Drama - Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Literary Biography, English Literature

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?

Name: Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
Author: James Shapiro
ISBN: 9781416541639

by James Shapiro

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Overview

For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories—and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination.

As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare’s plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them?

Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination.

Synopsis

The New York Times - Jeremy McCarter

[Shapiro's] refreshing method is to zoom all the way out, taking an interest "not in what people think—which has been stated again and again in unambiguous terms—so much as why they think it." Working its way back to the earliest doubters, Shapiro's book offers both history and historiography, a mix that yields insights even for those who don't know their "Othello" from their "Pericles."

About the Author, James Shapiro

James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he studied at Columbia and the University of Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599. He has been awarded numerous fellowships and grants from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He has written for The New York Times, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. Mr. Shapiro lives in New York with his wife and son.

Reviews

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Editorials

Jeremy McCarter

Lloyd Rose

…Shapiro doesn't take the theories themselves overly seriously. The real, and fascinating, focus of Contested Will is on the circumstances and personalities surrounding the genesis of those arguments, the way the historical and personal shaped the theoretical…The book is rich with insight and analysis…And in his attack against those who would limit what an artist can produce to what he has directly experienced, [Shapiro] champions not only common sense but creativity.
—The Washington Post

Library Journal

Mark Twain quipped that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare but another person named Shakespeare. Shapiro (English, Columbia Univ.; Shakespeare and the Jews) concludes that Shakespeare was written by Shakespeare. That said, he argues that an examination of the controversies over Shakespeare's authorship, which only began to arise in the 18th century, is valuable. It is not merely a matter of antiquarian curiosity but impinges on may issues in modern critical practice, raising questions about texts, autobiography, collaboration, national identity, interpretation, ideology, and the "author" function. Among the many competing claims of authorship, Shapiro focuses primarily on those for Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford as representative. His primary questions are the why and the how, tracing the history of these claims from their origins, how they gained momentum, and their lack of real substantiation. Thoroughly documented, Shapiro's book is scholarly yet well paced and accessible. VERDICT Rewarding for both the Shakespeare scholar and the serious general reader.—T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA

Kirkus Reviews

The author of A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (2005) chronicles the emergence of doubts about the playwright's identity and speculates about the assumptions and motives of the principal doubters. Shapiro (English/Columbia Univ.) is convinced that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays, but he waits until the penultimate chapter to summarize his evidence. The author's generally dispassionate, scholarly treatment will convince few doubters, for as he notes, "[p]ositions are fixed and debate has proved to be futile or self-serving." Shapiro begins with an account of a late-18th-century fraud perpetrated by William-Henry Ireland, who forged documents in Shakespeare's hand, including the manuscript of King Lear, then charts the growth of the notion of Shakespeare-as-literary-deity. This led, he argues, to the belief that the playwright must have been someone who possessed a superior education, was intimate with aristocrats and royals, had traveled extensively and owned a vast library-all of which exclude the man from Stratford. Early candidates ranged widely, but it was Delia Bacon who advanced the cause of Francis Bacon, a choice who attracted support from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Helen Keller and other notables. John Thomas Looney's "Shakespeare" Identified (1920) proposed the current champion-Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford-whose legions have swollen, says Shapiro, because of sympathetic print and electronic journalists, the Internet and the recent accommodations of mainstream publishers. What has also propelled the surge is the Oxfordians' belief that the works must have arisen from the playwright's personal, firsthand experience. Shapirosharply challenges this belief and convincingly demonstrates that it would have baffled Elizabethans and Jacobeans-not to mention that it would have ignored the power of a writer's imagination. The author bases his own conviction on the documentary evidence that he summarizes near the end. A thorough, engaging work whose arguments would prove more persuasive were we not living in an era of such fierce anti-intellectualism and pervasive conspiracy theory. Agent: Anne Edelstein/Anne Edelstein Literary Agency

Publishers Weekly

Shapiro, author of the much admired A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, achieves another major success in the field of Shakespeare research by exploring why the Bard's authorship of his works has been so much challenged. Step-by step, Shapiro describes how criticism of Shakespeare frequently evolved into attacks on his literacy and character. Actual challenges to the authorship of the Shakespeare canon originated with an outright fraud perpetrated by William-Henry Ireland in the 1790s and continued through the years with an almost religious fervor. Shapiro exposes one such forgery: the earliest known document, dating from 1805, challenging Shakespeare's authorship and proposing instead Francis Bacon. Shapiro mines previously unexamined documents to probe why brilliant men and women denied Shakespeare's authorship. For Mark Twain, Shapiro finds that the notion resonated with his belief that John Milton, not John Bunyan, wrote The Pilgrim's Progress. Sigmund Freud's support of the earl of Oxford as the author of Shakespeare appears to have involved a challenge to his Oedipus theory, which was based partly on his reading of Hamlet. As Shapiro admirably demonstrates, William Shakespeare emerges with his name and reputation intact. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

"With lucid writing for the common reader, with sense, and with respect toward those with whom he rightly disagrees, Shapiro tells how this whole mishegas got started, and then, with unbelievable patience, shows how it has not a shred of a breath of a hope of being anything." —-Philadelphia Inquirer

Melanie Hundley

James Shapiro's Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? takes a fascinating tour through the facts and legends surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. In addition to examining the texts, original documents, and writings that surround the "mystery" of Shakespeare's authorship, Shapiro looks at the questions of when and why people question the works. He works to clarify the nature of the debate around what exactly is being contested. The book raises questions about literary genius, art, and expectations. This readable book would work well for students who are interested in the debate around who wrote Shakespeare's plays. It provides a framework for understanding the nature of the debate, as well as a way to understand the primary sources used to defend the particular authors to whom the plays have been attributed over the years. The argument and text are complex but manageable for high school students. Reviewer: Melanie Hundley