The field of Shakespeare biofiction has a long history, but recently has experienced a massive growth in production of texts and in public and scholarly interest. From fictional lovers of Shakespeare, to imagined relationships with his literary collaborators, from stories about his wife Anne, his two daughters and young son Hamnet, Shakespeare’s biography has provided playwrights, poets, novelists, filmmakers and other creators with inspiration to create what is now a substantial body of material that explores, imagines, fantasizes, and invents multiple versions of biographical stories about the Stratford writer. This collection will be the first such volume to gather together, within one cover, the multitude of existing and emerging works connected with Shakespeare biofiction. As the first of its kind, The Palgrave Handbook of Shakespearean Biofiction will be the definitive study of the topic, intervening at a critical juncture of important growth for this subject matter. Thus, the Handbook will contribute to the fields of biofiction and Shakespeare studies, and disciplines such as Literary studies, Drama and Performance studies, Film and Screen media, Cultural Studies and History.

Katherine Scheil is Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, USA. She is the author of several books about Shakespeare, including The Taste of the Town: Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Eighteenth-Century Theatre (2003); Shakespeare/Adaptation/Modern Drama (with Randall Martin 2011); She Hath Been Reading: Women and Shakespeare Clubs in America (2012); Imagining Shakespeare’s Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway (2018); Shakespeare & Biography (with Graham Holderness, 2020); and Shakespeare & Stratford (2019). She is finishing a book on the history of women and Stratford-upon-Avon, and a book about Shakespeare and biofiction, called Father Shakespeare. 

Edel Semple is Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies at University College Cork, Ireland. She is the co-editor of three collections and a journal Special Issue: Shakespearean Biofiction on the Contemporary Stage and Screen (2023), Staged Normality in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave, 2019), Staged Transgression in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave, 2013), and of “European Women in Early Modern Drama”, a Special Issue of Early Modern Literary Studies (2017). Her research focuses on gender in Shakespearean drama, biofiction, and adaptations, and she is working on a book-length study of Shakespeare’s female characters on screen.