Contested Will
Who Wrote Shakespeare?
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Narrated by:
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Wanda McCaddon
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By:
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James Shapiro
About this listen
For nearly two centuries, the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays has been challenged by writers and artists as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Malcolm X, and Sir Derek Jacobi. How could a young man from rural Warwickshire, lacking a university education, write some of the greatest works in the English language? How do we explain the seemingly unbridgeable gap between Shakespeare's life and works?
Contested Will unravels the mystery of Shakespeare's authorship, retracing why and when doubts first arose, what's at stake in the controversy for how we value Shakespeare's achievement, and why, in the end, there can be no doubt about who wrote the plays.
©2009 James Shapiro (P)2010 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
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Note!--Abridged version
- By Scott on 01-05-16
By: James Shapiro
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Confronting the Classics
- Traditions, Adventures and Innovations
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Lynne Jenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the world's leading historians provides a revolutionary tour of the Ancient World, dusting off the classics for the twenty-first century. Mary Beard, drawing on thirty years of teaching and writing about Greek and Roman history, provides a panoramic portrait of the classical world, a book in which we encounter not only Cleopatra and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hannibal, but also the common people - the millions of inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the slaves, soldiers, and women.
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Annoying narrator
- By Chris E on 02-27-15
By: Mary Beard
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The Infidel and the Professor
- David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Vividly written, The Infidel and the Professor is a compelling account of a great friendship of two towering Enlightenment thinkers that had great consequences for modern thought. David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime, he was attacked as "the Great Infidel" for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism.
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a thoroughly enjoyable account of friendship
- By henryj on 02-21-20
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To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
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Shakespeare's Library
- Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature
- By: Stuart Kells
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of words of scholarship have been expended on the world's most famous author and his work. And yet a critical part of the puzzle, Shakespeare's library, is a mystery. For four centuries people have searched for it: in mansions, palaces, and libraries; in riverbeds, sheep pens, and partridge coops; and in the corridors of the mind. Yet no trace of the Bard's manuscripts, books, or letters has ever been found.
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Dismissed Mary Sidney Herbert without explanation
- By Lisa on 07-30-19
By: Stuart Kells
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Printer's Error
- Irreverent Stories from Book History
- By: Rebecca Romney, J. P. Romney
- Narrated by: J.P. Romney
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the Gutenberg Bible first went on sale in 1455, printing has been viewed as one of the highest achievements of human innovation. But the march of progress hasn't been smooth; downright bizarre is more like it. Printer's Error chronicles some of the strangest and most humorous episodes in the history of Western printing. Take, for example, the Gutenberg Bible. While the book is regarded as the first printed work in the Western world, Gutenberg's name doesn't appear anywhere on it.
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Porn for Ye Old Bibliophiles
- By George M. Liveakos on 03-24-17
By: Rebecca Romney, and others
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Emerson
- The Mind on Fire
- By: Robert D. Richardson
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph Waldo Emerson is one of the most important figures in the history of American thought, religion, and literature. The vitality of his writings and the unsettling power of his example continue to influence us more than a hundred years after his death. Now Robert D. Richardson Jr. brings to life an Emerson very different from the old stereotype of the passionless Sage of Concord.
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Finally!
- By Douglas on 08-15-14
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A Life Observed
- A Spiritual Biography of C.S. Lewis
- By: Devin Brown
- Narrated by: Jon Gauger
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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A Life Observed tells the inspiring story of Lewis' spiritual journey from cynical atheist to joyous Christian. Drawing on Lewis' autobiographical works, books by those who knew him personally, and his apologetic and fictional writing, this spiritual biography brings the beloved author’s story to life while shedding light on his best-known works.
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A beautifully written remembrance
- By Rob on 02-06-18
By: Devin Brown
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Six Walks in the Fictional Woods
- By: Umberto Eco
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this exhilarating book, we accompany Umberto Eco as he explores the intricacies of fictional form and method. Using examples ranging from fairy tales and Flaubert, Poe and Mickey Spillane, Eco draws us in by means of a novelist's techniques, making us his collaborators in the creation of his text and in the investigation of some of fiction's most basic mechanisms.
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big ideas presented simply
- By Ashton on 01-31-14
By: Umberto Eco
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The Riddle of the Labyrinth
- The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code
- By: Margalit Fox
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Simon Winchester and Dava Sobel, The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code tells one of the most intriguing stories in the history of language, masterfully blending history, linguistics, and cryptology with an elegantly wrought narrative. When famed archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed the ruins of a sophisticated Bronze Age civilization that flowered on Crete 1,000 years before Greece's Classical Age, he discovered a cache of ancient tablets, Europe's earliest written records.
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Discovery and Translation of Linear B Script
- By Sires on 01-11-14
By: Margalit Fox
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1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
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Award-winning author Stephen Greenblatt is one of the most influential literary thinkers in the world. An acclaimed interpreter of Shakespeare's works, his ideas have changed the way countless people approach the classics. Now Greenblatt's uniquely brilliant voice delivers a magnificent biography of the Bard himself.
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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.
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Excellent!
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Excellent!
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What listeners say about Contested Will
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Alyssa B. Goss
- 07-28-10
Not so much as argument as a narrative
I bought this book because it was on sale. I never much cared who wrote the plays just so long as we had the plays themselves. If this book convinced me of anything it was that the question of authorship was more important that I thought it was.
What a wonderful surprise this book was. I never even guessed that the realm of Shakespeare research was so full of intrigue. I love the way the author puts the arguments about Shakespeare in historical context using them to highlight the thinking on storytelling of that particular era. The best part of this book is when he puts Shakespeare himself in historical context during the last two chapters. I never expected to laugh or be emotionally moved by a text written by a scholar of all people.
The greatest surprise of all was the epilogue which is a passionate essay arguing for the importance of imagination in storytelling. It really made me realize just how relevant the plays still are. It also justified the feelings I've had since I was little kid first capable of sitting through an episode of Wishbone: I don't have any patience for Hamlet and I think Prospero is pompous and self-absorbed. Puck has always been my favorite.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Etienne
- 12-18-11
More than just Shakespeare
Where does Contested Will rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
This is a terrific book, only about a third of which directly addresses who authored those works ascribed to William Shakespeare. The rest explores our beliefs regarding authorship in general; how what we say about authors -- and history, for that matter -- often tells more about us than it does about our subject. I so enjoyed this audiobook, I bought the iBook (ePub) version as a reference, and gave it as a Christmas gift to four friends.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Contested Will?
Discovering Sigmund Freud annoyed his friends by his consuming interest in the Shakespeare authoring problem.
What does Wanda McCaddon bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
A nice English accent appropriate to the book's author and subject.
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- Laurence R. Baker
- 09-24-24
Contested Will? No Contest, actually
I enjoy Shapiro’s books and was particularly pleased that this was a free subscription for Audible Subscribers. Excellent narration too. I was mildly disappointed about one aspect of the book. Shapiro devotes most of his attention to the conspiracy theories that question whether the “man from Stratford” actually wrote the great plays and sonnets. I found this somewhat tiresome, particularly his focus on Freud and Twain who were “celebrities” who did no actual research but who breathed life into the authorship question. Only toward the end did Shapiro present his convincing case for William Shakespeare as author of Shakespeare’s works. I suspect Shapiro did not really have a book without letting the other nonsense dominate his publication
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Overall
- Walter
- 05-26-10
Excellent, if long winded
Many have questioned whether Shakespeare could have written what it is claimed that he wrote. The book does an excellent job of laying out how these arguments came to be. It also does an excellent job of refuting them. The book is well read. I would have given it 4 stars had it not been so long-winded. The author makes a point, then makes it again, and again, and again.... It is probably a bit better suited for the scholar. Still, worth a purchase for those intersted in such things.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- David
- 12-18-10
Excellent
This is the best book on the so-called authorship controversy because Shapiro is the first well known Shakespearean scholar to accept an uncomfortable truth: that an idea that has gripped the public imagination needs to be studied, even if scholars find it nonsensical.
Although his book does include a superb chapter that concisely explains the absurdity of the 'authorship controversy', that is not the best thing about the book. Its most admirable quality is that Shapiro begins by explaining how slowly the biographical facts of Shakespeare's life were uncovered, helping you to understand why the nineteenth century was an environment in which daft ideas might seem plausible. It helps the orthodox Shakespearean to understand why such ideas flourished, even as it insists that they're wrong.
The narrator does a great job. She has the tone of a stern but patient schoolmistress.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Troy
- 06-19-14
The History of the Debate
The question of the Shakespearean "authorship problem" is addressed in a rather unique way here. The author comes right out and tells you that he believes in the idea that Shakespeare wrote his own works, but that the target of the book is instead to present a history of the debate itself, letting the very nature of the debate reveal its own merits and flaws. The cases for Sir Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere are examined in depth, being representative of many of the other cases for alternate identity. The opinions of notables such as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Henry James, and many others are spotlighted and, in many cases, skewered as being ridiculous and unfounded. And yet, at the same time, the case for the Bard seems ever stacked against him due to a lack of supporting evidence and the ever-widening gap between what we know about him and what is revealed in his works. As a result, the process of how the problem has evolved over the course of time is as interesting as the problem itself.
This book is easily accessible for both the casual reader as well as the scholarly-minded, so the curious at every level will have little difficulty taking it all in and walking away with more than they might have expected.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Robert
- 06-04-12
Great work
I have to admit, I came into this book having read several other pieces that argue both for and against William Shakespeare as the author of his works.
This one was by far the best researched and best presented of them all.
It was interesting, compelling and kept me listening.
If you've read other books in the past or have never been presented with the concept of Shakespeare as the author of his works, you'll be engaged.
Check it out!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-06-21
Great content, awful narrator
Wanda McCadden needs to take it down several notches. The story is interesting enough without such over-doing.
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- JennieLynn
- 05-15-12
Interesting take on the authorship debate
I had always been interested in the authorship controversy, but I have never done much research on the topic. When I came across this book during a promotion, I decided to check it out. The author brings up all sides of the debate as well as evidence to support and refute each one. As the description states "in the end, there can be no doubt about who wrote the plays."
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Overall
- Martin
- 09-21-10
A very enjoyable work
A fascinating study of the disputes regarding Shakespeare's authorship of his plays. Very enjoyable, as well as being learned and informative. The reader is also quite good.
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