For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories—and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination.

As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare’s plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them? 

Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination. 

To read Prologue, click HERE.

James S. Shapiro (born 1955) is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and non-fiction author. Shapiro published widely on William Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture, co-directed two National Endowment for the Humanities Institutes on Shakespeare, co-edited the Columbia Anthology of British Poetry (1995), and served as the associate editor of the Columbia History of British Poetry (1994). He received awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Huntington Library, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for his publications and academic activities. He got the Hoffman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship on Marlowe and in 1997 the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC), McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, bestowed him the Roland H. Bainton Prize for his book Shakespeare and the Jews . He has written for a number of periodicals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Book Review, The Financial Times, and The Daily Telegraph. In 2006 he was named a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow as well as a Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Shapiro won the 2006 Samuel Johnson Prize as well as the 2006 Theatre Book Prize for his work "1599: a Year in the Life of William Shakespeare" . Shapiro has been on the faculty at Columbia University since 1985, teaching Shakespeare and other topics, and reviewing books for various publications.