HERE’S good news for Stratfordians as they celebrate the Bard’s birth, on April 23: Professors believe in him.

In an Education Life survey of American professors of Shakespeare, 82 percent said there is no good reason to question whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was the principal author of the poems and plays in the canon; 6 percent said there is good reason, while 11 percent saw possibly good reason.

What has come to be known as the “authorship question” dates back more than 150 years. Doubters allege that Shakespeare lacked the education, library and foreign travel to have produced the English language’s greatest works, and have pushed for acceptance in academe. In one small victory, next fall Brunel University, one of England’s plate-glass universities of the 1960s, will offer what is thought to be the first graduate program in Shakespeare authorship studies.

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But where do American colleges and universities stand on the question?

Last month, 265 professors filled out an online survey for Education Life. The professors teach Shakespeare in the English departments of public and private four-year colleges and universities, which were selected randomly. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.