Shakespeare was a woman & other heresies How doubting the bard became the biggest taboo in literature

Review by Choice Review

Deriving from journalist Elizabeth Winkler's essay "Was Shakespeare a Woman?" (published in the June 2019 issue of The Atlantic), this volume chronicles Winkler's response to the critical reception of that essay. Winkler recounts her conversations with those who propose various alternatives for authorship of Shakespeare's plays as she attempts to understand why the essay elicited such strong, negative responses. She offers her answer early on: academic scholars of Shakespeare treat Shakespeare--the man--as a god, and replace devotion to church with devotion to Shakespeare. She writes in chapter 6 that "English was institutionalized at the height of the Victorian deification of Shakespeare, swapping the old Judeo-Christian God for one that Britain had already at hand"--which is to say, Shakespeare was "conceived as a replacement for religion" (p. 151). According to Winkler, any attempt to undermine that devotion is therefore, in the words of the title, "heresy." Although interesting, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies targets a popular audience; it would be of less use in an academic setting. Summing Up: Optional. General readers only. --Kathleen Kalpin Smith, University of South Carolina, Aiken

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

The debate among scholars surrounding Shakespeare's identity is centuries old. Some believe he was a local villager, others that he was Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Queen Elizabeth I, or maybe even a group of people. Winkler explores the possibility that Shakespeare may have been a woman, Emilia Bassano. Winkler acknowledges right off the bat that bringing up the Shakespeare-authorship question among experts is still a huge taboo; her original article on the topic from 2019 inspired a lot of rancour. Her primary research focus on how Shakespeare wrote women so well, i.e. feminist readings of the Bard's work, was greeted with scorn in the mid-1970s. Now, they're a staple of the subject area. Wondering if Shakespeare was a woman disguising herself, like George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) did, Winkler alternates between historical explorations of the subject matter and ideas about why the Shakespeare experts get so defensive and hard nosed. A must-read for those obsessed with the bard, Winkler's book is a strong contender for both academic and public library shelves.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This sharp debut by journalist Winkler expands on her 2019 Atlantic essay exploring the "messy, ugly dispute" over the authorship of works attributed to Shakespeare. Questioning how a relatively uneducated man from Stratford-upon-Avon could write such learned and feminist plays, Winkler suggests that perhaps "the author was not an uneducated man but an educated woman." She discusses the numerous female candidates scholars have forwarded, including Mary Sidney, a translator who aspired to create "a body of English literature that could stand next to the great works in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian," and Emilia Bassano, a poet who advocated for liberty from male oppression. She also surveys male authors believed by some to be the "real" Shakespeare, noting that playwright Christopher Marlowe is a favorite candidate because he died under mysterious circumstances "just weeks before 'Shakespeare' emerged." Winkler doesn't weigh in on the likeliness of the candidates, but instead uses the controversy to serve up thoughtful meditations on the role of the author, the objectivity of biography, and the limits of scholarly study ("Despite the most heroic efforts of feminist scholars, women of the past will always be, to some degree, 'missing matter' "). Probing and smart, this is sure to stir up lively debate. (May)

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Review by Library Journal Review

In 2019, when journalist Winkler published the essay "Was Shakespeare a Woman?" in The Atlantic, a majority of Shakespeare scholars (and an army of anonymous internet trolls) were outraged. She approached the Shakespeare authorship debate in "a spirit of inquiry and open-minded skepticism," wondering how William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the relatively uneducated and untraveled son of a glover, had written plays that demonstrated intimate knowledge of European aristocratic life, the practice of law, and several languages, all with a unique sensitivity to a woman's place in Elizabethan society. Soon after the essay's publication, Winkler was called a conspiracy theorist, her questioning of the Bard's gender likened to Holocaust denialism and Obama birtherism. With an expert blend of wry humor, enthusiasm, and careful attention to detail, narrator Eunice Wong perfectly presents Winkler's enlightening and delightfully entertaining first-person account of who, other than William Shakespeare, may have contributed to the vast body of work attributed to him and why it has become so taboo to question who the poet and playwright really was. VERDICT Listeners, however knowledgeable of the Shakespeare authorship question or "his" works, should relish Wong's engaging performance of Winkler's spirited look at a hotly debated literary mystery.--Beth Farrell

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Diving into a Shakespearean drama. Journalist and literary critic Winkler makes her book debut with a witty, irreverent inquiry into a fraught question: Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? That question inspired her essay, "Was Shakespeare a Woman?" published in the Atlantic in 2019, in which she proposed that Italian writer Emilia Bassano might have written, or contributed to, Shakespeare's plays. The response by scholars was vicious. "In literary circles," Winkler quickly discovered, "even the phrase 'Shakespeare authorship question' elicits contempt--eye-rolling, name-calling, mudslinging." But that question has persisted, like "a massive game of Clue," since the Renaissance, fueled by the lack of evidence that the man born in Stratford was the same man who wrote Hamlet. No obituary appeared after Shakespeare's death, and he bequeathed no manuscripts, unusual for a man of letters. Furthermore, he seemed never to have traveled outside of England yet had intimate knowledge of European court life, other languages, and even ancient Greek. Winkler is well versed in Shakespeare's works as well as the "vast, complex" literature on the authorship question. She reports on conversations with stolid Stratfordians who have devoted their careers to defending Shakespeare's identity and with enthusiastic anti-Stratfordians who point to other individuals--or collaborators--as more likely playwrights: Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere, and Mary Sidney, who, like Bassano, could help to explain Shakespeare's prowess in writing feminist drama. Suppose, Winkler suggests, "the author was not an uneducated man but an educated woman, concealing herself beneath a male name, as the heroines of the plays so often disguise themselves in masculine garb." Winkler does not aim to solve the mystery but rather to point up the problems of ascertaining historical truth. "We take our knowledge of the past from sources we trust," she writes, "few of us going back to check how a 'historical fact' was arrived at, whether it's correct." A shrewd, entertaining journey into a literary quagmire. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Prologue Prologue In England in the summer of 1964, an unusual case came before the courts. It involved a squabble over the will of Miss Evelyn May Hopkins and the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare. Miss Hopkins had died, leaving a third of her inheritance to the Francis Bacon Society for the purpose of finding the original manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays. She referred to them as the "Bacon-Shakespeare manuscripts," believing the true author of the works to have been Francis Bacon, the Elizabethan philosopher and statesman. The aim of finding the manuscripts was to prove that Bacon was, in fact, the author of the works attributed to Shakespeare. Her heirs were not pleased. Naturally, they preferred that the money go to themselves. Seeking to reclaim their inheritance, the heirs brought a suit against the society, arguing that Miss Hopkins's provision should be set aside on the grounds that the search would be a "wild goose chase." To support their case, they solicited the testimony of scholarly experts. The Right Honorable Richard Wilberforce, a justice of Her Majesty's High Court, presided. Counsel for the next of kin "described it as a wild goose chase; but wild geese can, with good fortune, be apprehended," observed the justice. Many discoveries are unlikely until they are made, he pointed out: "one may think of the Codex Sinaiticus, or the Tomb of Tutankhamen, or the Dead Sea Scrolls." Wilberforce was a stolid Englishman, a former classics scholar at Oxford University who rose through Britain's legal ranks to become a senior Law Lord in the House of Lords and a member of the Queen's Privy Council. Having reviewed the evidence submitted to the court, he summarized it as follows: "The orthodox opinion, which at the present time is unanimous, or nearly so, among scholars and experts in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature and history, is that the plays were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, actor." However, Justice Wilberforce continued, "The evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship is quantitatively slight. It rests positively, in the main, on the explicit statements in the First Folio of 1623, and on continuous tradition; negatively on the lack of any challenge to this ascription at the time" of the First Folio's publication. Furthermore, the justice found, "There are a number of difficulties in the way of the traditional ascription... a number of known facts which are difficult to reconcile.... [S]o far from these difficulties tending to diminish with time, the intensive search of the nineteenth century has widened the evidentiary gulf between William Shakespeare the man, and the author of the plays." The justice went on to consider the testimony of the scholarly experts. Kenneth Muir, King Alfred Professor of English literature at the University of Liverpool, supported the plaintiffs, Miss Hopkins's aggrieved heirs. He considered it "certain" that Bacon could not have written the works of Shakespeare. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford, departed slightly from his English literature colleagues, taking what the justice deemed "a more cautious line." Though Professor Trevor-Roper "definitely does not believe that the works of 'Shakespeare' could have been written by Francis Bacon, he also considers that the case for Shakespeare rests on a narrow balance of evidence and that new material could upset it; that though almost all professional scholars accept 'Shakespeare's' authorship, a settled scholarly tradition can inhibit free thought, that heretics are not necessarily wrong. His conclusion is that the question of authorship cannot be considered as closed." Justice Wilberforce agreed. The question was not closed. The evidence for Shakespeare was too slim, the problems too many. The scholars might be wrong. Even if Francis Bacon was unlikely, new material might show someone other than Shakespeare to have been the author. Whoever wrote them, the manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays had never been found. Their discovery would be "of the highest value to history and to literature," Wilberforce proclaimed. Indeed, he added, to the consternation of the plaintiffs and the Shakespeare scholars, "the revelation of a manuscript would contribute, probably decisively, to a solution to the authorship problem, and this alone is benefit enough." Miss Hopkins's bequest to the Francis Bacon Society was upheld. Excerpted from Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature by Elizabeth Winkler All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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