'Shakespeare' by Another Name

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The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare
Every author's life tells a story. According to the conventional biography, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564; he moved to London sometime in the late 1580s or early 1590s and soon enjoyed great success as an actor

The Man Who Was Shakespeare, Part 2
The best place to begin is with the name itself: Shakespeare. The hyphen appears in many of the first publications of the plays and poems. Hyphenated phrases in an author's name often suggested a concealed author in an age rife with political

The Man Who Was Shakespeare, Part 3
The Return from Parnassus: This anonymous comedy staged by students at Cambridge University in 1600 pokes fun at an oafish actor, the clown Will Kemp. Kemp is made to say, 'Few of the university men pen plays well; they smell too much of that writer Ovid

A triumph of literary detective work about the true author of the works of Shakespeare

William Shaksper of Stratford was an actor and entrepreneur who had little education, never left England, and apparently owned no books. In the centuries since his death more and more questions have arisen about the true source of the plays and poetry conventionally attributed to him. Now journalist Mark Anderson's page-turning and groundbreaking new biography Shakespeare by Another Name offers tantalizing proof that it was the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere - a courtier, spendthrift, scholar, traveler, scoundrel, patron, and prolific ghostwriter of state propaganda - who actually created this timeless body of work.

Weaving together a wealth of evidence uncovered in ten years of research, Anderson brings to life a colorful figure whose biography presents countless mirror images of the works of Shakespeare. De Vere lived in Venice during his twenties - racking up debt with the city's money- lenders (Merchant of Venice); his notorious jealousy of his first wife spawned both self- critical works (Othello, The Winter's Tale) and self-mocking japes (The Comedy of Errors); an extramarital affair led to courtly disgrace (Much Ado About Nothing) as well as street fighting between his supporters and rivals (Romeo and Juliet). Anderson contends that the only way de Vere's compromising works - including brutally honest portraits of the powerful elite at Queen Elizabeth I's court - could ever be published was under another man's name.

Journalist Mark Anderson has devoted more than a decade to researching the life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, publishing articles on de Vere in Harper's, The Boston Globe, and on PBS.org. He has also been a contributing writer for Wired..

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