International

Professor James Shapiro of Colombia University, Shakespearean scholar and author of worldwide renown, is taken to task by 17 scholars who published Contested Year: a catalogue of errors, omissions and unsupported statements from Shapiro’s The Year of Lear .

While Shapiro’s Year of Lear has been widely praised in the press, a group of international scholars from both sides of the Atlantic says the book is full of inaccuracies and misleading information. Contributors include biographer, Mark Anderson; author Alexander Waugh; historian, Richard Malim; Professor Roger Stritmatter of Coppin State University; Dr Michael Delahoyde of Washington State University and independent scholars Katherine Chiljan from California and Robert Detobel from Germany.

Their new book, Contested Year, published Feb. 9, 2016 on Amazon-Kindle provides a chapter-by-chapter assault on the accuracy and reliability of Shapiro’s claims, rebutting fallacies and clarifying misunderstandings while highlighting Shapiro’s slips of dating, his 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 also claims to  “. . . fill the vacuum left by Shapiro’s controversial insistence that 1606 was the year in which Shakespeare wrote King Lear by introducing important evidence omitted from his book that undermines his thesis.”

Contested Year co-editor Alexander Waugh — author of Shakespeare in Court and co-editor of Shakespeare Beyond Doubt? Exposing an Industry in Denial — said:

“It is dismal that a tenured professor from a respectable university could make so many elementary gaffes and reveal such profound ignorance of his subject while critics from around the world sit about praising him and his literary style.  He should be censured by his university for willfully misleading the public about William Shakespeare”

Co-editor Mark Anderson — author of “Shakespeare” by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, The Man Who Was Shakespeare (Gotham Books/Untreed Reads, 2005, 2011) — said:

“Despite Shapiro’s many claims in The Year of Lear, not only is there no evidence that Shakespeare wrote King Lear in 1606, but there’s no credible evidence the author of the plays was even alive in that year!” 

Contested Year  is available in ebook format at Amazon.com. Proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, The De Vere Society and the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.
Canadian customers may order from Amazon.ca.
UK customers may order from Amazon.co.uk.
German customers may order from: Amazon.de