{{short description|20th-century Canadian literary historian and critic}} {{Infobox person | name =John Leslie Hotson | image = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1897|8|16}} | birth_place =Delhi, Ontario | death_date = {{Death date and age|1992|11|16|1897|8|16}} | death_place =North Branford, Connecticut | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | known_for =Elizabethan literary puzzles | education =Harvard University, AB., M.A. and Ph.D. | employer =Harvard University<br/> Yale University<br/>New York University<br/>Haverford College (1931–1942) | occupation = | title = | height = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse =Mary May Peabody | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | signature = | website = | footnotes = }}
'''John Leslie Hotson''' (16 August 1897 – 16 November 1992) was a scholar of Elizabethan literary puzzles.
==Biography== He was born at Delhi, Ontario, on 16 August 1897.<ref>Social Security Death Index</ref><ref name="NYT">{{cite news | last = Saxon| first = Wolfgang| title = Dr. John Hotson, 95, Unraveler Of Elizabethan Literary Puzzles | newspaper = New York Times | date = 20 November 1992 | url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DC133CF933A15752C1A964958260 | accessdate = 2008-05-07}}</ref> He studied at Harvard University, where he obtained an AB., M.A. and Ph.D. He went on to hold a number of academic posts.
Hotson was known for his tenacious archival research and his interest in coded information. He had a number of notable successes, but not all of his "decodings" have been accepted by other scholars. He discovered the identity of Ingram Frizer, the killer of Christopher Marlowe,<ref name="NYT" /> and reconstructed the shape of the original Shakespearean theater.<ref name="NYT" /> He also unearthed the letters that Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to his divorced wife Harriet;<ref name="NYT" /> produced evidence of Shakespeare's father as a wool dealer; illuminated Shakespeare's early years in Stratford-upon-Avon; and identified John Day as the killer of Henry Porter, a minor Elizabethan dramatist.
Some of his solutions to literary puzzles are still in dispute. He claimed to have identified one Nicholas Colfox as the murderer of Thomas of Woodstock by "decoding" Chaucer's ''The Nun's Priest's Tale''. He also claimed to have identified Mr W H, the person to whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedicated, as a William Hatcliffe of Lincolnshire.<ref name="NYT" /> He later argued that a miniature colour portrait by Nicholas Hilliard depicted Shakespeare as a young man. As the ''New York Times'' stated in his obituary: "it was chiefly as a Shakespearian detective that Dr Hotson remained in the public eye, sometimes to the annoyance of rival scholars who discounted his theories."<ref name="NYT" />
His first major work, ''The Death of Christopher Marlowe''<ref>{{cite book |last= Hotson |first= J. Leslie |authorlink= Leslie Hotson |title= The Death of Christopher Marlowe |publisher= Harvard University Press |year= 1925 |url= https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Death_of_Christopher_Marlowe/LToPAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Frizer+%22The+Death+of+Christopher+Marlowe%22&pg=PA37&printsec=frontcover}} Introduction by G. L. Kittredge.</ref> — which made his name — is still in print. He stumbled across the evidence while decoding Chaucer's ''Nun's Priest's Tale'' in the archives of the English Public Records Office in 1923–24.<ref>Several different names had been mentioned in connection with Marlowe's death, two of which were "one Ingram" and "ffrancis ffrezer". Hotson stumbled on the name "Ingram Frizer" and "felt at once that I had come upon the man who killed Christopher Marlowe." (p. 23).</ref>
He died on 16 November 1992 in North Branford, Connecticut.<ref name="NYT" />
==Life summary== * Pacifist - served with Friends (Quaker) Relief Unit in France, 1918–1919 * Educated at Harvard (BA, MA, PhD) and Yale * Married 1919, Mary May Peabody * Fulbright Exchange Scholar at Bedford College, London * Taught at Harvard, Yale (Research Associate) and New York University * Guggenheim Fellow 1929 and 1930 in 16th and 17th Century English Literature * Taught at Haverford College (1931–42) * Second War – Officer in Signal Corps * Fellow of King's College, Cambridge (England), 1954–60 * He is the author of many books of literary biography, criticism and detection, such as: ** ''Colfox vs Chauntecleer'' 1924 PMLA XXXIX ** ''The Death of Christopher Marlowe'' 1925 ** ''The Commonwealth and Restoration'' Stage 1929 ** ''Shakespeare versus Shallow'' 1931 ** ''The Adventure of a Single Rapier'' 1931 ** ''I, William Shakespeare'' ** ''Shakespeare's Sonnets Dated'' ** ''Shakespeare's Motley'' ** ''The First Night of Twelfth Night'', 1954 ** ''Shakespeare's Wooden O'', 1959 ** ''Mr WH'', 1964 ** ''Shakespeare by Hilliard'', 1977
==Footnotes== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hotson, John Leslie}} Category:1897 births Category:1992 deaths Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Shakespearean scholars Category:Canadian literary critics Category:Yale University faculty Category:Harvard University faculty Category:New York University faculty Category:People from Norfolk County, Ontario Category:Historians of theatre Category:Alumni of Bedford College, London Category:Canadian emigrants to the United States