STAGE

Friends, Romans and countrymen: You can rest easy tonight, because three British judges ruled Saturday that William Shakespeare was indeed the fellow who wrote all those plays in Elizabethan England. The creator of Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet was certainly not Shakespeare’s contemporary, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, according to the three law lords. The legal experts convened in London’s Middle Temple Hall, an Elizabethan chamber where Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” was first performed, where they heard arguments on the subject in a public “moot,” or debate. There was one very modern thing about the enclave, however: It was a fund-raising event, fashioned to raise money to rebuild the Globe Theater, where Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed.