Author: Elizabeth Winkler

In “Shakespeare Was a Woman,” journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo. 

Whisking readers from London to Stratford-upon-Avon to Washington, DC, she pulls back the curtain to show how the forces of nationalism and empire, religion and mythmaking, gender and class have shaped our admiration for Shakespeare across the centuries as she explores who may perhaps have been hiding behind his name. 

Hovering over the mystery are Shakespeare’s plays themselves, with their love for mistaken identities, disguises, and things never quite being what they seem.