SHAKESPEARE WAS A WOMAN AND OTHER HERESIES (PB)

Travelling from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to Washington, DC, this book shows how forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across centuries. It considers how writers and thinkers from Walt Whitman to Sigmund Freud to Supreme Court justices have grappled with the plays’ origins, and explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind Shakespeare’s name. Hovering over this question of authorship are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.