespeare’s work. He’s also a collector of Elizabethan and Jacobean documents from the decades on either side of the year 1600.