Seven Shakespeares

Everyone and their mother would like to know what happened to Shakespeare during the “Lost Years” of his career. The fact that very little is known about Shakespeare's life inevitably creates a lot of speculation and conspiracy theories, most of which are classist and elitist drivel. The main anti-Stratfordian argument is that it would have been completely impossible for an uneducated man from the countryside to write such beautiful poetry. Naturally, you can see how this is a problematic take.

“Seven Shakespeares” takes this exact approach and attempts to fill in the Lost Years by having Shakespeare, aka Lance Carter, be an untalented writer who has to rely on other people's skills to make a name for himself.

In this volume, we meet Li, a Chinese immigrant with an eerie sixth sense of premonition. This ability gets her into a world of trouble, but eventually she gets rescued by Lance and his friend Worth. Li learns English from Lance's other friend, Mil, and soon starts to speak in verse. Lance asks her to write her ideas, and she accidentally creates the English sonnet (aka the Shakespearean sonnet). Li's first sonnet is #18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?”) which she wrote for her dog....

Can I just take a second to say that sonnet 18 (the real one) is regarded as one of Shakespeare's finest poems and it is probably the most well-known, even to non-Shakespeare experts. It is widely accepted in academia that Shakespeare wrote this poem with his male lover in mind, so the fact that the manga makes it about a dog is just beyond gobsmacking and insulting.

This first volume ends with the hint that Li wrote Hamlet for Lance. Again, this is a baffling “explanation” for Shakespeare's masterpiece.

As a self-respecting Shakespearean, I can't possibly continue to read this series. If you want to read a fantasy/historical fiction account of Shakespeare's life, go for it, but for the love of all that is holy, don't believe for a second that Shakespeare didn't write his plays and poems.