Players

For centuries, scholars have debated the true identity of the author of the poems and plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens, John Gielgud, and Derek Jacobi, among others, have cast irresolvable doubt on the Stratford man and proposed alternatives from rival playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe to Queen Elizabeth I. Why did Shakespeare leave behind not a single work in his own hand? Is it possible that the Stratford man - who had a grammar school education at best - possessed the depth of knowledge reflected in the work? Was there a single man in the English theatre who knew the etiquette of the nobility, the workings of the law, and the tactics of the military and navy? So, Fields asks in his tantalising conclusion, was this actually a magnificent collaboration between two men, a partnership protected for centuries by the greatest conspiracy in literary history?