Faber & Faber

In 1599 James Shapiro looked solely at a year in the life of William Shakespeare - a momentous year, which changed the course of literature. In his new book Contested Will he investigates one of literature's great mysteries - did Shakespeare actually write what we think he wrote? He provides background in this Q & A.

What was the spark that made you consider writing this book?

[James Shapiro]: Having a 10-year-old ask me: ‘Did Shakespeare really write Romeo & Juliet? My brother told me he didn’t’ and realizing that I might have to spend the rest of my career trying to explain not just to students or popular audiences but to 10-year-olds that he in fact did.

For decades, a surprising number of influential people have variously doubted the true identity of Shakespeare - presumably there’s no smoke without fire?
 
There’s fire, all right: but the fires that threaten received wisdom has to do less with what we know about Shakespeare (which is plenty, though less than we would like) and more to do with two things.  First, the extent to which we all have become a bit too cozy with conspiracy theories. And second, and to me no less troubling, the extent to which we all now look for writers’ lives in their works. Since, in the absence of any documentary evidence, every rival authorship claim is based on an autobiographical reading of the plays and sonnets, this continues to fuel the controversy (giving, for example, the Earl of Oxford, who was captured by pirates and had three daughters, a better claim to have written Hamlet and Lear than Shakespeare, who never set sail and only had two).

What ‘missing’ document would you most like to find relating to Shakespeare’s life and work?

That one is easy: the account book for the Chamberlain’s Men, concerning company payments - the equivalent of Henslowe’s Diary for their rivals, the Admiral Men, which does survive. We would know who else was writing for Shakespeare’s company, what plays he acted in, what the company repertory was, when the theatre was closed for plague, which plays were box office hits, when plays were revived or revised, and so on. I’d rather have that than Shakespeare’s diary, if he kept one.
 
What if anything have non-academics added to our understanding of Shakespeare?
 
I learn something almost every day from following the on-line discussion groups of anti-Stratfordians; they are deeply interested in the plays, and in historical scholarship (though they are often driven by some pretty wrongheaded assumptions). The most recent example: just this week I read a terrific article of the dating of the main source of The Tempest by Tom Reedy, in response to another non-professor, on the same subject.  Brilliant stuff, and ahead of the scholars on this complicated issue.
 
What was your biggest breakthrough in researching the topic?
 
Scholarship grinds away slowly ... but the greatest breakthrough was discovering that the Cowell manuscript was a forgery, and that, as I had suspected, the controversy could not have begun before the 1840s.
 
Which of the conspiracy theories surrounding Shakespeare are you most attracted to (even if you know it’s one based on a fundamental misapprehension)?
 
I like the fantasy that Christopher Marlowe didn’t die in 1593, but was spirited away and went on to write Shakespeare’s plays. Though dead he was - and we have the coroner’s report to confirm it. But I’m drawn to the theory because it answers a question that haunts me and many others: had Marlowe not been killed at that Inn at Deptford, what great things might he have done?
 
Are there parallels between recent developments in ‘Shakespeare Studies’ and the teaching of evolution?
 
I think the two have only one - dangerous - thing in common: the notion that there are two sides to every question, competing and necessarily valid positions that merit equal time. They don’t, and one of the things I explore in the book is when and why this notion of ‘fairness’ developed in our culture (predictably, post-war America, though it has spread everywhere, like an invasive species since).
 
Writing this book, have you come to the conclusion that literary biography - not just a life of Shakespeare - is an impossible genre?
 
Impossible, no; difficult yes, especially cradle-to-grave biographies. I like to think of this book as part of the increasingly interesting conversation on what kind of lives ought to be written, and how. Should lives be written backwards? Should they be slices of lives? Are there more interesting ways at getting to the creative and consequential moments in an artist’s life? I love biography - hope to write more of it, but not conventional lives. And you won’t find me mining Shakespeare’s works for evidence that he was Catholic, or bisexual, or angry at his wife, or hated dogs (an argument Stephen Greenblatt recently advanced in the pages of the New York Review of Books).
 
What do you want believers, non-believers and agnostics to take from 'Contested Will'?

Three things, for all concerned: first, accept the fact that smart people often think dumb things, and it’s worth looking more deeply into why they do so, what assumptions led them astray.
 
Second, understand that when and why people think what they do can illuminate what they think - put another way, that theories have histories that are worth investigating, that attitudes - towards creativity, authorship, collaboration, genius - change over time.
 
Third, walk away understanding why, in the end, it was in fact Shakespeare who wrote the plays attributed to him, but also walk away with some compassion and understanding for those who don’t think so.