Did Shakespeare hide subversive messages in his poems?

Shakespeare and the Resistance
by Clare Asquith,
Public Affairs Books, 256pp, £21.99/$28

Not since picking up The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the seminal crime thriller by George V Higgins, some decades ago, can I recall having read a book in a single sitting. I certainly didn’t expect to do that with Shakespeare and the Resistance, but I simply could not stop turning the pages. The book is a scholarly work by Clare Asquith, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, and expands the themes of her earlier book, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, published in 2005.