James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University
He is the author of: Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 Oberammergau: The Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play Shakespeare and the Jews Rival Playwrights: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare |
RECENT WORK
SHAKESPEARE: THE KING'S MAN
First aired in April 2012 as a BBC4 3-hour documentary: “The King and the Playwright: A Jacobean History." Directed by Steven Clarke. Short-listed for the Grierson Award for the Best Historical Documentary, 2012. Now available as a DVD for North American viewers. 
American edition: Simon and Schuster, 2010
A New York Times "Notable Book" for 2010 BOOK DESCRIPTION For two hundred years after Shakespeare's death, no one thought to argue that somebody else had written his plays. Since then dozens of rival candidates - including Sir Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford - have been proposed as their true author. "Contested Will" unravels the mystery of when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote the plays (among them such leading writers and artists as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, and Sir Derek Jacobi). If "Contested Will" does not end the authorship question once and for all, it will nonetheless irrevocably change the nature of the debate by confronting what's really contested: are the plays and poems of Shakespeare autobiographical, and if so, do they hold the key to the question of who wrote them? 
UK edition: Faber & Faber
WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE (Best non-fiction book published in Britain) Also awarded: THE THEATRE BOOK PRIZE |
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