Category: Gender and Secrecy

• The "Shakespeare" was a Woman

  This theory argued that the works attributed to William Shakespeare were actually written by a woman whose authorship had to be concealed for political, social, or theatrical reasons. Its nineteenth-century foundations lie in the wider Shakespeare authorship controversy, especially arguments that the plays contained hidden political meaning and must have come from a more highly placed or better educated author. Later female-candidate theories adapted that framework by proposing that a woman wrote under a male mask to protect both her identity and her views.