William Shakespeare

Quick Facts

• Bold Name: William Shakespeare
• Role: Actor, businessman, and self-made “brand” who fronts for a hidden collective of playwrights, especially Emilia Bassano Lanier
• First Appearance: Grocers’ Hall, where his unimposing presence undercuts the legend he’ll later become
• Occupation/Status: London actor and shareholder of the Globe; shrewd broker of others’ words
• Key Relationships: Emilia; Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe; the Earl of Oxford; the Globe’s shareholders

Who They Are

Jodi Picoult reimagines Shakespeare not as the singular genius of history but as an opportunistic conduit: a man who understands the market, the audience, and the value of a name. He supplies a male mask for writers barred from the stage, especially Emilia, and converts their brilliance into his brand. This recasting lets the novel probe Authorship, Identity, and the Fight for Recognition: Shakespeare’s ascent is inseparable from the silencing of voices the era refuses to hear. He becomes the “upstart crow” whose fame is stitched from feathers plucked off others—proof that cultural memory can confuse a good promoter with a great writer.

Personality & Traits

At heart, Shakespeare is a pragmatist who spots a niche and exploits it. His practical mind and social ambition outpace his literary gifts; the novel shows a man who can negotiate a contract better than he can shape a line. His vanity grows alongside his market share, and the result is a morally gray figure who facilitates the staging of forbidden talent while also profiting from it and, at his worst, betraying it.

• Ambitious opportunist: He treats playmaking as commerce. Meeting Emilia, he immediately frames their collaboration as a transaction—name for content, credit for profit.
• Limited artistry: His own efforts are “pedantic and plodding.” Emilia thinks, “I could do a better job than this man,” and Kit derides him as a “beef-wit,” puncturing the myth of innate brilliance.
• Negotiator first, artist second: He bargains Emilia down, insists on a trial run, and protects his downside. His craft is dealmaking—contracts, shares, and branding.
• Vain and fame‑hungry: As his reputation swells, he mistakes recognition for authorship, believing audiences come for the name “William Shakespeare,” not the writing.
• Morally ambiguous: He enables silenced writers to reach the stage but ultimately exploits them—most starkly by publishing Emilia’s sonnets without consent.
• Unimposing, carefully costumed: Emilia sees “a receding hairline and a weak chin badly camouflaged by a dark beard,” and later a lace collar “stained with what looked like gravy”—a man dressing above his station, more show than substance.

Character Journey

Shakespeare’s arc is external rather than internal—the story of a reputation. He begins a middling actor with sharp business instincts and becomes a cultural monolith by attaching his name to plays he didn’t write. The crucial pact with Emilia launches the brand; box‑office success inflates confidence into entitlement, culminating in his claim that the name alone sells tickets. His betrayal—publishing her sonnets—exposes how his success requires the erasure of the true creators. Even after death, the First Folio and its oddities are read as winks to the fiction of authorship, turning him into a case study in The Erasure and Reclamation of History: the world remembers the name and forgets the hands.

Key Relationships

• Emilia Bassano Lanier: Their partnership begins as mutual necessity—her words, his name—and evolves into a power struggle. As his fame grows, he treats her work as capital he owns rather than art he stewards, culminating in the theft of her sonnets and the collapse of trust. Through Emilia, the novel exposes how patriarchy converts women’s genius into men’s legacy.

• Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe: Kit spots Shakespeare’s perfect utility: unremarkable enough to be a mask, hungry enough to play the part. His contempt for Shakespeare’s talent and his practical use of Shakespeare’s ambition sharpen the book’s critique—Shakespeare is less author than apparatus.

• The Earl of Oxford: The hinted scriptorium places Shakespeare at the hub of a coordinated anonymity machine. His name knits together disparate writers, turning private pens into public “Shakespeare,” and expanding the scale of the deception from one woman’s silence to a systemic operation.

Defining Moments

Shakespeare’s key scenes chart the rise of a brand and the corrosion of integrity.

• Meeting at Grocers’ Hall: Introduced as slight and unimpressive while expressing his wish to be a playwright.

  • Why it matters: The gap between ordinary man and future myth opens here; the novel starts dismantling the legend by undercutting his aura.

• The White Hart deal for Arden of Faversham: He brokers Emilia’s play for a cut, then claims authorship rights.

  • Why it matters: Establishes the terms—her talent, his name—and reveals his canniness in monetizing authorship.

• The boast about his name: “I could copy the Book of Common Prayer...People aren’t flocking...They come because they trust the name William Shakespeare.”

  • Why it matters: The thesis of his transformation—brand over art—said aloud; ambition tips into hubris.

• Publishing Shake‑Speares Sonnets: He prints Emilia’s intimate poems, including one for her dead child, without permission.

  • Why it matters: The novel’s clearest moral line crossed; he converts grief into product, proving the exploitative core of his enterprise.

• The First Folio’s afterlife: Posthumous publication with Jonson’s verses and the odd Droeshout engraving read as coded complicity.

  • Why it matters: Suggests that the machinery of mythmaking continues beyond the man, turning a strategic fiction into the official record.

Essential Quotes

“I, too, would like to offer my plays,” Shakespeare interjected.
Kit slid a glance toward Emilia. “Huzzah,” he said.

This early exchange deflates Shakespeare’s self‑presentation and positions Kit as the skeptic who reads him accurately. The sarcasm marks the pivot from Shakespeare’s desire to write to his usefulness as a front.

“I believe we can help each other,” Emilia said. “You wish for everyone to know your name; I wish for no one to know mine.”

Emilia crystallizes the transactional symmetry of their pact. The line exposes how patriarchy manufactures “Shakespeare” out of a woman’s necessary invisibility, making fame and anonymity two sides of the same deal.

“You were paid. The transaction is complete. They are owned by the shareholders of the Globe now. Of which I am one.” He smiled at her. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you, mistress.”

Shakespeare’s language—transaction, shareholders—reduces art to asset and relationship to contract. The chilling politeness underscores his moral drift: legal right over ethical responsibility.

“Our partnership is but a riddle. What grows bigger the more one takes away?”
“A hole,” Emilia answered.
“Or a man,” he said quietly, “who takes credit due another.”

This mordant riddle reveals his self‑awareness; he understands the mechanism of his ascent even as he continues it. The line reframes his growth as subtraction—fame expanding by erasing someone else.

“I could copy the Book of Common Prayer, slap my name at the top, and sell out a week of performances. People aren’t flocking to the theaters because of your words. They come because they trust the name William Shakespeare.”

Here, the mask speaks the truth of the mask. Shakespeare articulates the novel’s core critique: authorship has been displaced by marketing, and the crowd’s trust—misplaced—completes the theft of credit.