There is still a rogue faction of literary scholars and obsessive amateurs who claim that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. But there’s no debate about the identity of the first two authors who will be rewriting the plays as part of a major new project announced by Random House’s Hogarth imprint.
Jeanette Winterson will be reworking “The Winter’s Tale” and Anne Tyler will be tweaking “The Taming of the Shrew” as part of the new series, to be called the Hogarth Shakespeare. The first two volumes will be released in 2016, in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.
Clara Farmer, Hogarth’s publishing director, told The Guardian that Random House was happy to hear from authors who wanted to participate in the project, which is expected to cover the entire Shakespeare canon. (“We need people to step up for the tragedies,” she said.)
For Ms. Winterson, the choice of “The Winter’s Tale” was easy. “All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around,” she told The Guardian. “I have worked with ‘The Winter’s Tale’ in many disguises for many years. This is a brilliant opportunity to work with it in its own right. And I love cover versions.”