I liked “Contested Will” quite a bit (I also enjoyed “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599” by the same author) but there is no winning the argument with the conspiracy theorists – they have an explanation (no matter how far fetched) for everything.  You could make a similar argument about a lot of writers, after all can we really believe that Sam Clemens, with his poor education, wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  Clearly he could not have!  He was nothing more than a hack journalist and a stand-up comedian etc. etc.

I once suggested to an Oxfordian that perhaps Oxford was a vampire and after writing the works of Shakespeare, and faking his death, he resurfaced many years later to write the works of Byron.  In our day he was either J D Salinger or Thomas Pynchon – or perhaps both.  I discovered Oxfordians don’t have a sense of humour.

I realize this is not the Shakespeare forum, but something I read recently really struck me – apparently Shakespeare never wrote another play with a woman cross-dressing as a man after Queen Elizabeth died.  I haven’t gone back to look at the chronology of the plays to see if this is true – but if so it might suggest that the queen was very fond of those plays, or perhaps that her successor was not.  Either way, the bard was tailoring his plays for the court or, even more specifically, for the monarch to a high degree.

Sean

From: William Robison 
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 9:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: Shakespeare

For my money, James Shapiro's "Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare"
demolishes all claims by any pretenders to the bard's mantle.

--=20
William B. Robison, PhD
Department Head / Professor of History
Department of History and Political Science
Southeastern Louisiana University
SLU 10895
Hammond LA 70402
985-549-2109 phone
985-549-2012 fax
[log in to unmask]
http://www.selu.edu/acad_research/depts/hist_ps/index.html

Check out *The Tudors on Film and Television*, by Sue Parrill and William
B. Robison (McFarland 2013) and the interactive website,
http://www.tudorsonfilm.com/.

History teaches students to read intelligently, think analytically, write
clearly, accurately assess past trends, rationally predict future
developments, and understand the real world. Now *that* is workforce-ready!

History does offer us very real lessons, but they are seldom simple and
straightforward. To understand and benefit from them, you have to know your
history very well. That is why history matters as much as math, science,
technology, or any other subject.

"A young horse is fast, but an old horse knows what's going on." =E2=80=93 =
Muddy
Waters

Free =D0=9F=D1=83=D1=81=D1=81=D0=B8 =D0=A0=D0=B0=D0=B9=D0=BE=D1=82!