Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
(Sprache: Englisch)
A thrillingly provocative investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy...and who the Bard might really be.
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A thrillingly provocative investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy...and who the Bard might really be.
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A thrillingly provocative investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy...and who the Bard might really be.The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, vexed, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard's 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 readers from London to Stratford-upon-Avon 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 thinkers-from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices-who 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 Shakespeare's plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.
As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler's interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth-and 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 we're looking for.
An irresistible work of literary detection, Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare... and of how we as a society decide what's up for debate and what's just nonsense, just heresy.
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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,
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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 Wilberf
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 Wilberf
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Autoren-Porträt von Elizabeth Winkler
Elizabeth Winkler is a journalist and book critic whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Economist, among other publications. She received her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her master's in English literature from Stanford University. Her essay "Was Shakespeare a Woman?", first published in The Atlantic, was selected for The Best American Essays 2020. She lives in Washington, DC.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Elizabeth Winkler
- 2023, 416 Seiten, Masse: 15,2 x 22,8 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: Simon & Schuster US
- ISBN-10: 198217126X
- ISBN-13: 9781982171261
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.05.2023
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"An extraordinarily brilliant and scholarly work, written with an unyielding sleuthing instinct and sparkling with pleasurably naughty moments. This page-turner is mesmerizing."-André Aciman, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name
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