Borges’ writings on Shakespeare, and the author of seven novels, including Will (2004), My Father Had a Daughter (2003), Ariel (2005), The Turquoise Ring (2005), Paint (2013), Gunpowder Percy (2016), and The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (2025).
At Lit Hub Tiffany tagged seven titles that are among the "most engaging and provocative fictional works inspired by Shakespeare’s plays, as well as a Shakespeare biography or two, and one incomparable short story." One entry on the list:
Best Book on the Question of Why People Keep Asking Whether Shakespeare was ShakespeareRead about the other entries on the list.
James Shapiro, Contested Will
Last in my catalogue is a terrific book by noted Columbia Shakespearean James Shapiro, whose Contested Will deserves to be grouped with Borges’ microcuento “Everything and Nothing” as an answer to the question, not “Whowas Shakespeare?” (as the title slyly suggests), but “Why can’t people just accept that Shakespeare was Shakespeare?”
Shapiro takes on the global urban legend that the Earl of Oxford, or Christopher Marlowe, or Francis Bacon, or Queen Elizabeth, or an intergalactic time traveler, or anyone but William Shakespeare himself, was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. In an account which will fascinate those interested in literary and theater history, Shapiro shows that it wasn’t until a couple of hundred years after Shakespeare’s death that anyone thought to propose that the Bard wasn’t really the Stratford man.
And he shows why. Why, that is, it was two centuries before anyone thought to question Shakespeare’s identity. For, as Shapiro makes clear, the Bard was, indeed, the Stratford man. Get over it, Oxfordians. And, Shakespeare fans, enjoy!
Contested Will is among Janet Suzman's six best books.
--Marshal Zeringue
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