John Dover Wilson CH (13 July 1881 – 15 January 1969) was a professor and scholar of Renaissance drama, focusing particularly on the work of William Shakespeare.
He was the chief editor, with the assistance of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, of the New Shakespeare, a series of editions of the complete plays published by Cambridge University Press.
His What Happens in Hamlet, first published in 1935, is among the more influential books ever written on the play, being reprinted several times including a revised second edition in 1959.
[4] However, when the textual principles he painstakingly established did not support the reading that seemed right to him, he would depart widely from them, earning him a reputation for both brilliance and capriciousness; Stanley Edgar Hyman refers to the "valuable (sometime weird)" New Shakespeare.
These interpretations included a reading of the famous bedroom scene between Hamlet and his mother that remains influential (if frequently questioned) to this day,[6] but also peculiar ideas about covert Lutheranism and almost completely unsourced speculation about Shakespeare's relationship with his son-in-law.