Contested Will
by James S. Shapiro · first published 2010
3mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2010–2024first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.
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Reading right now: Charlie Stross, Halting State. Jacques Barzun, An Essay On French Verse: For Readers of English Poetry. Recently finished: James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (nonfiction, highly recommended; more about the history of the Shakespeare authorship controversy than a salvo in it) Ian Banks, Consider Phlebas (first book in the Culture series,…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading right now?” ↗…quarter-century before Shakespeare and we have virtually no documentary evidence from his lifetime, and yet nobody is making websites to prove that _Tamburlaine_ was really written by Ben Jonson. The book Contested Will by James Shapiro is a really interesting historical review of why Shakespeare authorship theories are such a persistent and recurring thing, despite the lack of new evidence. He also covers how they got…
on “Shakespeare's First Folio Turns 400” ↗…profile better. This exact process has been used for Bacon, Derby, Oxford, and dozens of other claimants; nobody has offered a truly new argument against Shakespeare for decades. I recommend the book _Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?_ by James S. Shapiro as the definitive work examining, explaining, and debunking alternative authorship theories. It's thoughtful and well-written, not the dry diatribe one might…
on “Shakespeare's sister: Digital archives reveal insights into unknown sibling” ↗