Description

Book Synopsis

For two hundred years after William Shakespeare''s death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays.

Since then dozens of rival candidates - including The Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe - have been proposed as their true author. Contested Will unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi)

Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro''s fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what''s re

Contested Will

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    A Paperback / softback by James Shapiro

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      Book details

      Publisher Faber & Faber
      Published 6 January 2011
      ISBN-13 9780571235773
      978-0571235773
      ISBN-10 0571235778
      Also in:
      ELT & Literary Studies Literary studies: plays and playwrights Entertainment Theatre studies History Social and cultural history

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      For two hundred years after William Shakespeare''s death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays.

      Since then dozens of rival candidates - including The Earl of Oxford, Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe - have been proposed as their true author. Contested Will unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi)

      Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro''s fascinating search for the source of this controversy retraces a path strewn with fabricated documents, calls for trials, false claimants, concealed identity, bald-faced deception and a failure to grasp what could not be imagined. If Contested Will does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what''s re

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