Sir, – Zounds! So fair and foul a day I have not seen. In Saturday’s Irish Times, William Leahy’s emphatically positive review of Elizabeth Winkler’s Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies is likely to raise quite a few eyebrows, methinks (Books, August 5th). The book by all accounts indulges those knaves known as Shakespeare “truthers” who dispute Will’s authorship of his plays and poems, while it “just asks questions” of the lily-livered mainstream scholars who think said theorists are brainsick.
The reviewer at one point states that “there is no evidence” that Shakespeare wrote the works that are ascribed to him. Forsooth, this is patent balderdash. Needless to say, his name is on the plays, and there are documents and contemporary accounts supporting his authorship. If The Irish Times continues to uncritically platform such foppery it will be hoist on its own petard. – Yours, etc,
A MURPHY,
Lismore,
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Co Waterford.