Professor of English at Columbia University, Shapiro sets out not only to examine the evidence that the plays customarily attributed to Shakespeare may have in fact been written by someone else, but also to explore the reasons why such theories abound and have persisted for two hundred years or so. He first traces the histories of various forgeries claiming to substantiate information about and events in Shakespeare’s life, and then he reviews the gradual “deification” of Shakespeare, a process that was necessary before alternate claims of authorship would have been possible.

As the centuries have produced new theories and ways of reading literature, new approaches to the writing of biography, even new perspectives regarding the nature of the self and the interior life, so new “facts” about Shakespeare have been advanced, often taken from inferences derived from his writings. And these new so-called facts have then become part of a sort of received canon and been used for the promulgation of subsequent theorizing, so that a whole mythology about the writer and his own “history” has occurred, leading to a plethora of conclusions that rest on very shaky and arbitrary grounds, grounds often reflecting the theorizers’ own interests and biases.

Shapiro uses two figures as illustrative examples of possible “true” authors of the plays, the first being Francis Bacon. The first person to have suggested Bacon seems to have been the 19th century New Englander, Delia Bacon (no relation). Shapiro spends considerable time and ink discussing Delia Bacon’s own life and possible motivations in developing her theory about Francis Bacon’s authorship. Following her lead came countless other theorists who often based their convictions on conspiracy theories that make The Da Vinci Code and the Obama “birther” theories look like kid stuff. Others simply wanted to believe because such beliefs fit into their own ideas in other areas; for example, it was Mark Twain’s conviction that all authors could write only out of their direct experience, and so he required that the author of Shakespeare’s plays must be, for instance, an attorney. Shapiro thoroughly and objectively lays out all such “evidence.” In the end, all possibilities and the means of arriving at such conjectures turn out to be vastly more improbable than the possibility that there really was a Shakespeare and that he really did write the plays. And Shapiro is convinced that the claims of those who posit alternative authorship reveal more about the skeptics than about the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.

The second illustrative example that Shapiro examines as a possible author is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The proponents of Oxford - Freud, J.T. Looney - each had powerful preexisting theories which they tried to support by advocating for Oxford, often by vigorously forcing a fit that was by no means obvious. And, yes, the Oxfordians are rife with their own conspiracy theories, too, none any more plausible than those of the Baconians and each shedding more light on the issues and motivations of the theorists than on the “mystery” of Shakespeare’s authorship. Nonetheless, enthusiasm for the Oxfordian position seems to have made a substantial comeback in recent years, aided by the tenor of the times to question traditional authoritative positions and by the advent of the internet and its facilitation of self-publishing and promotion.

In his final chapter, Shapiro presents positive evidence for Shakespeare’s indeed being the author of the plays attributed to him, evidence that I shall not present here lest it spoil the fun for a future reader of this book. That having been said, I am persuaded by his arguments.

Shapiro adds a fascinating Epilogue that begins, “The controversy over Shakespeare’s authorship has proven to be, in retrospect, a long footnote to the larger story of the way we read now.” It has been only since the 18th century that there has been interest in literature as an expression of the author’s self; since that time authors have more and more frequently deliberately and consciously written from their own experience. But we risk misinterpretation if we assume that such has always been so, or that such is necessarily so. Our present predilection is the preferred way of literary interpretation of today and may not be so tomorrow. We err if we assume that our present interpretive orientations are eternal verities. Modes of reading are as important to be aware of as knowledge of the lives of authors, and we need to be cognizant of how writing and reading were understood at the time a work was penned. All too often, as Jonathan Bate has written, Shakespeare’s writings have “made me project a story of my own into their narrative.” Autobiographical readings of Shakespeare’s poems and plays are risky and reflect certain current biases that may simply be currently fashionable. Shapiro writes, “The evidence strongly suggests that imaginative literature in general and plays in particular in Shakespeare’s day were rarely if ever a vehicle for self-revelation.” In addition to which, modern understandings of psychology and the self are radically different today from the early 17th century, making it presumptuous to assume that we can transfer our understandings to authors and audiences of four hundred years ago.

This book has been a delightful journey through the vagaries of this controversy, a journey that I think will entertain and enlighten any enthusiast of the Shakespeare corpus.