Eric Sams

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Eric Sams (May 3, 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 elder son, Richard, is a Japanese scholar and chess master working in Tokyo; their younger son Jeremy Sams is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and theatre director.

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 argued strongly against the concept of memorial reconstruction, believing that variants from standard Shakespeare texts were more likely the playwright's own early versions. 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.