Contested Year, a response by anti-Stratfordians to James Shapiro’s The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, is now available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released as a Kindle e-book on February 9, 2016. Shapiro’s book claims that Shakespeare wrote, not only King Lear, but also Macbeth and Antony & Cleopatra in 1606. Although Shapiro does not explore the authorship question in his book, it is obvious that his argument is an attempt to undermine the Oxfordian theory by alleging that these three major plays could not have been written until after Oxford’s death in 1604.
The Kindle response, whose full title is Contested Year: Errors, Omissions and Unsupported Statements in James Shapiro’s “The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606,” is edited by Mark Anderson, Alexander Waugh, and Alex McNeil. Additional contributors include John Shahan, Katherine Chiljan, Richard Malim, Roger Stritmatter, John D. Lavendoski, Earl Showerman, Wally Hurst, Tom Regnier, Steve Steinburg, Jan Cole, Michael Delahoyde, C.V. Berney, Robert Detobel, Lynne Kositsky, and Christopher Carolan. The cover design is by Jennifer Newton.
Contested Year addresses Shapiro’s book by systematically quoting from Shapiro’s text and then pointing out the flaws in his arguments. As the Amazon website explains:
Contested Year rebuts fallacies and clarifies misunderstandings while highlighting Shapiro’s inaccuracies of dating, his sloppy confusion of sources, his muddle of historical events, his topographical gaffes, his mix-up of British titles, his errors over names, his genealogical howlers and his flagrant mistakes concerning language, court custom and the historical connections between key figures in his story. Contested Year fills the vacuum left by Shapiro’s myopic and controversial insistence that 1606 was the year in which Shakespeare wrote King Lear by introducing a cornucopia of important evidence (omitted from his book) that undermines his thesis.
The Contested Year e-book is priced at only $0.99, allowing it to sell widely, and the proceeds will be divided equally among the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, and the DeVere Society. Reserve your copy by clicking here and have it sent to you automatically on February 9.
[posted February 4, 2016]
