The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix [Paperback]

Ilya Gililov (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 3, 2003

Who was Shakespeare? In an intellectual sensation that went through three printings in the first year, a Moscow scholar presents a solidly documented work showing how, and why, the 5th Earl of Rutland wrote most of the Shakespeare oeuvre. Gililov has studied watermarks and printer's type, registration dates, and documented biographical details of Shakespeare contemporaries, considering the physical evidence as well as the personalities and motives of the suspects.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Among the candidates for author of Shakespeare's works, Roger Manners, the earl of Rutland (1576-1612), is not the most popular. In arguing for Rutland, Russian Shakespeare scholar Gililov also suggests that the earl's wife, Elizabeth (daughter of Sir Philip Sidney), was a literary collaborator and co-hoaxer in attributing their oeuvre to an illiterate theatrical hanger-on from Stratford-on-Avon. Gililov's assertions about Shakespeare's illiteracy rest on dubious grounds: the disappearance of manuscripts, the absence of an estate library and the sloppy signatures on Shakespeare's will. Nor does Gililov convincingly explain how an illiterate could have risen in Elizabethan theater to become a shareholder in its most popular playhouse. Moreover, he overstates the plays' linguistics and erudition (often a factor in arguing the identity of the plays' author) and underrates the possible level of Shakespeare's education in order to contend that only someone as well educated and well traveled as Rutland could be their author. The centerpiece to Gililov's tendentious theory is the anthology Love's Martyr, which includes the poem dubbed "The Phoenix and the Turtle." Confusing evidence as to when it was originally published allows Gililov to conveniently postdate the poem to appear to be a coded elegy on the earl and countess. In post-Soviet Russia, where Shakespeare studies are no longer under government-controlled orthodoxy, Gililov has won some popularity with his theory of "a Great Game" regarding the author of Shakespeare's works, but he might be playing it with himself alone. Illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Algora Publishing (December 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875861814
• ISBN-13: 978-0875861814
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,323,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix by Ilya Gililov, February 27, 2009

By 

Andy Atlas (france) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (Paperback)

Very interesting book, the story is wonderful and enigmatic. I believe it to bring the Rutlandian theory to the same level of confidence as Baconian or Oxfordian ones. However, the most important is a general overview of the epoque presented by a person of good competence.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mysterious poetic couple, November 2, 2003

By 

Irina Moskovich (Glendale, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (Paperback)

Ilya Gililov's book is quite an event in the Shakespeare authorship debates. The watermarks' discovery converts the dead-end mystery of the Lover's Martyr character's prototypes
into an open road for the honest researchers. As far as I know, nobody, except Gililov, has offered two such strong candidates for a poetic couple that died at the beginning of the 17th century (both almost at the same time) and had been mourned by the most famous and talented contemporary poets of England. For example, "the Queen Elizabeth and Essex" theory is too weak and unrealistic.
Another Gililov's hypothesis about the real author of the "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" sounds very convincing to me. Especially, after reading "Salve Deus" and some books related to the subject, such as:
- "Dr. Simon Forman. A Most Notorious Physician" by Judith Cook,
- "Redeeming Eve. Women Writers of the English Renaissance" by Elaine V. Beilin,
- "Women Writers of the English Renaissance" by Kim Walker,
- "Writing Women in Jacobean England" by Barbara Kiefer Lewalski -
I'm totally convinced that Aemilia Lanyer, an experienced flirt, could not suddenly become the most virtues and chaste Lady who valued woman's virtue more than anything in the world. And if I let myself to imagine that this conversion wonder did happened, I would not be able to believe that this newly born chaste soul could immediately forget her own sins of the past. I was not able to find in the "Salve Deus" any regrets about them, vice versa, when reading the book, I had a feeling that the author had nothing to confess, she was proud of her personal virtue and had great trust and hopes for the other Ladies virtues, because she never failed herself.
About Boris Borukhov articles: I cannot say that the rude tone of his criticism and his "manners brightly shine". He may deserve some thanks for the small mistakes he corrected in Gililov's book, but he treats a deserving scientist without respect, and he failed to appreciate Gililov's important discoveries.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough and honest research. Facinating theory., April 7, 2009

By 

V. A. Shimanovskaya "[e-mail]" (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (Paperback)

Looks like the only negative comment by "Sam" is made by Boris Borukhov himself. I did read both Gililov's very thorough and honest research and Boris Borukhov's spiteful comments, which are nothing but unsupported "name calling" and can't be seriously considered.