Players: the Shakespeare Mystery.(Brief Article)(Book Review)

PLAYERS: The Shakespeare Mystery BERTRAM FIELDS. Regan, $26.95 (320p) ISBN 0-06-077559-9

Fields (Royal Blood), a high-profile, L.A.-based entertainment lawyer, makes his case in the debate about who Shakespeare really was. Fields doesn't make any original contribution to the controversy; instead, he gives a digest of assorted arguments on both sides, though he sides with the anti-Stratford school. Fields examines the surviving evidence about William Shakespeare, whom he refers to as "the Stratford man." The scattered documentary proofs leave Fields free to conclude that, unlike the great-spirited author of the great works bearing his name, Shakespeare was …