Having read of Rylance’s belief that Shakespeare didn’t exist, I expected his play script to be much more polemically preachy in defence of his views but the conclusion here was wonderful. I can’t imagine he will ever get as many accolades for his writing as for his acting, but this had great moments of humour and was occasionally pretty adroit in its handling of this often absurd literary conspiracy theory.

Very clever play on the Shakespeare authorship question.

3.5

This had been sitting on my to-read pile for ages. Nearly 2 years actually - I bought a signed copy from the publisher's website just after the book came out as I'm a big fan of Mr Rylance's stage work. It's been lingering on the shelf because I don't read a lot of plays and I was wondering if it was going to be really cerebral. I finally picked it up last night after Rylance got a double Tony nomination for his performances in Richard III and Twelfth Night - and three of his cast mates picked up nods too. I'm so glad I did - and am now really curious to see how this worked on stage - the directions for the staging sound intriguing.

Contrary to my expectations, it's a humourous look at the questions surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare's plays as several of the contenders appear to an English teacher who is staging an internet phone in about the authorship debate. Having seen Rylance on stage in a variety of roles I could really see him playing the part of Frank in my head (although knowing him, he'd've done it in a different way to how I was imagining it!) and I could hear his voice in the work. It's not a long play, and I don't know how it would work if you didn't have a really good crop of actors performing it, but as someone who didn't really have much idea about the arguments for the various contenders, Ii found it interesting and accessible and fun.

Having read of Rylance’s belief that Shakespeare didn’t exist, I expected his play script to be much more polemically preachy in defence of his views but the conclusion here was wonderful. I can’t imagine he will ever get as many accolades for his writing as for his acting, but this had great moments of humour and was occasionally pretty adroit in its handling of this often absurd literary conspiracy theory.