Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies

How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature

By: Elizabeth Winkler

Narrated by: Eunice Wong

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be.

The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.”

In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo. Whisking you from London to Stratford-Upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries. As she considers the writers and thinkers—from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices—who have grappled with the riddle of the plays’ origins, she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. A forgotten woman? A disgraced aristocrat? A government spy? Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.

As she interviews scholars and skeptics, Winkler’s interest turns to the larger problem of historical truth—and of how human imperfections (bias, blindness, subjectivity) shape our construction of the past. History is a story, and the story we find may depend on the story we’re looking for.

“Lively” (The Washington Post), “fascinating” (Amanda Foreman), and “intrepid” (Stacy Schiff), Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies will forever change how you think of Shakespeare…and of how we as a society decide what’s up for debate and what’s just nonsense, just heresy.

Critic reviews

“An extraordinarily brilliant and scholarly work, written with an unyielding sleuthing instinct and sparkling with pleasurably naughty moments. This page-turner is mesmerizing.”
—André Aciman, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name

“A fascinating detective story… whose irreverence is part of its appeal.”
—The Guardian

“Elizabeth Winkler is blessed with the clear-eyed wit of a heroine in a Shakespearean comedy. Her undoing of the fools in the forest of the authorship question is iconoclasm As You Like It—joy to behold, lesson for us all.”
—Lewis Lapham, founder of Lapham’s Quarterly

“As a literary-investigative reporter, Elizabeth Winkler… pursues her quarry with tenacity and grips it like a dog with a bone.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Lively…. Winkler is a crackerjack researcher, deftly laying out the myriad questions, arguments and mysteries swirling around Shakespeare.”
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“Elizabeth Winkler’s Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies is one of the most engaging, riveting, scholarly, and challenging whodunits anyone with an interest in theater, human psychology, literature, and history can hope to read. Following in the footsteps of Henry James, Mark Twain, Mark Rylance, and innumerable other skeptics, Winkler writes about what has been essentially a centuries old theological dispute about the origins of Shakespeare’s astounding body of work like a Shakespearean drama itself: full of complex characters with false reputations and deceptive appearances.”
—Bessel van der Kolk, MD, New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps Score

“No, Elizabeth Winkler doesn’t reveal the true identity of the writer Ruth Bader Ginsburg termed “the literary genius known by the name William Shakespeare.” But she does explain how we’ve wound up with, among an army of others, a republican Shakespeare and a monarchist Shakespeare, a Shakespeare who hated his wife and one who loved his, a Shakespeare who wrote all the plays and a Shakespeare who could not write at all. Along her intrepid way, Winkler charts, with refreshing clarity, the much-contested ground underfoot, studded with flinty convictions, gnarled fictions, and a surprising number of land mines.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Revolutionary

“Fascinating and often delightful…. Shakespeare Was a Woman may represent something of an “emperor’s-no-clothes” moment for academia.”
—Winnipeg Free Press

The debate

As a PhD in science and engineering, I was fascinated by the different approaches players in this debate took to support and advocate for their side. I recognized many analogies in my own field, particularly when postulating new theories to recognized authorities, though not to the degrees highlighted in this book, thank goodness.
The focus on human biases and behaviors, how people were treating each other, added a dimension that I found intriguing and portions of this book have strengthened my own motivation for self examination.
I was also excited to learn about the new technologies and models that have been employed to advance the way historical interpretations can be analyzed ( though I had to laugh at the often misuse of new technologies to distort, something not uncommon to any scientific field of study, though whether out of intent or ignorance is another debate).
I also really enjoyed the narrator, her pacing and tone was on point. I do have to admit, however, that I went into the book assuming the narrator WAS the author up until the very end of the epilogue… yep, I fell into an unconscious bias with an un-investigated assumption, which also made me have to laugh.
Regardless of whether you are a devout Shakespeare lover or have a strong appreciation for the works (like me), I think there is something for everyone in this book.

Passionate and engaging

Excellent exploration of the author of the plays, covering many viewpoints, known facts and rethinking long accepted theories. I learned so much from this book and now am really interested in following future research.

Well researched and very engaging journalism

Must read! It validated my experience as a young woman in academia who was scoffed at for asking “unimportant questions” about women and their experiences in the Great Books. Thank you Elizabeth for standing up to academic thuggery with grace and intelligence.

Eye-opening

It’s amazing how much of our reality is built upon myths, legends, and lies, and this book shines a light on all three with regards to the authorship question. While we might never know the ground truth, I think this discourse is an important reminder that great art often requires many hands to make it happen, regardless of whose name headlines the playbill.

A Fascinating examination of the Shakespeare Authorship Question

The life of the man from Stratford is examined and revealed, based on historical sources, to be that of an illiterate, litigious businessman who at times fell afoul of the law. Unlike supposed biographies of the elusive Will, which are overloaded with modifying words like “imagine, probably, we assume, perhaps, and likely” words that frame guesses made about the supposed authors life, here we have history based on solid historical facts which led to a suprising hypothesis well worth examining.