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the_sunken_library 's review for:
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare ?
by James Shapiro
For anyone interested in the conspiracy theories surrounding Shakespeare and his authorship.
Shapiro clearly and concisely strips down and destroys the two main contenders that have been put forward in the past century; the 17th Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon, as possible "Shakespeare's in disguise".
Shapiro uses his knowledge of Shakespeare's relationship with fellow playwrights, his intimate associations with his actors and the way the two unique playhouses he used in his lifetime affected the style of plays he wrote to bolster our belief that Shakespeare was a real man. He explains how spelling mistakes when recording his name was natural - the dictionary didn't exist yet and therefore uniform spelling didn't, that it's perfectly reasonable that we don't have much recorded evidence of the man himself bar a few court papers - we have the same limited information on Marlowe but nobody questions his existence and how it's our incapability of believing a man of such "lowly stature" could have such education and understanding on the "upper echelons".
An absolutely brilliant book.
Shapiro clearly and concisely strips down and destroys the two main contenders that have been put forward in the past century; the 17th Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon, as possible "Shakespeare's in disguise".
Shapiro uses his knowledge of Shakespeare's relationship with fellow playwrights, his intimate associations with his actors and the way the two unique playhouses he used in his lifetime affected the style of plays he wrote to bolster our belief that Shakespeare was a real man. He explains how spelling mistakes when recording his name was natural - the dictionary didn't exist yet and therefore uniform spelling didn't, that it's perfectly reasonable that we don't have much recorded evidence of the man himself bar a few court papers - we have the same limited information on Marlowe but nobody questions his existence and how it's our incapability of believing a man of such "lowly stature" could have such education and understanding on the "upper echelons".
An absolutely brilliant book.