An extraordinarily brilliant and pleasurably naughty (André Aciman) 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 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 you 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. Lively (The Washington Post) fascinating
(Amanda Foreman) and intrepid (Stacy Schiff) 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.
