MADreads

Who was Shakespeare?

May 11th, 2006 Ann M.

While graduate student Joe Roper is sorting through a donated collection of Elizabethan documents, he finds a letter stating that Shakespeare never wrote any plays.  The letter is signed by William Shakespeare himself.  Intrigued, Joe teams up with a fellow grad student to begin a DaVinci Code like search to validate the letter and find the true author.  Chasing Shakespeares by Sarah Smith is part literary thriller, part modern day mystery and part graduate seminar in 16^th century literature.  Like its non-fiction counterpart, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt, Smith’s novel tries to determine how a young man from a small provincial town, without wealth, powerful family connections or a university education, could move to London and in a relatively short time, become the greatest playwright of all time.

Entry Filed under: Recreational Fiction