Description

An extraordinarily brilliant and pleasurably naughty Andr Aciman investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemyand who the Bard might really be

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible unspeakable subject in the history of English literature Scholars admit that the Bards biography is a black hole yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable even some say immoral

In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo Whisking you from London to StratfordUponAvon to Washington DC she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire religion and mythmaking gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries As she considers the writers and thinkersfrom Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justiceswho have grappled with the riddle of the plays origins she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name A forgotten woman A disgraced aristocrat A government spy Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeares plays themselves with their love for mistaken identities disguises and things never quite being what they seem

As she interviews scholars and skeptics Winklers interest turns to the larger problem of historical truthand of how human imperfections bias blindness subjectivity shape our construction of the past History is a story and the story we find may depend on the story were looking for

Lively The Washington Post fascinating Amanda Foreman and intrepid Stacy Schiff Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeareand of how we as a society decide whats up for debate and whats just nonsense just heresy