Academic Blog About Shakespeare

 

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The Mysteries of Williams Shakespeare

Samuel Williams

William Shakespeare has become known as one of the greatest writers in human history. His writing, his style, and his iconic works have established themselves as some of the greatest written pieces in history. Today, I will be diving into and analyzing Shakespeare's impact and the legacy he leaves for scholars and researchers alike using the ProQuest database and an academic journal called Who Was the Real William Shakespeare? Reviews of 'Shakespeare Without a Life,' 'Stalking Shakespeare,' 'What Was Shakespeare Really Like?' and 'Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies'. 

The study above does a breakdown on how making books about Shakespeare have no real end. Stated by the author, Willard Spiegelman, “In particular, a set of questions about the writer—concerning identity, authorship, legitimacy—has vexed readers for centuries”.What is stated here is that there is still so much mystery about Shakespeare that writers are still trying to figure out even with all of his works that people are reading today. However, because of the work of many historians, there has been a very large amount of information found over the past few decades about Shakespeare himself and the backgrounds of some of his plays. With modern research, more information that was lost to history is now starting to surface with more details.

Names like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth have all been recognized and studied globally for their storytelling. However, there are many Shakespeare titles that do not become popular in today's world for various reasons. One of those titles that has not gained lots of attention over the years is The Rape of Lucrece. What separates this piece of writing from all the others that are more well known is that after lots of research, it was discovered that this poem is an allegory of colonialism. Katie Williams, an avid undergraduate historian from Fordham University who has years of research and archival work under her belt has been exploring more into this topic. Her recent study has been focusing on the conditions that allowed William Shakespeare to write about the colonies and European colonialism without actually traveling to the new world himself.

Katie Williams has traveled across the globe doing research for various institutions. Even though she is a Junior, she has done more travel, publishing, and research than many historians her age. With study and research destinations such as London, Paris, Cape Town, Barbados, Bermuda, St Kitts, St Maarten, Chicago, and Montreal, she has studied and researched topics such as indentured servants, French colonialism in the new world, and many breakdowns of old and relatively unknown pieces of Shakespeare's writing. She is very public about her findings, and usually gives updates about findings, breakthroughs, or discoveries before she even publishes a study or journal article. Her main source of releasing her archival updates are on her X and her Linkedin pages.

“So Shakespeare was a stay-at-home, meaning he did not travel. He was surrounded by stay-at-homes who did not travel either”, said Katie in a recent interview. Through months of research and traveling, she has been putting pieces together explaining how it was possible for Shakespeare to actually write about the new world without actually going. Much like I was able to interview her, she had also been interviewing many historians about the topic as well. While her research is still continuing, she has made several findings about new ways that Shakespeare could have found out about the new world and the colonization going on. Stated by Katie later on in the interview “But these stay-at-homes were able to write and comment on Early Modern colonialism because of the influx of travel literature written by people who actually traveled”. Essentially, her research and interviews have led her to the fact that Shakespeare was getting his colonial knowledge passed down from other writers at the time who had either been to or spoke to those who went to the new world. 

When asked further about the topic, Katie stated, “these stay-at-homes synthesized what they read and the world around them to produce their own commentary writings on colonialism”. Because there was no internet, texting, or phone calls, what Shakespeare used to write The Rape of Lucrece was simply word of mouth information.

While Shakespeare still leaves more questions than answers, there is lots of work and research being done across the world discovering more into his legacy and life details.

Disclaimer: (Historian Katie Williams is the sister of the author, Samuel Williams)

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