Does our understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare's plays demand that we know exactly who Shakespeare really was and what he intended to communicate in his work? This volume examines the role that authorship plays in people's experience of language and art as meaningful human artifacts, as well as reviewing the fierce debates over these issues both within academia and popular culture. It is argued that many aspects of our understanding of language (both oral and written) and artworks (paintings, music, theater, etc.) rests on people's fundamental, often unconscious, bias to seek who created something and for what communicative purpose.