Imagine a time when Shakespeare played a very second fiddle to Ben Jonson

In the century after Shakespeare’s death, Ben Jonson’s name appeared in print three times as often as his. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images

My favourite subjects at school were English and history. By A-level I had to pick which one to study for university. I chose English. Reading Richard Cohen’s deliciously erudite book Making History makes me reconsider whether I made the right choice.

History is not simply about being bogged down in a library trying to decipher an unintelligible manuscript with a magnifying glass. It is not just about delivering an extensively developed lecture to a room with 10 people.