Customer Reviews

The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix

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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.

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.

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.

This is a fantastic book. I have read it in the original Russian and cannot wait to read it again in English. This book is a true intellectual achievement. Even if Gililov's theories will be proven to be wrong, eventually, this book is still worth reading since it is a perfect example of a true scientific approach to this problem. I have also read Borukhov/Gililov discussion on the internet in the original Russian and can only say that Borukhov does not offer any significant alternative theories. All he offers are minor corrections that in no way even begin to challenge Gililov's premise.

The book is very fascinating and interesting. The argument is very persuasive and believable. There are minor mistakes in the book but they don't diminish the general flow and impact of the Gililov's theory. It is unfortunate that the Rutland archive is closed for researchers, thus it is impossible to check whether private papers of the first seven Earls have a watemark of a unicorn or not. I have written a PhD dissertation part of which has been dedicated to Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland. I can assure that all that Mr. Gililov claims the Earl has been (patron of arts, educated man, lover of performing arts) is true.
I can very much believe that Rutland and his friends enjoyed their literary carnaval in the spirit of fun and joke.

Excellent book! Reading it I got a similar impression as if witnessing Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy. I would recommend this Gililov's book to any person loving literature, poetry, history and also as well detective stories. 40 years of scrupulous work brought brilliant results!

Repeating stale arguments that have been totally disproved by Gililov, Dr. B. Borukhov from Jerusalem proves only that the mystification Gililov speaks about has no flaws (which is a compliment to Shakespeare alias Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, & al.), but fails to prove that there was no mystification at all.

Ilya Gililov's unfounded claim that Robert Chester's 'Loves Martyr' and Shakespeare's 'The Phoenix and the Turtle' were published in 1612-3 (instead of 1601 as it is universally accepted) and that the Turtle and the Phoenix were Roger Manners, the 5th Earl of Rutland and his wife Elizabeth who died in 1612 has recently been demolished. See Boris Borukhov, `"The Phoenix and the Turtle" Was Published in 1601', Notes and Queries, volume 53, No.1 (March 2006), pp. 71-2.