Why Shakespeare WAS Shakespeare (Kindle Singles)

3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars | 97 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 04-27-2025


About this item

Why Shakespeare Was Shakespeare offers both a vivid account of the life of William Shakespeare and a vigorous rebuttal to those who claim his plays and poems were written by someone else. In this fascinating exploration, the renowned Shakespeare editor and critic Stanley Wells explains when these ‘deniers’ first emerged and who they are today. He looks at the reasons for their belief that Shakespeare wasn’t the author Shakespeare we know and love, and examines the claims made for others -- The Earl of Oxford and Christopher Marlowe are the usual suspects, though over the years a bewildering array of candidates has been proposed. Ultimately, Wells concludes, Shakespeare the Stratford-born man of historical fact and Shakespeare the greatest writer in English were undoubtedly one and the same.

Stanley Wells, CBE, FRSL, has devoted a lifetime to the study of Shakespeare. Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Professor Emeritus of Shakespeare Studies in the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, he is General Editor of both the Oxford and the Penguin editions of the works. He has written widely about Shakespeare and his contemporaries. His books include Shakespeare For All Time (Macmillan), Shakespeare & Co. (Penguin), Shakespeare, Sex, and Love (Oxford University Press), and (co-edited with Paul Edmondson) Shakespeare Beyond Doubt (Cambridge University Press).

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare was Shakespeare was Shakespeare. Get over it.
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2014
I find it interesting that the anti-Straitfordians deny Shakespeare's genius. The authors of all those plays and that poetry is ABBS, Any Body But Shakespeare. The evidence, as Stanley Wells, summarizes here is obvious that Will Shakespeare from Straitford-upon-Avon was the author. Seems to me that to deny Shakespeare's genius is to deny that there are any human genius. If you don't have a college education, you must not be a genius. Genius by its very nature is something that appears out of nowhere and changes things.

It's not based on how much education you have or don't have, although the evidence is in that Shakespeare received enough of an education to create the plays and poetry. To deny Shakespeare's genius is to deny Einstein's genius or Freud's or Picasso's or Homer's or Dante's or Johann Sebastian Bach's or Beethoven's. How could Beethoven have written his Ninth Symphony when he was completely deaf? We don't have much factual evidence that Sophocles, Aeschylus or Euripides wrote the plays ascribed to their names either. But we accept that they did. Think Socrates. Maybe Plato made up the person we know as Socrates. After all, we don't have Socrates' birth certificate.

What gets me is that Ben Jonson and his contemporaries believed that William Shakespeare was the genuine article and yet the deniers want to override their votes. If an Oxford or Cambridge education created genius, why don't we see more geniuses coming out of those institutions or other institutions of higher learning.

There are so many things we credit to certain people like Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, Bach, Sophocles and Homer. Yet we have no absolute proof about them. For instance, Jesus of Nazareth or Buddha are both accepted not only as real people but as two of the greatest religious figures in human history.

So I would say, read the plays and the poetry. Enjoy them as some of the highest literary art in human history.
Viktor Romanovskiy
3.0 out of 5 stars A conventional wisdom
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2020
You can rate this book with any amount of stars - it is depends of your predispositions. I decided to gave 3 stars. The book is concise statement of orthodox story which easy to read. I think that all or near all arguments from it you can read in authorship doubter's books (but sometimes scattered on the many pages). The main problem with this book is that it too much conflate Shakespeare the Writer and Shakespeare from the Stratford upon Avon (i.e. Shakspere): "In the last three years of his life Shakespeare wrote little or nothing". But it is a hypothesis which are challenged by doubters and it shouldn't be a premise if you want to prove it. Another minus of the book are offensive labels which mr. Wells hangs on the doubters - "deniers" and "anti-Shakespereans".

I enjoyed when mr. Wells quotes Richard Barnfield's verse:
"Liver ever you, at least in fame live ever
Well may thy body die,but fame dies never".

I think that this passage in Wells' book is destined for the hidden denigration of famous hypothesis that "ever-living poet" from the dedication of Shakespeare' Sonnets means a dead poet. (but I think that mr. Wells doesn't achieve success in it).

In overall, if You are an honest stratfordian, You can give this book 4 stars (not 5, because it conflate an assumption and a goal). If You are an honest anti-stratfordian You can give 2 stars (because it is concise and well-written). A short book with a conventional wisdom.
ewaffle
5.0 out of 5 stars He really was, you know.
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2016
Stanley Wells is 86 years old. He has edited two "collected works" of Shakespeare, has published hundreds of scholarly papers and may have written more books about Shakespeare than have I have read. However there may be times when Stanley Wells wishes he had taken his degree at University College London in physics or chemistry. Because as the big kahuna of everything about the Bard he seems to be the guy who answers those odd people--people with money, degrees and some academic accomplishments--who insist that the only real important issue is discovering who actually wrote the plays and poems that are credited to Shakespeare.

I won't bother with the various theories put forth: Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford), Francis Bacon and my favorite for sheer wacky chutzpah, Christopher Marlowe (faked his death, moved to the Netherlands, etc.). Wells may feel sometimes that in a materialistic science you don't have to prove the fundamentals every few years. Force = mass x acceleration remains true; the second law of thermodynamics doesn't get reversed. But occasionally Wells (and a few others) have to write books like "Why Shakespeare WAS Shakespeare" to put things right.
Kevin J. Bouffard
4.0 out of 5 stars Worthy effort
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2014
Wells marshals many strong arguments in a brief book. I've never believed Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him, and I still don't.

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