Who is Shakespeare? With Bard fascination having become a cottage industry, and new theories concerning his life and work springing up as fast as their proponents can score book deals, it’s a question worth asking. Interestingly, many of the scholars, actors, and directors who know the playwright’s work best respond to the question the way many people would respond to the question, “Who is God?” Case in point: “As every age has re-invented him, so I have cast him in my own private image. As I am a gay man brought up in a Catholic family in Lancashire, so Shakespeare for me is a gay Catholic who spent some time in Lancashire.”