Eric Sams

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Eric Sams (1926—Sept. 13, 2004) was a British musicologist and Shakespeare scholar.

Born in London, he was raised in Essex; his early brilliance in school earned him a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge at the age of sixteen. His life-long passion for puzzles and ciphers stood him in good stead in his wartime service in British Intelligence (1944-47). After the war he read modern languages at Cambridge (French and German), 1947-50; upon graduation he entered the Civil Service. In 1952 he married Enid Tidmarsh (d. 2002), a pianist. Their son Jeremy Sams is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and theatre director; another son, Richard, is a Japanese scholar and chess master.

In music, Sams wrote on and studied a range of subjects and genres, though his specialty was German lieder. He wrote volumes on the songs of Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Hugo Wolf. He reviewed opera performance for the New Statesman, 1976-8.

In the field of Shakespeare studies, Sams specialized in the early phases of Shakespeare's career. He wrote books defending the attributions of the anonymous plays Edward III and Edmund Ironside to Shakespeare, and a chronology of the poet's early career, The Real Shakespeare.

[edit] Selected works by Eric Sams

• The Songs of Hugo Wolf, 1961.
• The Songs of Robert Schumann, 1969.
• Brahms Songs, 1972
• Shakespeare's Lost Play, Edmund Ironside, 1986.
• The Real Shakespeare: Retrieving the Early years, 1564-1594, 1995.
• Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon, 1996.
• The Songs of Johannes Brahms, 2000.