The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare

by Brenda James, William D. Rubinstein

The question of who wrote Shakespeare’s plays has been the subject of furious debate among scholars for over 150 years. Everything known about the facts of William Shakespeare’s life seems incompatible with the extraordinary genius of his writing. How could a man who left school at the age of 13, and apparently never travelled abroad have authored the incomparable Sonnets or so intricately described Renaissance Venice? Shakespeare ‘candidates’ abound, among them Sir Francis Bacon, The Earl of Oxford, even Queen Elizabeth I herself, but none have stood up to serious scrutiny. Until now…. This remarkable, intriguing, and provocative book offers a completely plausible new candidate; Sir Henry Neville.

Genres: Shakespeare, Biography, History, Nonfiction, Literature, Theatre

404 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2006

Reviews

[Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Within the Shakespeare Authorship Debate (SAD) if you've read one book then you've read them all regardless of the supposed identity of the hidden author. Indeed with no effort at all you can merely substitute Bacon with Oxford with Marlowe and in this instance with Sir Henry Neville.
If you think I'm being facetious the authors wholeheartedly agree with me.
Look through the bibliography: Diana Price (Oxfordian), Charlton Ogburn (Oxfordian), Cockburn (Baconian), Michell (Oxfordian). Despite all this of course Brenda James and William Rubinstein are adamant that none bears merit quite like Neville despite their reliance on hidden codes, double meanings, and travel itineraries not to mention the exact same sources!
Much of the book in fact is a very real struggle of the authors to separate themselves from their sources and still advance Neville's case as the true author using those same sources. Their only attempt at any documentary evidence for themselves is an attempt to connect a specific copy of Leycester's Commonwealth to Neville based upon underlines, and marginalia and then to connect Leycester's Commonwealth to the poisoning scene of Hamlet via the Wars of the Roses and the Nivelle family which is such a convoluted mess of book titles, "maybes," and "possible" secret keepers that makes this section not only pointless towards their initial thesis but unreadable. This above the fact that they didn't do a very good job in attributing even the ownership of this book to Neville in the first place.
This is a book that would have made a forgettable blog, or a kindle-self-published work. Being published by Harper-Collins no less is a greater mystery to me than anything Brenda James and William Rubinstein have raised within.

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The question of true identity of person(s) who stand behind Shakespeare's masterpieces is a very interesting and intriguing one - even thought the mainstream opinion still holds opinion that no other that "master from Stratford" wrote them, we now surprisingly little about his life except that he left school at the age of 13, have never travelled abroad and could hardly be expected to know court rituals, astrology and science of the time not to mention detailed description of Italian cities. At his death bed William Shakespeare writes what pieces of furniture to be divided between his family and not one word about literary work.

There are numerous candidates of "real Shakespeare" - mostly aristocrats and people connected to the court, even two women (Emilia Lainer and Mary Sidney) who could have hide behind pseudonym but the most interesting theory is about "group work" where various authors used Shakespeare as front man for their political agenda camouflaged as theatre plays. Now we have newest discovery, forgotten aristocrat Sir Henry Neville who had a gift to see but not be seen in a crowd - Neville was gifted writer but hid behind his diplomatic status and is life actually mirrors Shakespeare's plays closely - for example when plays are happy,Neville enjoyed his court position, when plays were dark Neville was imprisoned in Tower for his role in a political coup. There are many interesting little twists and turns in this book written by Brenda James and William Rubinstein (strangely enough, australian research team came to same conclusion independently) and though it makes sense, I could not shake a feeling that it's all a nitpicking - way too much "if", "possibly" and "must have" to actually convince me. It is true that James and Rubinstein believe passionately in their theory but somehow it just sounds far stretched in lack of concrete proof except guesswork. Yes, Neville travelled to Italy, knew the places Shakespeare describes in detail, spoke fluently foreign languages and had privileged education fitting for someone of his background, however after I finished the book the main impression was that I could be pointed as true Shakespeare if someone puts his mind to it.

Sir Henry Neville (curiously enough, nicknamed "Falstaff") is just one of the many aristocrats supposedly educated enough to have been "real Shakespeare". Its interesting mystery and I am still curious about it but not totally convinced - if you ask me, both versions sound possible. I see no problem with Stratford man showing genuine talent in spite of his background or perhaps someone other hiding behind theatre owner and financing public displays of political propaganda carefully camouflaged. Let's hope some documents will eventually be find and real Shakespeare finally get recognition.

[Isham Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to grant one thing to the anti-Stratfordians, that the best of them tend to lay out their arguments with calm and patience, in contrast to the often contemptuously dismissive flaming of Shakespeare-as-sole-author proponents. Nevertheless, both sides suffer from their uncompromising and unyielding, black-and-white, mirror-image, boxed-in positions. The Oxfordians have to twist themselves into knots in order to explain how the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, could have penned The Tempest, which was almost indisputably written in 1610-11, if he had died in 1604. Brenda James solves this particular difficulty by proposing a different candidate altogether, Sir Henry Neville (1564-1615), and amasses quite a bit of circumstantial evidence for her thesis, which however began to pall on me by the end, with her penchant for repetition. But my impatience with all of the anti-Stratfordians stems from a deeper issue: a failure of the imagination, shared by the Stratfordians themselves, a failure to understand that 1) the authorship question may never be solved, and 2) it doesn't have to be since the potential solution is staring us right in the face. If, that is, it cannot be explained how Shakespeare singlehandedly could have amassed so much esoteric knowledge that made it into his plays which he could not possibly have been privy to with his provincial background, it may be because his plays were a collaborative effort among some or all these historical figures (Neville, Bacon, Jonson, Marlowe, etc.), who apparently knew each other, with Shakespeare the actual author and the others contributors to his project in the form of ideas, books, libraries, and the like.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

The evidence presented in this book that the playwright was not, in fact, William Shakespeare, is truly quite compelling. But the book is very poorly edited -- so poorly that I couldn't slog my way through the thing. I hate unnecessary repetition, and this thing is full of it. Diehard Shakespeare enthusiasts might have enough motivation to get through it.

[Feistymonkey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book failed to convince me that William Shakespeare didn't author the plays, largely because arguing that someone wasn't educated enough to have produced a work, in the same breath as noting that no one really knows anything about the education of the individual in question, is weak at best. Also, the writing consisted of over 300 pages of homage to passive voice via the use of hedge words (probably meant to keep the perspective that the author was engaging in conjecture-but the reality is that all history is conjecture and much of it is probably wrong, so there's no reason not to be more assertive just because one's conjecture is newer than most).
But I really liked this book anyway. First, even as there wasn't enough evidence to convince me that Shakespeare was a fraud, there was plenty of evidence to support the claim that if Shakespeare didn't author the plays, Neville did. Second, it was an entertaining look at the intellectual and cultural context for the plays. Also, the afterword in which the author kvetches at length about the perils of academia is dead on and everyone involved should be ashamed. This is the attitude that strangles innovation.
I don't recommend this book unless you are familiar with Elizabethan England and the plays of Shakespeare, but if you are it's an interesting read.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

not a very compelling account of the life and alleged works of a man upon whom the author seeks to bestow the greatest artistic literary accomplishments of the Western world in the last 1000 years.... i lost interest around half way through. Neville's life story, and in fact Neville himself, is just not that interesting, as presented in this book. sorry.

a much better read is Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare By Another Name", which draws vivid and fascinating parallels between the works of Shakespeare and the life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Anderson succeeds at the very least in drawing a portrait of a singular and brilliant character, one that could more plausibly be imagined as the creative genius behind the great works in question.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Am I missing something? Maybe you have to be a true anti-Stratfordian to appreciate this. Based on what I had heard, I expected to be blown away by the authors' evidence that the true "Shakespeare" was Henry Neville. After reading the book, I felt like their strongest argument was that there are so few arguments in favor of any other author. So we are back where we started. I'm no more impressed with their documentary evidence than I am with the pro-Stratfordian evidence the authors deride and dismiss.

[Myles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pretty much convinced by this book that Shakespeare could not have written the plays attributed to him, and persuaded by the arguments for who likely wrote them. I really enjoyed this book. And it didn't diminish my respect for the plays or poetry of whomever wrote them.

[Shakespearesmonkey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting linguistic parallels but no evidence at all that Sir Henry Nevile rote Shakespeare

[Jaime · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing really wrong with it, but I'm still a Shakespeare purist.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still undecided who wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. Most books about the "authorship question / debate / argument / feud" states their hero's claim in the second chapter and then carries on the biography as though the author has proven "the truth" to the satisfaction of everyone except *ignorant* die-hards in the other camps. This book is one of them. [The first chapter is, of course, the one positing why William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not write the plays and poems.]

Sir Henry Neville's qualifications are as good as Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford's. Noble birth. Well educated (Oxford University). Well travelled. His father was a courtier and diplomat. So was he. His grandfather Edward was a friend of Henry VIII until Henry VIII arrested and beheaded him for involvement in a Catholic plot to overthrow him. [The king was paranoid about such plots, and the Nevilles and the Tudors did share Plantagenet blood. Edward and the king so shared height, build and facial features that in their younger days of pastime, Edward would sometimes double for him as a joke on the Court. And further back was the Neville Warwick the Kingmaker.] So Henry knew his family history and could glean from it. Henry also lived long enough to have written Macbeth, King Lear, and the later plays. Oxford died in 1604. Henry Neville was involved in the Earl of Essex's conspiracy and was in the Tower with the Earl of Southampton, one reputed subject of "Shake-speare's Sonnets".

Was he Shakespeare? I don't know, but I think Henry Neville does deserve study by historians of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean politics and of literary patrons if not of playwrights and poets. He was connected with the Bacon brothers, the Cecils, the Essex party, almost all the men who mattered. He was an MP most of his life; on diplomatic missions; held a number of offices though not the top ones. He was an insider, and perhaps more of an influence behind the scenes than has been obvious to historians.

[Mari Ho · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was curious when I was around high school age of the idea that the Stradford man was not the true author. I remember watching a TV doc that showed his house and his belongings from his will. Well, I asked myself where his library and office. This book presents a convincing case of the anti-Stratfordian view but doesn't prove Henry Neville as the true author. I believed it could be anyone in court or anyone who knew the court and politics. Brenda James did a lot of good research, which makes it a good history read, but it needs a lot of editing . With the age of AI maybe we can run some common words usage from the candidates and compare them to Shakespeare's work.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating piece of work, trying to throw the jigsaw that is 'William Shakepeare' up into the air and see how the pieces can be reassembled. I found the suggestion of a new contender for the playwright who wrote 'Shakespeare's plays' wholly convincing. In addition it's a well written book.

[Heidi Doreika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well written but book basically complete after the first quarter of the book.

[Amy Roebuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reminded of this when one of my daughters asked, "Do you have an opinion about who wrote Shakespeare's plays?" Why, yes, I do, and I was convinced by Brenda James and William D. Rubinstein, in this book.

"As this book rightly suggests, if the plays had not been attributed to Shakespeare in 1623, he would be the last person you would imagine able to write such matter." So says the estimable Mark Rylance, speaking as an actor (one of my favourites) who has long appreciated Shakespeare and who wrote the foreward to this book. James and Rubinstein make their case, through painstaking research and detailed analyses and comparisons of the texts, and the life of Sir Henry Neville.

Enjoy!

[Arminelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read on average three books a year about Shakespeare; his works and his life, and I've never been hugely enthralled with the 'who really wrote Shakespeare's works?' mystery ... until this book. Regardless of whether or not I was moved to believe or dismiss the finding presented in this well researched and accessible book, I was captivated by the ideas and possibilities it presented. This was a truly engaging piece of literature with just the right balance between academic findings and engaging material. Definitely worth a read for anyone interested in the works of Shakespeare, the origins of literature or history in general. Two thumbs up!

[Richard Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now I believe we’ve found the real Shakespeare. I entered this book a traditionalist and emerged with an entirely different point of view. This book is extensively researched and all the pieces fit in place. What emerges is a fascinating story of a tragic genius who was forced by his station in life and the politics of the time to conceal his role as the greatest English author. He did such a brilliant job of it, that the mystery continues to this day.

[Russell Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book is well written and contains a good deal of pertinent history the argument for her author, Henry Neville, is practically non-existent. I'm not sure if she believes this or just wanted to write a book.

[Tori · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting argument for Henry Neville as the real author of "Shakespeare's" works. The authors did a good job of convincing me that "Shakespeare of Stratford" was not the real author, but I'm not wholly convinced about Neville. Definitely intrigued.

[Nschuth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little dry. Mostly for the academic.