Skip to main content

Stratford shipwreck

By

by Linda Theil

Look no further than best-selling author Jodi Picault's brand new novel for evidence that the Shakespeare author ship is leaking like a sieve.

Picault credited Elizabeth Winkler's 2019 Atlantic article "Was Shakespeare a Woman?" about Emilia Bassano as inspiration for By Any Other Name, a novel released today by Ballentine Books featuring Bassano as a pen behind the Shakespeare pseudonym.

In that same interview on Jacke Wilson's History of Literature podcast, Picault told Wilson that she believes Edward deVere, seventeenth earl of Oxford, played a role in the Shakespeare authorship. 

"I believe the earl of Oxford was the puppet master behind the works of William Shakespeare," Picault said.

The History of Literature podcast episode is titled "Meet the woman who REALLY wrote Shakespeare's plays with Jodi Picoult", broadcast today.

For centuries pressure has been building on the bulwark of Stratfordian-based authorship created by David Garrick for his fantasyland-on-Avon "Shakespeare Jubilee" in 1769; but the extraordinary publicity accompanying Roland Emmerick's 2011 film "Anonymous" created an unrelenting tide of fascination that is finally popping the oakum on the foundering Stratfordian ship.

Other recent noteworthy authorship petards:

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature by Elizabeth Winkler (Simon $ Schuster, 2023)

In Shakespeare's Shadow: A Rogue Scholar's Quest to Reveal the True Source behind the World's Greatest Plays by Michael Blanding (Hachette Books, 2022)

The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy:Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity by Michael Dudley (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) also available as an ebook from Google Play 

"Could Philip Sydney Be the Fair Youth of the Sonnets?" by Elizabeth Quattrocki Knight (video presentation from The Los Angeles Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable)

References

By Any Other Name (Ballentine Books, Aug 20, 2024) by Jodi Picoult, https://www.amazon.com/Any-Other-Name-Novel/dp/059349721X

History of Literature podcast with Jacke Wilson, "Meet the woman who REALLY wrote Shakespeare's Plays with Jodi Picoult" broadcast Aug. 20, 2024
https://www.historyofliterature.com/628-meet-the-woman-who-really-wrote-shakespeares-plays-with-jodi-picoult-my-last-book-with-alli/

"Was Shakespeare a Woman?" by Elizabeth Winkler, The Atlantic June 2019

What Blessed Genius?: The Jubilee That Made Shakespeare by Andrew Stott (WWNorton & Co., 2019)

Popular posts from this blog

What's a popp'rin' pear?

By
James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said.  “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.”  She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...
Post a Comment
Read more

Winkler lights the match

By
by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler  calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h...
Read more

Dudley nails it to the door

By
Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from   Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...
Read more