The subtitle of Elizabeth Winkler’s witty, illuminating and possibly scandalous – depending on where you sit – book on a man who has been called Britain’s greatest export runs: “How doubting the Bard became the biggest taboo in literature.”
The idea is not new. It has been around almost since the bloke was buried in Stratford-upon-Avon, his hometown, 407 years ago, and will no doubt go on for another several hundred.
But where Winkler differs from many tendentious, yawn-inducing texts is that her approach across 336 pages is without doubt entertaining and humorous. Please note, this doesn’t mean it’s lightweight, but as Winkler has put it, her page-turner is a “detective mystery” and is aimed at not only people who love the plays, but also books as well.
The idea for Shakespeare Was a Woman began with an article Winkler, a journalist and literary critic, wrote for the Atlantic magazine titled, with that lure of a question, “Was Shakespeare a woman?” It was selected for The Best American Essays 2020.
And then the trouble started. Outraged Shakespeare scholars besieged the magazine with howls of protest, and to call the Atlantic’s defence of its contributor staunch would be a bit of a stretch.
But Winkler is not one to lie down in the face of slings and arrows. She stuck to her guns, to switch metaphors, and from her hometown in Washington DC, made visits to London, Stratford and other places in Britain, where she spoke to experts. She did the same across the US.
The result is enthralling and raises lots of questions. Shakespeare was the son of an illiterate glover and part-time beer taster. He was given a very basic education in Stratford, and couldn’t even spell his own name consistently.
So, how could he have written such mighty works as Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice, to list a mere eighth of his alleged output?
Along the way in exploring Shakespeare’s career, and the limits of biography and scholarship, Winkler gives fascinating glimpses into the thoughts of some heavyweights of literature, including Evelyn Waugh, Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf, several British and US Supreme Court judges, and contemporaries of Shakespeare himself, Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe, on the subject. Many of them have had doubts as to Shakespeare’s ability to have produced such work, she notes. Others, such as the great English actor Mark Rylance, still do. But if it wasn’t the man most think, then who?
Because Winkler is a writer who contributes to the New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement and the Economist, she naturally addresses the defenders of the faith, the Stratfordians, who believe that to suggest anyone but the Bard wrote the 30-plus plays is a crime beyond reason, giving them their place in the story.
This is only fair, but one cannot help but think that if the shoe was on the other foot, they would likely tar and feather anyone who dared to question views they regard as almost holy.
Winkler finds it hard to understand why her critics are so outraged. Of her storming the gates of the Stratford saint she protests, “I’ve been very polite.” That’s probably what’s got up their noses most of all.
Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies by Elizabeth Winkler (Simon & Schuster, $55hb)
