The Shakespeare conspiracy theory that just won’t die

The novelist Jodi Picoult is the latest to deny that Shakespeare wrote his own works.

Was Shakespeare a fraud? The American writer Jodi Picoult seems to think so. Her latest novel By Any Other Name is based on the premise that William Shakespeare was not the real author of his plays. Specifically, in her story, the poet Emilia Lanier (née Bassano) pays Shakespeare for the use of his name so that she might see her work staged at a time wh…