Shakespeare's Changeling

Literature & Fiction

synopsis

Synopsis

Charged in 1616 by the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery to edit a folio of Shakespeare plays, writer Ben Jonson races against time to find the missing manuscripts by seeking out his former nemesis in Stratford. Can William Shaxper's deathbed confession reveal the mysteries of the Shakespeare authorship that could threaten the throne of King James I?

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Author Biography

I am an author and educator who believes that writers create within the context of their own experience. By helping students connect the real Shake-speare with his life and works, we enable them to see relationships in their own learning, thinking and writing. Was there more than one Shake-speare, or was he really Lord Oxford, a known writer of his time forced to hide behind his distant kinsman, a grain merchant from Stratford? Not sure? Read my controversial novel and think about it.

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Author Insight

First Folio Folly

Why are the pages numbered wrong in Shakespeare's original First Folio? Why is Ben Jonson's dedicatory poem part insult, part honor? Why is a cartoon image used to represent the author? The fact is that Renaissance publishers cared about quality. They numbered pages correctly. They proofread and used good engravings to honor their authors. Then why so many seeming blunders in the First Folio? Answers to these and other questions about the authorship unfold in my Chaucer award-winning novel, "Shakespeare's Changeling." Be informed and entertained! Read it.

Book Excerpt

Shakespeare's Changeling

“Drayton? Well, I’ll give him a chance to withdraw from the project as a courtesy.”

“And the others?”

“Your father’s friends? We do need a little sincerity in the book. It can’t all be tripe and trumpery.”

“Whatever you do, please don’t harm my brother.”

“On my honor, I won’t. King James is too bland to understand riddles and subtleties, but I warrant you he’ll be very pleased with the finished product. I’ll even devise some convoluted drivel for that ridiculous monument in Stratford.”

“Isn’t that going too far?”

“Not at all. It’ll keep ‘em guessing about the authorship for generations.”

“I suppose,” the Countess sighed. “Still, it’s not the memorial I wanted for my father.”

“No, nor I,” Jonson replied. “But the truth will out. Who would be so foolish as to believe that a merchant from Stratford, with not one word of literary juvenilia or poetic practice to his name, could emerge from the ether to create the greatest plays ever written?”

In a corner of the home’s foundation, a gust of wind blew some ashes into a circle.

The long rain had begun.