Contested Will : Who Wrote Shakespeare?

from thronm

As a 30 year veteran of teaching Shakespeare, I find Shapiro's book in the top ten written about Shakespeare during my career. It is fair, even sympathetic, to those who believe Sir Francis Bacon or Lord Oxford wrote the plays but Shapiro refutes each--plus many other contenders--directly and thr...

from tuckerresearch

This is the best book on the Shakespeare authorship controversy that one can own. This is because this book is not just a explanation of the controversy, but a historiography of the controversy. For instance, Shapiro explains why people first thought William Shakespeare the actor could not be Wil...

from vguy

"Masterpiece" is a word usually applied to works of art rather than scholarship, but would fit here. We learn so much about human folly, the creative process, real history, research methods, the changes of literary fashion, the true love of art - and human greatness. Piquant is how Shapiro points...

from nosajeel

An outstanding book. A joy to read from beginning to end, learned an enormous amount, all processed through the lens of the history of Shakespeare authorship controversies. In particular, the book asks why so many people have come to believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the...

from ZenMoon

There's quite an art to making scholarly material this accessible. Shapiro writes eloquently and with great expertise about the Shakespeare authorship debate that has raged now for centuries. I've been fascinated in it ever since I came across an Atlantic article written in 1991, 'Looking for Sha...