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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
So far, this book is amazing! It purports to be a balanced view of the Shakespeare authorship controversy, and presents the case for Francis Bacon, then the Earl of Oxford, then Shakespeare. The beginning, however, is a remarkable survey of early Shakespeare scholarship (late 1700s), tracing the lines that laid down the kinds of thinking that made the authorship controversy possible. I highly recommend it.
. . .
Now, after finishing this book, I still highly recommend it! It's excellent. It is not unbiased, but a long immersion in postmodernism has taught us that objectivity is impossible anyway. So, it's a lovely, lively survey of (not the authorship question itself, but) WHY people question Shakespeare's authorship. It has a great cast of characters: forgers, lunatics, spiritualists (one guy held seances in which his medium called up Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, and Shakespeare to get from them the whole story. He did get the whole story of who wrote what, and even got a couple of lousy sonnets out of them. Funny that guys write better when they're alive than when they're dead), philosophers, psychoanalyists (Freud was an Oxfordian), novelists (Mark Twain was, too), feminists, historians, politicians.... It's well-written, quite readable, and (in the end) quite persuasive that Shakespeare of Stratford was the guy after all.
If you're going to go see "Anonymous" (don't know why you'd waste your money, really), read this first!
. . .
Now, after finishing this book, I still highly recommend it! It's excellent. It is not unbiased, but a long immersion in postmodernism has taught us that objectivity is impossible anyway. So, it's a lovely, lively survey of (not the authorship question itself, but) WHY people question Shakespeare's authorship. It has a great cast of characters: forgers, lunatics, spiritualists (one guy held seances in which his medium called up Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, and Shakespeare to get from them the whole story. He did get the whole story of who wrote what, and even got a couple of lousy sonnets out of them. Funny that guys write better when they're alive than when they're dead), philosophers, psychoanalyists (Freud was an Oxfordian), novelists (Mark Twain was, too), feminists, historians, politicians.... It's well-written, quite readable, and (in the end) quite persuasive that Shakespeare of Stratford was the guy after all.
If you're going to go see "Anonymous" (don't know why you'd waste your money, really), read this first!
Read this after seeing "Anonymous" which left me vaguely irritated. I had already read Shapiro's year in the life of Shakespeare book, and enjoyed it, so I was curious to see what he had to say about all the anti-Stratfordian hoohah.
I liked this book more than I expected to. Shapiro's biographies of the major proponents are quite interesting. He demonstrates the utter lack of positive evidence and gives credible motivation for why people would promote these theories.
I liked this book more than I expected to. Shapiro's biographies of the major proponents are quite interesting. He demonstrates the utter lack of positive evidence and gives credible motivation for why people would promote these theories.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I've wanted to reread this book for the longest time, and I was absolutely right to do so. This is, of course, not an academic work, but it explains the different positions of the authorship question well, and Shapiro never descends to name calling, even if some things he describes are clearly ridiculous, like the Prince Tudor theory. I also really appreciate that he goes over the case for Shakespeare rather than just the cases against the other theories. I am more convinced of my Stratfordian beliefs than ever.
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Despite what the title may have you believe, this book is not about weighing the merits of various authorship hypothesis with regards to Shakespearean literature. James Shapiro informs the reader near the beginning that Shakespeare was written by Shakespeare. This book is instead a history of the Shakespearean Authorship Controversy, why and how it developed, the forms it has taken, and why "the establishment" kinda rolls their eyes about it.
The book itself is split into four parts.
In the first part, we get some background history on the development of Shakespearean studies from the eighteenth down to the nineteenth century, what assumptions were made about the Bard, and the desperate struggle to find any documentation that would elucidate the biography of what many considered the greatest English writer to have ever lived. The dearth of such information, and what information being available depicting a "worldly" Shakespeare, led researchers to search William's work for clues into his life. This assumption, that the plays and poetry of Shakespeare contain autobiographical information, is what mostly drives the Authorship Controversy, according to Shapiro.
The second and third parts take a look at the development, rise, and fall of two of the most famous "candidates" for writing Shakespeare: Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. These are representative of two main views on the author of Shakespeare: that he hid meaning in ciphers in his plays (Bacon) or that Shakespeare works are veiled satire attacking the establishment and meant to overthrow the tyranny of democracy (Oxford). In both cases, speculative evidence in support of these cases were sought in how closely events in the plays and Sonnets corresponded with the lives of the supposed "true" authors.
In the fourth part, Shapiro makes his case for the Stratfordian authorship. This, like the rest of the book, is well structured and interesting, but seems to be a bit short. It is convincing, but I want more!
Shapiro's book pulls the curtain from the Authorship Question and shows how unfounded assumptions, romanticism, and lack of imagination has led and continues to lead many to false conclusions on the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. He also demonstrates that even in smelly old academia, there is a dynamic progress in place as new research from different fields helps elucidate what culture was like in England during the time of Shakespeare and in particular the practices of the playwrights.
The book itself is split into four parts.
In the first part, we get some background history on the development of Shakespearean studies from the eighteenth down to the nineteenth century, what assumptions were made about the Bard, and the desperate struggle to find any documentation that would elucidate the biography of what many considered the greatest English writer to have ever lived. The dearth of such information, and what information being available depicting a "worldly" Shakespeare, led researchers to search William's work for clues into his life. This assumption, that the plays and poetry of Shakespeare contain autobiographical information, is what mostly drives the Authorship Controversy, according to Shapiro.
The second and third parts take a look at the development, rise, and fall of two of the most famous "candidates" for writing Shakespeare: Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. These are representative of two main views on the author of Shakespeare: that he hid meaning in ciphers in his plays (Bacon) or that Shakespeare works are veiled satire attacking the establishment and meant to overthrow the tyranny of democracy (Oxford). In both cases, speculative evidence in support of these cases were sought in how closely events in the plays and Sonnets corresponded with the lives of the supposed "true" authors.
In the fourth part, Shapiro makes his case for the Stratfordian authorship. This, like the rest of the book, is well structured and interesting, but seems to be a bit short. It is convincing, but I want more!
Shapiro's book pulls the curtain from the Authorship Question and shows how unfounded assumptions, romanticism, and lack of imagination has led and continues to lead many to false conclusions on the authorship of the works of Shakespeare. He also demonstrates that even in smelly old academia, there is a dynamic progress in place as new research from different fields helps elucidate what culture was like in England during the time of Shakespeare and in particular the practices of the playwrights.
Very readable look into the history of the controversy/conspiracy surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. The author is definitely in the Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare camp and makes a strong case against the other contenders and the house of cards the conspiracies are built upon. Highly recommended for those of you who care and are interested in this stuff. I certainly do.
Enjoyable and interesting, looking at the attitudes which have led people to assume Shakespeare couldn't have been Shakespeare. I'm firmly of the Stratford camp, but found some interesting material here. One doubt - Shapiro referred to the Victorian interest in codes and more or less stated that E A Poe was a contemporary of Samuel Morse and of late Victorian codebreakers. He was dead before 1850, which suggests Shapiro's grasp of later chronology is either shaky or overly flexible. Like Greenblatt he has been known to adapt evidence to suit his ends, so it does leave a little question open about other facts where one has to take him on trust.