Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature

by Stuart Kells

A tantalizing true story of one of literature’s most enduring enigmas is at the heart of this “lively, even sprightly book” (Michael Dirda,  The Washington Post )―the quest to find the personal library of the world’s greatest writer. 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 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. The search for Shakespeare’s library is much more than a treasure hunt. Knowing what the Bard read informs our reading of his work, and it offers insight into the mythos of Shakespeare and the debate around authorship. The library’s fate has profound implications for literature, for national and cultural identity, and for the global Shakespeare industry. It bears on fundamental principles of art, identity, history, meaning and truth. Unfolding the search like the mystery story that it is, acclaimed author Stuart Kells follows the trail of the hunters, taking us through different conceptions of the library and of the man himself. Entertaining and enlightening, Shakespeare’s Library is a captivating exploration of one of literature’s most enduring enigmas. "An engaging and provocative contribution to the unending world of Shakespeariana . . . An enchanting work that bibliophiles will savor and Shakespeare fans adore." ― Kirkus Reviews

Genres: Shakespeare, History, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Literature, Biography, Literary Criticism

Audio CD

First published August 20, 2018

About the author

Stuart Kells is a Melbourne-based author. His history of Penguin Books, Penguin and the Lane Brothers, won the Ashurst Australian Business Literature Prize.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Once inside the field, it is easy to become obsessed. Shakespeare scholars speak ruefully of addiction (another word coined by Shakespeare) and wasted years. Waylaid by the Shakespeare Siren, they dare not go forward but cannot go back. The field is full of men and women with damaged reputations and impaired sanity. Among Shakespearean researchers (very, very broadly defined), more than one perished in prison. There are serious whispers of a Shakespeare Curse.”



When I was at university, there was a lot of speculation about the true identity of William Shakespeare. Everyone who cared about his body of work had their own working theories. I was not surprised to find that Stuart Kells found the same splintering of belief when he attended Monash University for his doctorate. There were even more theories of who Shakespeare really was by the time he was attending school. There are the Stratfordians, who believe that Shakespeare was really Shakespeare. There are the anti-Stratfordians: Baconians, Marlovians, Derbyites, Oxfordians, Rutlanders, Nevillians, and Groupists.

To be fair, I’ve never given a lot of time to investigating the basis for most of these speculative, conspiracy theories for, really, if Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, then a conspiracy was certainly necessary. So I maneuvered the English department as a stout Stratfordian. It wasn’t very trendy to believe that Shakespeare was really Shakespeare, but to convince me that the grammar school boy from Stratford was merely a front for a member of the aristocracy, someone was going to have to move heaven and earth with documentary proof that is simply irrefutable.

Their criticism sometimes reeks of elitism. How dare a commoner with no real education become the most famous English wordsmith of all time? It is simply impossible, right?

”The idea that ‘William Shakespeare’ was the pen name of an Elizabethan aristocrat is ultimately less fanciful than ascribing to an alleged grammar school dropout the most exquisite dramatic literature in the English language.” ---Diana Price

Price is a Nevillian; in other words, she believes that Sir Henry Neville was the real Shakespeare. The information about Shakespeare’s early school days is sketchy because the records of the school burned. So how she knows he was a dropout is unsupportable, but it does reveal her lack of objectivity regarding Shakespeare, although there is a part of me that does think that it is quite possible that Shakespeare was too cool for school.

There is this concept that Shakespeare, the genius version, created his plays out of whole cloth. We do know that his plays were built upon the backs of existing plays. ”He acquired, adapted, appropriated, converted, revised, synthesised, improved, borrowed, copied, co-opted, re-used, re-worked, re-packaged, stole. Let us again remember he worked at a time when authorship, plagiarism and copyright were differently conceived.” To further confound the idea of Shakespeare as genius, it is very possible, of course, that other writers honed his plays into the masterpieces we enjoy today.

The thing is, when the plays were collected in the Folio editions, there was no outcry of stealing most foul by his fellow writers.

I do admit it is odd how a man so famous, who actually became reasonably wealthy as a playwright in London, could have left so little of himself behind for researchers to sift through. We have his plays and sonnets ard very little else. Where are his letters? Where are his research books? When I think about the enormous piles of correspondence I’ve written in my lifetime of letters, emails, business transactions, and book reviews, it would be enormously difficult to eliminate every trace of me from the universe. Although I do have a few enemies who would probably love to know how to do that. It is almost as if William Shakespeare has been systematically, deliberately removed from the public forum.

To add to the problem, as Stuart Kells, discovers as he searches for Shakespeare’s library is that there have been generations of conmen, forgers, collectors, researchers, writers, and outright thieves who have all had their grubby fingers on what little is known about the man or the books he may have owned.

As Kells reveals what he finds, I gain this more practical view of Shakespeare. He may have been brilliant, the upstart crow, but he was much more conscious of writing plays designed with a frothy mix of highbrow and lowbrow to appeal to the educated as well as the grubby commoners in the theatre pit. I do believe that his fellow writers didn’t think that much of him. He wasn’t, after all, trying to write elevated plays that would be applauded and admired by scriveners and men of higher education and be simultaneously booed off the boards by the hoards below.

Kells does include several wonderful book porn passages. ”(Earl Spencer’s) library at Althrop, Northamptonshire, contained tens of thousands of volumes; some estimates put the number above a hundred thousand. The library occupied five large rooms. The height of bookish discernment, it was rich in desirable books, many of them handsomely bound in leather featuring Spencer’s coat of arms. The library...was probably the best private library in the western world.”

It is impossible to search for Shakespeare’s library without searching for the man as well. Kells takes on quite a task, not only searching for new clues but also unraveling the rather sketchy research of those who have explored and sometimes altered the story to fit their own theories.

This book worked for me on so many levels. The researcher in me was stimulated, the collector in me was titillated, the reader in me was captivated, and the worshipper of Shakespeare in me was presented with a more realistic view of the practicalities of a man who left us with greatness while trying to merely entertain the masses.

”He is a Brontosaur: nine bones and six-hundred barrels of plaster of paris.” ---Mark Twain

I want to thank Counterpoint Press and Alisha Gorder for sending a copy in exchange for an honest review.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mai ordonată decît The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders (2017), cartea de față încearcă să răspundă la o întrebare dificilă: unde a dispărut biblioteca lui Shakespeare? Întrebarea presupune, desigur, că Shakespeare a avut o bibliotecă și că unele dintre exemplarele ei s-au păstrat pînă astăzi și ar putea fi identificate.

Problema e că în Last Will, dramaturgul nu menționează nici un volum, nici un manuscris și nu face nici o aluzie la activitatea lui de scriitor. Menționează trei actori din Londra (John Heminge, Henry Condell și Richard Burbage), dar pasajul e dubios. Unii presupun că e apocrif. Hotărîrile sună ciudat și tocmai ciudățenia testamentului i-a împins pe mulți pasionați să se întrebe dacă Shakespeare (din Stratford-upon-Avon) chiar a compus textele atribuite lui Shakespeare (actorul din Londra). Imposibil de stabilit.

Firește, pentru a-și scrie opera, Shakespeare a avut nevoie de cărți. Nimeni nu compune o tragedie (Hamlet, să zicem) pornind de la nimic. Nu e un secret, de cele mai multe ori, autorul a rescris (a plagiat) piesele altora. Toți autorii din epoca elizabetană procedau la fel. Nu e un păcat. De exemplu, pentru a redacta Totul e bine, cînd se sfîrșește cu bine, Bardul s-a inspirat din Decameronul lui Boccaccio. Iar pentru Regele Lear a folosit, printre altele, piesa anonimă King Leir.

Dar dacă Shakespeare a folosit cărți, de ce n-a rămas nici o urmă materială a lor? Întrebarea i-a împins pe mulți bibliofili să cerceteze bibliotecile publice în căutarea unui semn că o carte anume a stat pe masa lui Shakespeare. Stuart Kells vorbește de sigilii, de semnături pe carte, de legături în piele de vițel sau de capră. Unii contemporani și-au marcat exemplarele, de ce n-ar fi făcut-o și dramaturgul? Dar căutarea nu a avut succes. Biblioteca lui Shakespeare a dispărut. Pur și simplu.

Relatarea acestei căutări seculare, îi oferă lui Stuart Kells prilejul unor digresiuni amuzante despre bibliomani (Thomas Frognall Dibdin), despre țicniți (reverendul James Wilmot), despre falsificatori. Pe la 1796, numitul William Henry Ireland a compus un Catalog al bibliotecii lui Shakespeare. Și tot cam atunci a dat tiparului o scrisoare a reginei Elizabeth the First către Shakespeare. Savanții (Edmond Malone a fost cel dintîi) s-au prins destul de repede că aceste documente erau niște falsuri realizate de un ageamiu.

Din păcate, și din acest volum, lipsesc notele de subsol (se găsesc pe site-ul autorului) și bibliografia folosită. O astfel de carte, chiar dacă e mai degrabă anecdotică, avea nevoie de note și surse. Lipsa lor arată a treabă de amator.

P. S. Sigur, biblioteca lui Shakespeare poate însemna și „biblioteca din cap”. Aceea a fost investigată de mult, chiar dacă Stuart Kells nu suflă un cuvînt despre ea. În opera lui, dramaturgul citează (trimite la) cel puțin două sute de cărți. Cu siguranță, a citit și a studiat mai multe...

[Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first important thing to know about Shakespeare's library is that he almost definitely had one. The second important thing to know about Shakespeare's library is that no one who's gone looking has ever successfully identified a single solitary scrap from it.

That's sort of what you get with Shakespeare. You can read as much or as little as you want into the plays and poems, but when it comes to the man himself there's just not much to go on. Anyone who decides to write biographically about Shakespeare knows they're setting themself up to fail, and anyone who reads that sort of thing better be prepared for a lot of speculation and little else.

As it happens I'm not bothered by speculation—I think Will is all the more fascinating for his ultimate unknowability—but I do think a book promising to unlock "the Greatest Mystery in Literature" should probably take at least a good-natured stab at the topic in question.

Sadly our author is of a different mind. Kells is a rare books dealer based in Australia, and it's the art and science of bibliophilia—book-love, particularly as manifested by collectors—that really get him going. Sure he starts with Shakespeare and makes a noble effort to tie things back to him when possible, but for much of Shakespeare's Library the Bard is really just a sort of coat rack on which to hang an assortment of anecdotes and musings on the history of book-hunting, notable literary forgeries, and the legendary personal libraries of the most prolific collectors. It's a freewheeling sort of thing, and since virtually every English-speaking collector from the 17th century on will have interacted with a Shakespeare volume at some point, Kells is at liberty to discuss pretty much whatever comes into his mind. This stuff's not not interesting, but it's also not really what I signed up for, and Kells tends to go on and on in the way people with an all-consuming hobby often do.

Even in the parts that do concern Shakespeare, the approach is more than a little bizarre. Kells is apparently buddies with someone who's a big advocate for the Nevillian theory of Shakespearean authorship (i.e. a Shakespeare authorship truther who believes the plays were actually written by a contemporary named Sir Henry Neville), and Kells spends a significant number of pages setting up and then debunking his friend's pet theory. This in itself is kind of a weird emphasis—there have been over a hundred different candidates proposed for the "real" Shakespeare, and Neville's not even one of the big contenders—but it gets even weirder when, well into the book's second half, Kells comes out of nowhere with an authorship theory of his own!

[Spoilers ahead, I guess.]

Kells' hypothesis isn't so much a theory of authorship (who wrote the plays) as it is a theory about authorship (how were they written). Essentially Kells sees Shakespeare as a sort of literary middleman: someone who would scope out promising source material (everyone knows the Bard borrowed all his plots) and use it to whip up new adaptations for his company, which a later editor or editors (Kells favors Will's friend Ben Jonson) would then polish for publication in book form. He suggests that the earliest known copies of Shakespeare's works—widely referred to as "bad quartos" because they're usually pretty rough and incomplete—are actually the closest we have to Shakespeare's own writings, and that the much tidier later editions were cleaned up and fleshed out by someone else.

From one angle this isn't a new suggestion at all. Renaissance publishing standards were famously lax, and it's been accepted for a long time that Shakespeare was a skilled tradesman who plundered other texts at will, regularly partnered with fellow authors, and whose manuscripts may have undergone any number of changes between his pen and the printing press. But in another sense it's a big leap: Kells is basically suggesting that much of Shakespeare's best poetry (the most famous version of Hamlet's "To be or not to be speech," for example) may not be his at all, and that the aspects of his work we cherish as the most truly "Shakespearean" probably owe at least as much to a copy editor's tweaks as to his own imaginative talents.

I confess I'm not really sold. Kells still succumbs to the nasty undercurrent of elitism which underlies all Shakespeare authorship theories (no one like that could ever write something like this), but his anonymous editor figure doesn't even provide us a compelling alternative. He tries hard to paint Will as a sort of Elizabethan hack writer, not overly concerned with the quality of the finished product, but this only makes the brilliance of his verse and the depth of his insight all the more difficult to comprehend. Even if Shakespeare the playwright wasn't a genius, his reviser would have to be—and at that point we might as well go back to trying to find the "real" author like all the other truthers. Kells tries to impress his readers with a Big New Theory, but all he really manages to do is repackage what we already know in a much more confounding way.

Shakespeare's Library is a mess, and not something I'd recommend to anyone in particular. But it's an interesting and generally informative kind of mess, and one which kept me reading, and so I have to give Kells credit for that at least.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summary: While parts of this book were interesting, it felt unfocused and full of filler.

This book is ostensibly about the search for Shakespeare's library. His physical library could inform us about how he worked. Knowledge of his library's contents would show us what sources might have inspired him. I was fascinated by this idea and hoped for some serious scholarship, preferably quantitative in nature, identifying sources Shakespeare probably referenced. The book was also sold as a bit of an adventure story in the intro, so I was prepared for some exciting anecdotes about the physical search for Shakespeare's books as well. Unfortunately, the author primarily used Shakespeare's library as a framework to lay out his own theory about Shakespeare's identity.

The author's focus on his own theory didn't even become clear until the end of the book. For most of the book, I was confused about why we were spending so much time on other theories about Shakespeare's identity. The evidence for any given Shakespeare candidate (as presented by the author) seemed to exist on a spectrum between tenuous and laughable. The book also contained a lot of filler. We learned entire histories of people with weak connections to the Shakespeare story (they once collected a first folio! they helped bring Shakespeare plays to Australia!). We focused more than I would have liked on the people the author has personally interacted with. For example, one of the author's friends believes Sir Henry Neville was Shakespeare. This seems to be the only reason the author spends so much time on the Nevillian theory instead of, say, the Baconian one.

I wanted to like this book. The premise sounded fascinating. Books about books are one of my favorite subgenres and this book certainly included fascinating stories at times. Overall though, I found the contents of the book to be a real grab bag. I regretted spending time learning about the absurd 'evidence' supporting the Nevillian theory. Had the author been upfront about this book being his foray into theories about Shakespeare's identity and organized this book to focus on his evidence for that theory, I think this could have been an extremely enjoyable book. As is, it's kind of a mess.This review was originally posted on Doing Dewey

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ostensibly an account of the search for the books of Shakespeare's library (the holy grail of book collectors), this entertaining tale incorporates a very interesting account of the history of book collecting itself (starting with the story of Dibdin, Roxburghe and Spencer in the early 19th century) and goes on to touch on subjects of various degrees of relation to its ostensible subject ranging from the Ireland forgeries and their exposure by Malone in the late 1700s to the renowned book collector and swinish thief Thomas Wise. At times it's a little hard to stay with the author and harder still to see where he's going, but ultimately there's lots here for those interested in Shakespeare, his library, bibliomania in general or just a good yarn.

[Moira · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a convoluted mess - there was a lot of interesting stuff, but it wasn't tied together well. The claim that the book is about Shakespeare's Library isn't really accurate, and the search for the library becomes a smaller and smaller part of the book as it goes on. The author spent a weird amount of time arguing that Australia is a hotbed for Shakespearean study. I'm not really sure WHY he felt the need to make that point (and I'm not convinced he made it well). The book really goes off the rails when Kells starts attacking Nevillian authorship theories specifically for A FULL TWO CHAPTERS. WHY?? The whole thing veers into the tone of a personal vendetta. In the process of 'debunking' alternative Shakespeare authorship schools, Kells attacks the authors who established the cases for other schools of thought instead of countering their arguments with evidence of his own, which really hurt his credibility as a 'scholarly' author. This book falls into the same pitfalls that he accuses the other authors of - namely using very certain language when presenting theories, generally lacking evidence in favor of his theories, and furthering animosity between different schools of Shakespearean scholarship with a very combative tone. In my opinion, dude needs to chill. And work on organization.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kells' writing is eloquent and inviting and this non-fiction mystery is a fascinating way in to the stories at the edges of a writer who exists only in edges.

[Kaethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

All Theories of the Hyphen are as lame as these ones, and it is best to say as little about them as possible.

***

Kells makes a skeptical, well-researched, convincing, fascinating, amusing case for who Shakespeare really was, why we have never found his manuscripts, and many other adjacent issues. He has utterly convinced me, but then, I was more than halfway there to start with: I figure Shakespeare was a hack. Kells is rather more nuanced in his thesis than I am in mine.

Anyway, clever and funny. Now I am eager to read more by him. If only the stupid Bluefire would download the text of the library book for me.

Library copy

[Mike Hanford · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could have been an interesting intellectual mystery. Unfortunately, an entirely self-indulgent work by an author who needs to demonstrate how knowledgeable he is. The text wanders all over the Shakespeariana landscape as almost a freeform stream of consciousness. The work contains more names than a Russian novel; most of whom have nothing to do with books in—or not - the Bard’s library. The narrative style is tough sledding. Overall, a disappointing effort.

[Robert Teeter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm interested in Shakespeare; I'm interested in books and libraries. So, when I saw this at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul, Minn., I snapped it up.

I knew about "the greatest mystery in literature." Shakespeare, the greatest writer in the English language, left no books and no manuscripts of his own works. His will doesn't mention a library, and nobody has been able to find one. Anti-Stratfordians bring out this fact as part of their argument that William Shakespeare of Stratford did not write the plays and poems attributed to him.

(For the record, I am a Stratfordian. I believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford was also William Shakespeare of London, who wrote, acted, and produced the plays and poems that bear his name. If you'd like to read more on the subject, I recommend ShakespeareAuthorship.com and "Shakespeare in Fact" by Irvin Matus.)

Stuart Kells, an Australian rare book dealer, tells the story of various searchers for Shakespeare's library. He also recounts many book world scandals that took place 200-300 years after Shakespeare's time. For example, he spends 14 pages on George Barrington, who started as a actor in Britain in the 1780s, became a pickpocket, and was transported to Australia, where he had some books attributed to him that he probably didn't write. (Many of Kells' anecdotes have an antipodean connection.) What's the connection with Shakespeare? Shakespeare, too, may have committed or been associated with roguery and had some books attributed to him that he probably didn't write.

Of necessity, Kells has to get into the so-called "authorship question." By page 11, he's deep in the weeds of various theories of why Shakespeare's name is sometimes spelled with a hyphen in the middle. Starting on page 10, he mentions one of the lesser-known candidates for authorship of Shakespeare's works, Sir Henry Neville. (Kells knows people who believe in this theory.) One of the Nevillians' arguments is that Shakespeare's works have so many Nevilles in them, but it's hard to see how one could write about the Wars of the Roses without mentioning Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (a.k.a. "the kingmaker"). Kells keeps coming back to this theory, before demolishing it in a chapter that begins on page 165.

The book has short lists of references for each chapter, but no footnotes linking specific facts to specific sources. There were a number of loose ends that I would have liked to follow up:

* "Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, is often referred to as Shakespeare's patron. Southampton's papers, though, confirm he was not." (page 199) Really? I've never heard this before. How do Southampton's papers prove this? Remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

* Two of Shakespeare's actor friends, John Hemmings and Henry Condell, are credited with publishing the First Folio, a collection of Shakespeare's works issued in 1623, seven years after his death. Kells doesn't believe Hemmings and Condell were the true editors; he thinks the actors were fronting for more educated men. This seems like a variation on the snobbish anti-Stratfordian theory that an actor couldn't have written Shakespeare's plays. (Note: If you want to read or see a great play on the First Folio, seek out "Book of Will" by Lauren Gunderson.)

* Kells' fellow bookdealer Robert Littlewood says he has "a Shakespeare letter at home." (No letters written by Shakespeare are known. There's his will and some other legal documents.) "Though the Littlewood Letter contains very little text, it is arguably the most important Shakespeare letter in the world today -- provided, of course, it is genuine." (page 296) He brings this up on the very last page of the text and never says what the letter is!

Where does Kells come down on the authorship? He believes Shakespeare wrote the plays, but with a twist. He thinks that Shakespeare was a kind of middleman, picking up plots from other books and polishing the language. Later somebody else edited them. It is true that there were revisions of the plays during Shakespeare's lifetime, but most authors I've read believe Shakespeare himself made those revisions as the plays were performed and he learned what worked and what didn't.

What about the mystery of Shakespeare's library? It still hasn't been found. But if Shakespeare was a middleman, rather than the supernatural genius we want to believe, maybe he didn't need such a big library.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does not deliver as promised. LOL, seriously though, it gives a great overview of the work and scholarship so far surrounding this fascinating topic. I hope someday more appears, but I genuinely think a lot was lost in fire. :(

[Marc Pressley · Rating 4 out of 5]

What inspired Shakespeare? What books did he own, and how did they contribute to his legacy? Stuart Kells explores the history of the ongoing (and often frustrating) search for Shakespeare's library. Since the Bard's death, there have been many attempts to piece together the collection of works that Shakespeare used as sources for his plays. The book takes a long look at the history of this search, the personalities involved, and the sometimes shady world of book collecting and forgery.

What emerges is a plausible picture of Shakespeare as a "bookman," less of a natural genius author, but much more than the "imposter from Stratford" suggested by proponents of others. The body of work, from the early quartos to the First Folio to the modern editions of today, can be viewed as a collaboration between Shakespeare, his sources, and every editor of the last four centuries.

Along the way, the reader is treated to tales of researchers such as Edmund Malone, outright frauds such as William-Henry Ireland, and eclectic bibliophiles such as Thomas Frognall Dibdin. Kells tackles all this material with accessible and often witty style. Well worth the read for Shakespeare enthusiasts.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kells offers an enlightening and detailed history of the search for books, manuscripts, and documents related to William Shakespeare, including some cases of Shakespeare bibliomaniacs who forged Shakespeare materials when there was nothing to be found. The paucity of direct Shakespeare sources or any examples of books he might have owned has helped fuel the authorship question, which Kells explores at length. The story concludes with a reasoned look at Shakespeare's play writing method, which helps explain our lack of an authentic "Shakespeare's Library".

[Text Publishing]

‘A delight to read, a wonderful piece of erudition and dazzling detective work.’
David Astle, Evenings on ABC Radio Melbourne

[Karyn Bowman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting so much more but I never even got to his pet theory before I stopped. Just a bunch of suppositions and theories that don't pan out. Wasn't worth my time and I cannot recommend.

[Greg Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I read a book and ultimately regret that I stuck with it. In the case of Stuart Kells' Shakespeare's Library, the opposite happened. Early on, the book felt esoteric and disorganized, and I felt tempted to give up on it. But as I continued, I began to follow the thread of Kells' argument and to understand the depth of the mystery of Shakespearean authorship of the works attributed to him—and the part his missing personal library plays in the debate. I had no idea that the arguments over Shakespearean authorship were that intense. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found Kells' stance on the authorship question rather convincing (he supports Shakespearean authorship, but with a twist). The book meanders in a few places as Kells indulges his love for old books, but even those moments were pleasant.

[stephanie suh · Rating 5 out of 5]

We talk of him so much, yet we know of him so little: So much so that even George Orwell acknowledged, “Much rubbish about Shakespeare has been written” both by anti-Stradifordians as well as Stradifordians, and various sects of Shakespearenism as a result of a literary equivalent of Schism and the Reformation that is still progressing and evolving. Nonetheless, William Shakespeare is a heavyweight literary champion and a provocateur of authorship of his popular plays and pearly poems. He is certainly a man of reputation that gives him a status fusing highbrow elitism of a famed writer with a sensuous appeal of modern-day celebrity. In Shakespeare’s Library by Stuart Kells, such academic hullabaloos over Shakespeare’s authorship of his oeuvres are laid bare in the course of Kells’s quest of Shakespeare’s library. For the meaning of Shakespeare’s library and its whereabouts are bound up with the authorship question and hold the key to the cardinal principles of humanities and truth.

Much of the debate on the Authorship Question arises from Shakespeare’s non-aristocratic family background despite the erudition of his writing. The book serves as a scholar’s demurrer challenging the claim of Shakespeare’s non-authorship and flagrant plagiarism. Kells demurs at such preposterous allegations that negate the capacity of Shakespeare as a writer on the basis of ambiguity, uncertainty and prejudice. Kells takes a conservative liberal Socratic position of impartial advocate who defends the Bard on the grounds of (1) different social and historical criteria; and (2) the demonstrative evidence of the library at issue. With respect to Shakespeare’s alleged plagiarism, it must be regarded as a common de rigueur literary practice of his day that adopted the ideas from other source texts into an adaptor's own. Adaptation was a revered literary custom, stretching back to medieval times when a monk modeled other people’s writings on his own because they taught him different styles of writing he wanted to emulate. Shakespeare lived before the advents of copyright and intellectual property law and psychoanalysis with the emergence of the powerful middle-class intellectuals as a substitute of the ecclesiastical caste. Therefore, we must not make an anachronistic mistake of looking at the past with our modern criteria in making parallel with our own time period, measuring the trend of the days against the principles of our day.

Further to the social background, including a lack of formal education and humble family origin, classicism is used as a touchstone of validity of Shakespeare’s authorship as carefully nuanced in this book. Kells as a learned adventurer shines through in this book. Various debates on the Authorship Question are rendered accessible as he pivots deftly from keenly observed details about the source texts to the universally equitable ramifications of his search of Shakespeare’s library in favor of the ingenious Bard. Kells wears his learning lightly here and writes with a general reader in mind, discriminating none regardless of social and cultural differences to invite all in his search of Shakespeare’s library. Shakespeare’s library is his source texts ingeniously combined into his world of imagination populated with star-crossed lovers, fairies, witches, kings, princes and a parade of various walks of life, all manifested in his legacy of literature still revered by all around the world. It is an excellent case of dispersion of collective knowledge throughout society as an Elizabethan-styled meme, a unit of cultural imitation, which is a form of cultural revolution in which art always flourishes.

If Chaucer foundered the bedrock of English literature, Shakespeare popularized it through his appealing works all over the world, making his timeless quotations indexes of wisdom and wits percolated through our daily lives. Rather than as a serious grim man of letters, such as what Leo Tolstoy and his Agnlo-Saxon ilk liked to lionize, Shakespeare was a fashionable Elizabethan literary tradesman, a workaday dramatist who had a feat of converting existing works into new kinds of drama, packed full of scintillating wits and memorable lines easy to understand with themes blended with the highbrow concepts and the lowbrow dramas that were contemporaneously popular in Shakespeare’s time as it is in our time. In Shakespeare’s library, readers will meet the Man as he was thanks to Kells’s scholarship of Shakespearean literature and general erudition combined with his Socratic principle of “Knowledge to All” as manifested in his approachable writing style. Moreover, readers will find more interesting, more lively and more attractive Shakespeare who was a practical artist with wordily sense of success and vision to match. For he knew that to create was to recombine by letting his fancy free in his solipsistic library of books and notebooks, his Cabinet of Curiosities in Mind.

[Kristen Barenthaler · Rating 4 out of 5]

If in-depth literary research and Shakespearean history is something you’re interested in (like me) then this book is for you. If not, I’d suggest skipping it, as there are many chapters with tangents that would probably bore those who don’t spend all their time researching literature.

[Tom Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was hard to follow on audio. Simon Vance narrates, so it wasn't that. He is my favorite narrator. Perhaps this would get a higher rating for the print version, but I'll pass.

[Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shakespeare’s Library is divided into three parts, including The First Searchers, The Heretical Searchers, and Visions of Shakespeare’s Library. Kells begins with the earliest efforts to locate the Bard’s papers. It is a complex history, fraught with false leads, and red herrings. Bemused Stratford-upon-Avon locals have been known to play tricks on the treasure seekers, such as pretending that they recently burned a stack of old papers that might have belonged to their most famous son. Other searchers turned out to be frauds and con men, happily supplying the lack of Shakespeare memorabilia with documents of their own creation. This hair raising history will be enough to make you question any such future discoveries that have not been carefully vetted. Stuart Kells confidently takes the reader through this fascinating history, tracing the high highs and low lows of a centuries old quest. If the idea of Shakespeare’s original manuscripts makes you salivate a little, if the Shakespeare Authorship question horrifies and fascinates you in equal measure, then this is the book for you. more

[Hannah Ermi · Rating 5 out of 5]

You have to be specific kind of nerd to thoroughly enjoy this book cover to cover; fortunately, I am exactly that nerd. I felt as though I was learning so much and the stories told were entertaining and colorful. The more I read about the seedy underworld of black market book forgery and the Anti-Strat heretic clans of Australian college campuses, the more I never wanted to stop reading. If you have ever enjoyed a word Shakespeare has written (and you want to know a bit more about the mystery of the man himself), you should invest your time in reading this book.

[Cal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thomas Jefferson plagiarized Thomas Paine who cares Shakespeare is fraud.

[Abdul Alhazred · Rating 1 out of 5]

You need to know there isn't one. No library, no catalogue of what was in it, no books attested to have been owned by Shakespeare, not a bookplate. So is the book just literary clickbait? Yes.

There's 100 pages on the "hunt" for a Shakespeare library, starting within a century after his death. It's a long string of disappointments and forgeries. You do learn something about his contemporaries and the following eras of bibliophiles and Shakespeare aficionados, as well as what books Shakespeare is clearly referencing or even stealing outright from, and thus must have had access to.

In Part II we're into the authorship question. Was Shakespeare the Stratford one we know or a secret front/pseudonym for . There are entire books on this topic, but we don't even get an overview really because this part is about the author and author's friend who subscribed to a particular sect of fake-speares called the Nevillians. Not even one of the popular fake-speares. We get 100 pages on why they're wrong, followed by a pretty good section where a case is made for Shakespeare as plagiarist and spin doctor, taking other people’s work and adapting it into play form to great success, followed by many revisions by him and later editors to arrive at the “perfect” plays in their final form. This really subverts the entire authorship question by lobbing in the grenade of considering if he really was the super genius wordsmith they’re so busy trying to pin on someone with better credentials. A talented, but even more shrewd playwright becoming a legend by the polish of history. An intriguing idea, but only about a dozen pages are about this.

In Part III we finally get 70 pages of “visions of Shakespeare’s library”. So this is it, right? A learned take on what books such a library might have included based on the surviving plays and poems? No. Australian adventures in Shakespeare, an attack on the First Folio, controversy surrounding the bawdry passages, private press editions, followed by an Epilogue trying to tie a bow around all this as if there’s been a throughline in the work at all.

It's not just a book that sells a false premise, the content is so scattershot that despite desperate attempts to return to the idea of Shakespeare's library, it has so little to say about any one thing it's like reading a book of upcycled blogposts.

[John W. Broglio · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 stars if you care about the Shakespeare. 4.5 stars if you are fascinated by literary frauds, libraries and historical publishing gossip.
The author does a legitimate search for any books that might have belonged to Shakespeare, and he is very good at describing what that kind of search entails.
SPOILER follows!
His take on Shakespeare authorship is not convincing: the idea that the quartos were Shakespeare's work and the first folio was polished by someone else, in this case *maybe* Ben Jonson.
The problems with that conclusion are serious. Take the "good" quarto theory. We have a manuscript page of Christopher Marlowe from "The Massacre at Paris". We have the same scene from a quarto: the texts are different and the manuscript is far superior. So we know that quartos were most often pirated and rarely edited and sold by the player companies that owned them unless they were desperate for money and/or the plays were salable as books but no longer to the taste of the current audience.
Secondly, compare Ben Jonson's somewhat ponderous, mannered style with the First Folio. If Jonson could write plays like Shakespeare, he would have. Further, Jonson's most famous skill was self-promotion. If he had edited Shakespeare, we would have heard about it.
Finally, there are the sonnets and especially the two narrative poems. Those poems, published in the early 1590s, are the work of a mature poet and bear no resemblance to anything by Jonson, who additionally was not in the picture as a writer when they were published.
The book is still enjoyable to a book lover for the skilled writing and the stories of Shakespeare frauds and famous old libraries.

[Minotaur Mangum · Rating 2 out of 5]

As Nelson said when he and Bart snuck in to see the film version of Naked Lunch: "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."

Actually the words "Shakespeare" and "Library" would be just fine on their own. It's when you combine them that they become troublesome. This book gives you Shakespeare with no library, and libraries with no Shakespeare. It does not give you Shakespeare's Library.

Nobody's found Shakespeare's library, and people have been looking very, very hard.

Occam's Razor: He didn't have one.

The book assures us both that surely he did have one of some kind, and that well, if he didn't, that's fine because he was no Man of Letters, but more of an entertainer/entrepreneur. Authorship and bibliomania developed later. (Even though Prospero is surely a bibliomaniac.)

Look, I'm an agnostic on the Shakespeare Authorship Question. But it gets far from steel-manned here. We get a charmingly condescending portrait of Nevillians, a cursory look at Bacon, and barely a mention of Oxfordians. Somebody correct me if I'm mistaken, but I understood the popularity of anti-Stratfordian schools to be in the exact opposite order.

There's a nice little history of modern English bibliophilia, forgery, and publishing in here. But it's hard to appreciate because it's part of a literary bait-and-switch scheme.

Kells definitely learned something from the forgers and crackpots he's studied: you can get a long way with people by promising to solve the riddle of Shakespeare.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where to begin? I’m a lover of books and libraries and I find Shakespeare fascinating. The overall premise is that Shakespeare had a library as source material to write the most famous plays in the world, and without that library, how do we know Shakespeare was a real person?

Kells goes through all the possible conspiracy theories, meticulously with considerable anecdotes sprinkled liberally. About halfway through, the overall argument falls apart. It goes on, his theory that Shakespeare relied heavily on editors is an interesting one, but he poked several large holes in that theory as well. The book seems to unravel near the end, the anecdotes grow lengthier and there is less about Shakespeare and more about the modern press, Shakespeare in Australia, (fascinating but I fail to see the strong connection between a NSW Shakespearean memorial library and Shakespeare’s actual library) and what would have been in Shakespeare’s possible erotica library.

It was the conclusion though that did me in (and resulted in the loss of a star). After meticulous research, discussions about provenance of letters, chapters on the fakes that have arisen through history, he concludes with the so-called Littlewood Letter, owned by the father of a girl who handles their book stall at markets. Either that guy has been sitting on a golden ticket for years (or under a rock) or more likely, he found someone who would buy his story. Utter rubbish to conclude a generally well-researched book with such a weak ending.

3/5 stars. Bit disappointing.

[Bruce Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being only a mild fan of Shakespeare (a damning admission, I know), I found this book to be a fascinating, though uneven, search for the books of that fabled author, the supposed greatest writer of all time in any language (an admittedly English-centric view). If you are a bibliophile this may be a book to read. In addition to tantalizing discoveries of almost always fake books and documents purportedly owned, produced, or otherwise associated with the Bard, Mr. Kells dives headfirst into innumerable rabbit holes related to books: other related libraries; authors, playwrights, collectors, and historical characters; publishing and bookbinding; then-contemporary literature from throughout Europe; the nature of playwriting including much collaborative efforts; a culture of borrowing/plagiarism; and much more. If you’re solely interested in Shakespeare don’t waste your time, but if you have an unfettered love of books, this might be an enjoyable read. Spoiler alert — the only fault I find about the title (Unlocking the Mystery…) is that I believe despite Kell’s and others’ efforts to find that library, not only is the lock still inviolate, but its existence remains somewhat in question. That said, you may enjoy the author’s beliefs about Shakespeare, or be intrigued by the many other theories of his real or imagine existence swirling amongst Shakespeare fans and researchers.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I set myself up for disappointment with this book. I had expected to read an account of the books Shakespeare used in his writing--the texts he relied upon for his sources, mined for turns of phrase, or those that influenced his thinking most. I had hoped to see, though the mirror of his reading, a portrait of his mind. Instead, this is a rather crowded account of the people who searched for books he might have owned. That's a much less interesting story. No doubt the discovery of manuscripts would be of great interest, and the provenience of Shakespeare's papers would have been fascinating, if it were known, but it's not.

Reading about others' interests is less compelling that one's own, of course, and the parade of characters who have tried to track down Shakespeare's relics, or fabricated them, is of intermittent interest, but we already know many of the books he read and relied on--and the account of a search, or several searches, all fruitless, for physical copies brought me no closer to the wonder of his works themselves. Instead, we find ourselves in the midst of an account of those who tried to disprove Shakesperare's authorship, which is not what the description of the book leads us to believe we'll get, and the 'authorship question'--a set of far-fetched conspiracy theories--becomes the focus of the account. As a result, this book is less a literary than a social history, and the promise of the title is never quite fulfilled.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was library month apparently. What books did Shakespeare read - own - consult? People have been asking this question ever since the First Folio - which isn't. The quartos came first. Mr. Kells traces whatever evidence he can find from the time of the Bard's contemporaries through the fakers, the non-believers, and the searchers down to the present day. It is a fascinating trip, all the more so since he is an Australian and writes from that perspective. Nice to know that the convicts were interested in the theatre, even if it was only to burgle the homes of the audience. It was also instructive to learn what influence monomaniacs can have on the flow of literary history. I thought that the desire of collectors to obtain first editions had always been there, but no it is the result of just another fad. I like the use of the word "workmanlike" instead of "genius" and the acknowledgement that everyone can use a good editor.
He ends the book with a suggestion that there is a real Shakespeare letter out there, one that was actually sent, but for heaven's sake let us know something about it! I suppose that when this book came out the letter was undergoing a careful inspection but it is quite painful to know that after all the many people who searched and searched someone actually did find something. We justdon't know anything about it, not who wrote or when or where, to whom it was sent, was there a reply?

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

What can I say except TOTAL SNOREFEST! I'm a big fan of Shakespeare, so this is a lot coming from me. I was hoping to learn more about the famous Bard, but learned more instead about the people who tried to duplicate fake documents, ledgers, papers, and letters for the sake of saying they "owned" something by Shakespeare. If anything, this book has taught me that most of what we know about Shakespeare can't really be proven to be true or accurate. We know he had a wife named Anne Hathway, we know he had a child named Hamlet who had died, and we know that he worked for the Rose theater. But it seems like this book sheds much more doubt that confidence. I had to abandon it about 60-70% through because it just wasn't satisfying, and I really just wanted to leave it.