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    Who Wrote Shakespeare?: The Case for William Shakespeare of Stratford
    Who Wrote Shakespeare?: The Case for William Shakespeare of Stratford
    Who Wrote Shakespeare?: The Case for William Shakespeare of Stratford
    Ebook69 pages47 minutes

    Who Wrote Shakespeare?: The Case for William Shakespeare of Stratford

    By James Shapiro

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    About this ebook

    This ebook is an excerpt from Contested Will by James Shapiro, and originally appeared as the last section titled "Shakespeare."  In this chapter, Shapiro succintly and eloquently makes the case for why no one else but Shakespeare could have written Shakespeare's plays.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateAug 23, 2011
    ISBN9781451668384
    Who Wrote Shakespeare?: The Case for William Shakespeare of Stratford
    Author

    James Shapiro

    James Shapiro, aprofessor at Columbia University in New York, is the author of Rival Playwrights, Shakespeare and the Jews, and Oberammergau.

    Read more from James Shapiro

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    • 1/5
      I grew up divided between two homes, my grandparents’ where Shakespeare was recited liberally and my parents where my mother read the Shakespearean canon to us as embryos. Today I delight in their content rhythm color and tone more than ever and have never had the slightest discontent with their inauspicious authorship.
      So, after reading Oxfordian arguments; illiterate parents and progeny, no contemporary paper trail or celebratory notice upon his demise, I found myself looking to Dr. Schapiro as a credible and definitive (perhaps even heroic?) respondent.
      Alas, i found none - and was sadly a bit off put by his excursive triflings.

      perhaps a rose by another name will indeed smell as sweet

    Book preview

    Who Wrote Shakespeare? - James Shapiro

    Contents

    The Evidence For Shakespeare

    Here’s Our Fellow Shakespeare

    Jacobean Shakespeare

    Bibliographical Essay

    Simon & Schuster

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    Copyright © 2010 by James Shapiro

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

    Who Wrote Shakespeare? originally appeared as Shakespeare in Contested Will by James Shapiro.

    First ebook edition of Who Wrote Shakespeare?August 2011

    SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

    Designed by Nancy Singer

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    1   3   5   7   9   10   8   6   4   2

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Shapiro, James S.

    Contested Will : who wrote Shakespeare?/James Shapiro.

    p.   cm.

    Includes bibliogaphical references and index.

    1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship. 2. Shakespeare, William,

    1564–1616—Authorship—Baconian theory. 3. Shakespeare, William,

    1564–1616—Authorship—Oxford theory. I. Title.

    PR2937.S47   2010

    822.3'3—dc22         2009032710

    ISBN 978-1-4516-6838-4

                      ISBN 978-1-4165-4162-2 (hardcover)

             ISBN 978-1-4165-4163-9 (pbk)

                ISBN 978-1-4391-7022-9 (ebook)

    Simon & Schuster

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    Copyright © 2010 by James Shapiro

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

    Who Wrote Shakespeare? originally appeared as Shakespeare in Contested Will by James Shapiro.

    First ebook edition of Who Wrote Shakespeare?August 2011

    SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

    Designed by Nancy Singer

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    1   3   5   7   9   10   8   6   4   2

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Shapiro, James S. Contested Will : who wrote Shakespeare?/James Shapiro.

    p.   cm.

    Includes bibliogaphical references and index.

    1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship—Baconian theory. 3. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Authorship—Oxford theory. I. Title.

    PR2937.S47   2010

    822.3'3—dc22         2009032710

    ISBN 978-1-4516-6838-4

                      ISBN 978-1-4165-4162-2 (hardcover)

             ISBN 978-1-4165-4163-9 (pbk)

                ISBN 978-1-4391-7022-9 (ebook)

    The Evidence For Shakespeare

    Schoolroom, Guildhall, Stratford-upon-Avon

    It’s one thing to explain how claims that others wrote the plays rest on unfounded assumptions; it’s another to show that Shakespeare of Stratford really did write them. When asked how I can be so confident that Shakespeare was their author, I point to several kinds of evidence. The first is what early printed texts reveal; the second, what writers who knew Shakespeare said about him. Either of these, to my mind, suffices to confirm his authorship—and the stories they tell corroborate each other. All this is reinforced by additional evidence from the closing years of his career, when he began writing for a new kind of playhouse, in a different style, in active collaboration with other writers.

    The sheer number of inexpensive copies of Shakespeare’s works that filled London’s bookshops after 1594 was staggering and unprecedented. No other poet or playwright came close to seeing seventy or so editions in print—and that’s counting only what was published in Shakespeare’s lifetime and doesn’t include Othello, first printed in 1622, or any of the eighteen plays first published in the First Folio a year later. Print runs were usually restricted to fifteen hundred copies. If cautious publishers printed and sold only a thousand copies of each of these early quartos, it’s likely that fifty thousand books bearing Shakespeare’s name (for some were published anonymously) circulated during his lifetime—at a time when London’s population was only two hundred thousand. As an actor, playwright, and shareholder in the most popular playing company in the land—which performed before as many as three thousand spectators at a time in the large outdoor theaters—he was also one of the most familiar faces in town and at court. If, over the course of the quarter-century in which Shakespeare was acting and writing in London, people began to suspect that the man they knew as Shakespeare was an imposter and not the actor-dramatist whose plays they witnessed and purchased, we would have heard about it.

    One of those who recognized Shakespeare and knew him by name was George Buc. Buc was a government servant, historian, book collector, and eventually Master of the Revels—the official to whom Shakespeare’s company would submit all playscripts for approval. A familiar acquaintance of the Earl of Oxford, Buc also knew Shakespeare well enough to stop and ask him about the authorship of an old and anonymous play published in 1599, George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield, a copy of

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