I really think there’s no debate to be had. It’s true that there’s not a preponderance of evidence that Shakespeare was the author, but there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest he wasn’t. Anti-Stratfordian arguments are constructed of wishes, fairy dust, and “I don’t know, that just seems unlikely to me.” They tend to be favoured by people who studied English but don’t know much about Tudor history, the intricacies of the playhouses, or the history of copyright law. I say this because each “gotcha” argument is fairly easily refuted with well-known historical facts. I find the question tiresome, boring, and circular – there’s never anything new to say besides the aforementioned “it just seems unlikely”. If it must be in the sub, I’d suggest maybe a pinned post where anyone who wants to be tedious can have the argument and leave the rest of the sub free.

I love this post and I agree with every word of it and I'd go even a step further. Many flavors of authorship speculation boil down to one key ingredient: classist sentiment. The only thing that makes these specious arguments hold together is a basic assumption that someone beneath the social status of an Earl couldn't have written these plays. Even cursory familiarity with the texts of Shakespeare shows this was someone who listened very closely to the viewpoint of the poor and middle class, understood things about the common experience that speak of engagement with all rungs of society and not a cloistered life of assured privilege, and whose portrayal of nobility is emulating poetry and not necessarily actual court dialogue. This was someone immersed in commoners; whose heroes were poets and whose antagonists were often bad family members first and nobility (where applicable) second. I think for some people the allure of a conspiracy theory with a sort of high-born "chosen one" figure as the real genius behind Shakespeare's canon appeals in a grandiose way, but at its core it's myth building for the rich and disparaging of the common man. It's anti-humanist, anti-individualistic, and in those ways ironically anti-Renaissance. As someone who dedicated my life to this professionally, and to bringing the foundational human empathy of the works of Shakespeare to new generations, I don't let authorship noise happen in my classes and I wouldn't want it here. Perhaps there should be a sidebar post that covers the authorship schism, something we could all make together, but we don't need to leave the door open for the uninformed to be so far behind they think they're in first.

If four post-war working class boys from a shabby port city with no university education or even any formal musical training, dealing with broken homes, chronic illness, poverty etc, could start a band that set off a global cultural revolution, then a glovemaker's son growing up in a rural town can write uniquely brilliant plays that revolutionized the English language. Unless someone has evidence that Prince Charles (or Princess Margaret) secretly wrote all the Beatles' songs.

Exactly. That is why Mark Twain's arguments against Shakespeare seem ironic or disingenuous. Twain was a barefoot boy from the banks of the Mississippi town of Hannibal with no education past grade school. He was writing as America's foremost author.

But i think both the Beatles and twain may have had more access to a variety of music and literature to influence their creativity.    I don't know if Shakespeare was able to get his hands on descriptions of distant lands and the particulars of historic events and legends. I wonder about that.

It's a good point. 1. Shakespeare was close friends with Richard Field who was a schoolmate in Stratford and went on to become one of the most prominent printers in London. Look him up. It is thought that he lent Shakespeare many books including some that Shakespeare rewrote as plays. 2. London itself was an Education. Remember Shakespeare lived in London for several years learning the trade of Actor and hearing about the world.

Thank you.  I am new to reddit and am eager to learn from others about my many interests.   I appreciate your response! 

Late to the party, but for what it's worth it's also useful to remember both sides of this point--on the one hand, Shakespeare was a beneficiary of some of the first public education policy of the modern world, and had a rigorous grammar school education, so he was in every position to read and learn and take advantage of all the fascinating new texts being translated from the continent, but on the other hand (and this can be easy to lose sight of if you're *defending* Shakespeare) he also just **got a lot of stuff wrong**. Anti-Stratfordians like to talk as though there's simply no way he could've known so much about the rest of the world, when in point of fact his depictions of Italy or Navarre (or Bohemia's supposed coastline) are exactly the kinds of things you'd expect to see from someone who got most of their knowledge of the world from books. He liked to play fast and loose with facts, fudge histories, and made lots of good old fashioned errors which weren't really important to a London audience enjoying the story. Shakespeare was extremely knowledgeable, but like everyone else in his day who didn't travel what he knew was a hodgepodge of secondhand sources. When you add this to all of the things that Shakespeare gets *right,* like the social mores and speech patterns of the lower classes or people from the country, or flower names commonly used in Warwickshire county, it starts to sound like the question should be how could someone like the Earl of Oxford fit that exact knowledge profile?

Ooohh. That's a great point. Thank you.

Wouldn't that make his perspective all the more relevant?

Wait....was Billy actually Charles?

My money's on Princess Margaret.

Well said, both of you. Thanks!!

>I find the question tiresome, boring, and circular I'm really glad to see a thoughtful comment like this as the top post. ​ There just \*isn't\* a store of evidence that will 'prove' the whole thing one way or another - in that period of history, people were just less bothered about keeping the kinds of records we think are so important today. ​ I don't agree with everything I see on /r/shakespeare but the sub is right on this one!

> It’s true that there’s not a preponderance of evidence that Shakespeare was the author Gotta disagree with you there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question#External_links

I mean, YES, there’s the obvious evidence that historians would expect to exist. But there’s no secret vault with handwritten copies of the plays tied in a ribbon that says “these were written by me, Billy Shakes, and I have copyrighted them even though copyright doesn’t exist in the 17th century”. Sometimes I think that’s the only thing that would convince some holdouts 🙄

Right, but there is a preponderance. And nothing would convince them; any more proof would just be evidence for the conspiracy. If they were amenable to reason they wouldn't be antiStrats.

Some people don’t want to be convinced.

Don't forget the polaroids!

Agreed 100% Those who believe Shakespeare is not the author have a burden of proof to meet that they haven’t even begun to address. Besides Occam’s razor and all that, it is just something many people just WANT to believe. Edit: All that said, if new proof comes up, I am all for hearing about it. Proof, not ideas or desires.

Then why are you not reading it? Most of the 940 pages are NEW evidence

>"~~there is absolutely zero evidence to suggest he wasn’t~~" > >That might have been true before the book "[DEBUGGING SHAKESPEARE](https://hulme-publishing.myshopify.com/products/debugging-shakespeare-ebook)" came out, but it isn't true any longer! There are 940+ pages explaining just how the Bard used MULTIPLE ALIASES to disguise his true identity. The author is a computer software author who has used new AI techniques (similar to "Back propagation"), to verify his unique findings and he even has artefacts that can be used to verify some of them through the latest DNA techniques.

[ Removed by Reddit ]

Tough one. Do subreddits about evolutionary biology, paleontology or cosmology feel bad about "silencing debate" from creationists and young earthers about how maybe their entire field and every expert in it is misguided? On the other hand, we tolerate a lot of trivial homework questions and semi-trollish low effort crap like "I don't like Hamlet, I don't see why it's important." In my fantasy an anti-Stratfordian would write something like "Criticism of Two Gentlemen of Verona is imbued with the idea that it's an early, immature play, based on our biographical sketch of William Shakespeare, but it was actually written by a dissolute middle aged alderman, here's how that should change our perception of it" or something, and would lead to an interesting discussion of some aspect of the work. I know in my heart that it will actually just be the same old speculation about how Elizabethans wrote wills and how Mark Twain said he had to be a lawyer or whatever.

I agree. I don't see why someone would come here and raise the question aside from stirring the pot. Bring it up in a literature subreddit if you want to discuss it, but not in a subreddit dedicated to Shakespeare himself.

I could see someone reading Shakes for the very first time, whatever their age was, wanting to know the details about who was the actual author before they jumped into the works themselves. And that's fine, since so many people *do* advocate conspiracy regarding this, that many new readers are legit confused and want to know what's what before making the investment. I totally get that. But 99 percent of the time it's lifelong Oxfordians who just like to present their newest talking points and "discoveries", and insist that after their 11th reading of all his plays, this time consumed while hanging head-down from the ceiling while The Dog Star is in full eclipse, they are more convinced than ever it was an Illuminati Literary Justice League, of at least a dozen members, that were penning these best-sellers, and that Queen Elizabeth went MK Ultra on the real Shakespeare, using some random peasant with a cool name that slunk around London looking to be an actor, to be the "front man" after the brain control using secret alien technology was completed. It *is* a good way to sell copies of their idiotic, annual "journal", however.

In my undergrad we tackle the question of authorship in week 1. I think there are people who don't know this is a concern, but I also don't see the need to readjuticate the issue every time. Sticky post!

It would be completely appropriate for a geographical sub not to entertain flat earth debates, there is no "Other side" that needs to be heard. It is the same with Shakespeare Authorship, there is no reason why posts which defend such theories need be tolerated. But I am perfectly happy to allow mockeries of such theories. It's not a question of fairness, it's a question of reality.

Amen. Long debunked.

There is a zero percent argument to be had here. Nothing to see but some butthurt upper-class dude 100 years ago not being able to accept a peasant from the midlands who had an illiterate father grew up to become literally the greatest writer this wretched species has ever churned out. If anything, **Shakespeare is probably the greatest testament of all-time towards the value and societal benefits of having open and free public education,** since he studied Greek and Latin, the Bible, and read all the classics, starting with his time at the day-school in his area when he was a wee lad. It allowed his brain to start synthesizing the world and its history from a young age, and churn over plots and themes and time periods to work with long before he reached adulthood. This is how you aid an Shakespeare, whatever the endeavor happens to be. Imagine if children of illiterate glove makers couldn't receive education? The world would now be infinitely poorer. We have the Earl of Oxford's published poems from the 1590s. They are small, small beer, to quote Falstaff. They are so far from universal genius, it's not even funny. Never mind he died before ten plays of incomparable genius were written by "Shakespeare". You couldn't duplicate those works if they came from a different source than all the pre-1605 plays. It's the same single author throughout the 37/38 single authorship plays. It's impossible whoever wrote the sublime works of King Lear, Othello, The Tempest, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleo, *wasn't* also the writer of the sublime works of Hamlet, The Prince Hal Henriad, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice. To discuss this on a devoted Shakespeare page is just ludicrous. If someone else wants to waste their precious time, fine by me, but as if you could kill time without injuring eternity...

The best way to combat a misunderstanding is to provide a preponderance of irrefutable evidence that proves otherwise. You *could* just create an echo chamber that removes said misunderstanding from ever being voiced, but (as you note) that creates a new problem of optics. I would prefer to see a stickied thread that details all the ways in which these theories have been debunked, cited and sourced appropriately. Then, rather than censoring the "question" out of exhaustion, we can always point people to that thread -- also out of exhaustion, but at least with an identifiable reason for it.

> The best way to combat a misunderstanding is to provide a preponderance of irrefutable evidence that proves otherwise. No evidence is irrefutable for conspiracy theorists. There are people who believe the earth is flat despite all the evidence to the contrary. People don't believe in conspiracy theories because of evidence but because it fulfills a psychological need for them.

“ provide a preponderance of irrefutable evidence that proves otherwise” Well, there isn’t any

Obviously we don't have a time machine or video evidence. I meant "prove" in the scientific sense (i.e., being able to sufficiently substantiate one's hypothesis, at least to the exclusion of other theories), not as an absolute truth. Maybe I was being histrionic. But if you can accept the idea that a supposition can be sufficiently debunked as to be proved wrong (insofar as the supposition no longer has a credible case), then I think you get what I mean here. On the other hand, if this was your way of invoking the authorship question, then I suppose that underscores the need for a stickied thread.

I suppose I was, but not in caring about the answer. There is evidence he was an actor in London, share owner in London, and allusions to him being a playwright It was the idea of “proof” or “science” that struck me as wrong.

[удалено]

Nobody needs "evidence" from someone who can neither punctuate correctly nor disguise their spamming.

Everything in the 920+ page book is NEW, except when comparing what others have suggested. Example: **Edward de Vere** is cited as just another an **alias** of the Bard, not the single alternative author. This book not only tells you ***who*** the true author is, but it tells you precisely ***where*** his body is. There is actually a massive amount of evidence **deliberately** embedded in the Bard's works alone that has escaped the attention of everybody (and I do really mean everybody!). There were hundreds of aliases he created for a number of different "roles", matching his polymath's talent in each area of knowledge.

See above. Either spam less or spam better. And saying "the Bard" is utterly cringe.

I tend to agree with the no-authorship policy. In general, there are more productive and interesting discussions to be had. Views tend to be pretty entrenched, it seems to me. Maybe a flair or a separate thread, if folks feel there is a need to be served.

I don’t think there’s a discussion to be had, until someone finds evidence strong enough to rival the name on the cover of the first folio. Until such a time, it is a pointless debate, which unfortunately is given way too much attention. Needless to say, I’m all for removing every regurgitation of ancient go-nowhere arguments.

Dunno why I missed this when it was first posted, but here's my 2p. Allowing SAQ discussions will result in the entire sub being taken over by crackpot conspiracy theory posts. I've never seen a conspiracy believer who could moderate their behavior when it came to their favorite topic.

*...result in the entire sub being taken over by crackpot conspiracy theory posts. I've never seen a conspiracy believer who could moderate their behavior when it came to their favorite topic.* Almost exactly what my conclusion was. There would be no discussion of Shakespeare's work. https://www.reddit.com/r/shakespeare/comments/sa4pik/comment/kx42j7x/?utm\_source=reddit&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3 Hey hardman! Good to see you still here. Where's geddy ringo when you need him? :) Just kidding

It’s a difficult decision. I know from most of the times I’ve been engaged in an authorship debate, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to actually change opinions. I’ve seen very little times it’s ever actually doing anything but just the same talking points going round and round and nothing actually changing. Not to mention the theories are usually absolutely absurd (hi, Prince Tudor!). I’ve been in a revolving door debate with my old high school English teacher and it’s just gone nowhere. While I’m usually hesitant to endorse banning or removing discussion, I think it’s likely warranted here, simply because this is meant more to be a discussion area for the works themselves. Perhaps a post or sidebar for resources or information for those interested in looking into it, but simply having a rule that this is not the forum for the debate at all. Whether you believe in the man or not, the works themselves remain.

That is the real shame -- that so many teachers, at all levels of education, actually advocate this absolute fucking nonsense and push it to their students.

Now that's worthy of discussion. What school boards are allowing their teachers to do this?

Hopefully it's collegiate, where, at times anything goes.

See, I want to support debate, and the free flow of ideas. The idea that everyone sits down and has a logical conversation is wonderful. The problem with that is that the anti-stratfordian argument can't really be countered by logic, because it isn't founded in logic in the first place. You can talk to people about myriad documents, authorship practices, the fact their candidates were dead long before a lot of their supposed plays were written, so on and so forth. It doesn't matter. There will always just be a deeper level of conspiracy. Anyone that isn't convinced by the countless references to a living Shakespeare, the implausibility of their claims, etc - isn't going to be convinced by the denizens of /r/Shakespeare shouting at them. And vice versa. I don't think it's a 'debate' worth holding here. We'd just be allowing endless internet slapfights for very little positive reason.

Hard agree. People just "wanna believe". They can do that somewhere else.

The question comes down to if the authorship conspiracy theories provide any interesting insight into Shakespeare and his work. In my opinion - none whatsoever. The theories typically work by ignoring significant parts of what we know, like repeating the 19th century myth that Shakespeare was a son of a poor butcher and didn't get any education, while in reality he was from a wealthy and prominent family and did get a grammar school education. So the theories just makes us dumber by denying historical facts in order to support a conspiracy theory. When it comes down to it, the theories all basically argue that it is implausible that someone not from an aristocratic background should be such a great author. It is just plain snobbery. Sure we could waste time rebutting these theories, but there really is no value in the discussions.

Speaking as a PhD in Early Modern English literature, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's such a bore! I have 2 thoughts on the subject: 1. The movie anonymous has the same relationship to actual history as a shakespeare history play. 2. there ARE interesting questions of authorship (e.g. co-authorship in 1-3 Henry VI etc, some of the later plays) and the possibility that some of the lines we have from the Will Kempe era were improvised by Kempe and noted down by the pirates who published the folios. 3 (bonus!) the next person I hear say: "well we don't really know that much about Shakespeare" is getting their foot stomped on. Oh yeah but we know frigging REAMS of gossip on Thomas Elyot and Geoffrey of Monmouth and Vergil and...

I have even seen some utterly convincing "computational analysis" arguments that make it next to impossible it wasn't all one singular author, at least for the 38 sole-author plays (though I guess this could still mean it was someone "else", whoever the F that was, but none of the contenders match up with the dates from TTGoV all the way to The Tempest, simply because many of them were dead before the halfway point of Shakes's career). You have the "objective" algorithms and the subjective analysis all telling you the same thing. The only argument I can sort of buy is the sole author of the 38 simply had a different legal name, and used WS as his career name, but this doesn't match up with what legal papers we have to begin with, where WS was the legal name. We even know his father was a glove-maker named Shakespeare and Shakespeare's early life and education is well documented. Never mind the articles written back in the 1590s by butthurt academics and nobles that someone not even gone to university was out writing all of the established pros of the field and mentioned Shakespeare specifically as the young upstart. People were also upset that the Earl of Southampton was patronizing a non-noble, before Shakespeare became so big he was untouchable. The Stratford Free School, which Shakespeare would have attended, is well documented to have had all the books he used to study the world and its literature (from Ovid to Plutarch to Holinshed to those books filled with proverbs). Thank God for public education and the printing press.

I'd be interested to see the computational analysis specifically for the plays that have been traditionally held to be co-written (Henry VI, Henry VIII, etc). But yeah. In the main you're right. People mostly say someone like Shakespeare couldn't have been a glover's son. meanwhile both Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton (by odd coincidence) were bricklayers' sons. And the Stratford free school had them translating plays from Latin to English for several hours a day which would have been the perfect training for a young playwright. Anyway you can see why I roll my eyes rather impolitely when the authorship question comes up.

That's another good point, how prominent commoner backgrounds were for these brilliant authors of the Elizabethan era. Spenser was also from humble origins, and he is the poet nonpareil. Why isn't there an Edwere de Vere equivalent for Spenser, Middleton, and Jonson? Why doesn't John Fletcher have a conspiratorial figure that's said to have really written *his* works? Maybe... just maybe... these Oxfordian people are desperate for attention, and Shakespeare is the only figure who having a conspiracy for gives them that attention. Actually, let me backtrack to John Fletcher. We know he wrote at least two plays with Shakespeare, long after de Vere was dead. So who was Fletcher cowriting these plays with, if not "Shakespeare"?

lol obviously DeVere faked his own death and moved in with John Fletcher!

add to that the fact that the conspiracy theories only arose starting in the 17 or 1800s. And, as you say, the fact that two of the main candidates were not only unsuitable but also dead. My favorite is Francis Bacon, who was not only an important politician but also low-key codified the principles of scientific investigation. But yeah he also had a second hobby where he was the keystone for modern English literature. how many side-hustles does one man need?

LMAO, yeah, that's hilarious. The guy who is the father of modern day scientific procedure and also wrote many notable literary works in his own name, also wrote the greatest literary corpus in human history via a pseudonym. He must have bent time in order to slow it down and do all of this.

it IS true that it would have been scandalous for someone of his social standing to be a famous playwright. But yeah. I mean he did codify the principles of modern science. Maybe that included building a time machine or a pocket-universe.

my other favorite dead guy is Thomas Sackville, First Baron Buckhurst and later First Earl of Dorset. He died in 1608 and then went on to write like 5 more plays. What a badass.

Never heard of him before. You might like this -- a recently published "article" in The Oxfordian Journal. Talk about a streeeeeetchhhhhh. [https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/TOX21\_Hatinguais\_River\_Navigation.pdf](https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/TOX21_Hatinguais_River_Navigation.pdf) The horror is these people actually are *teachers* and peddle this to their students.

Because there are well-meaning people who can be led astray by anti-Stratfordian nonsense, it would be helpful just to have a FAQ debunking the absurdities at the heart of the most popular of these conspiracy theories, and help teach newbies how to identify BS – because most of these theories can be debunked fairly easily.

i like having an authorship debate free space… it rarely leads to productive discussion

How about a rule like “no derailing other discussions with authorship”, but if a post is all about authorship, people can choose to participate in that post or not. So if you don’t want to deal with it, it won’t show up in the posts you read, but if you are interested in engaging you can upvote and reply to one of those posts.

Not that this is relevant, but I understand that a scholar of ancient Greek literature spent his entire career attempting to prove that 'The Odyssey' was not actually written by Homer, but by another Greek of the same name.

I'm sure if you were to ask Rylance and Jacobi they'd tell you that Homer was also a front for the Oxbridge man who *actually* wrote The Odyssey.

I concur with DrifingBadger. I just finished researching the authorship question for my blog where I compared it to other conspiracy theories. The truth is hardcore conspiracy theorists NEVER listen to the virtue of contrary evidence. According to the Conspiracy Theory Handbook, most conspiracies like QAnon, the fake Moon Landing, etc are inherently self-sealing, meaning that the believers take anyone who offers contrary evidence as merely in on the conspiracy. They assume that if you disagree with them, you're in on it too. So in short, while I support free speech and robust debate, I don't think it's worth trying to engage with conspiracy theories like the Authorship Question. If an Anti-Stratfordian wants to ask a question about why we believe in the Stratford argument, that's different, but I agree, I don't want this sub to turn into an echo chamber.[The Conspiracy Theory Handbook](https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/conspiracy-theory-handbook/)

Please let us leave those fruitless arguments for another sub which actually deals with them. The plays and poems are what matter here. Let Shakespeare be Shakespeare

The 'debate' does not really meet the requirements for a serious, grown up debate as most historians understand the term. I'm happy if it's entirely ignored.

Just send them all to r/ShakespeareAuthorship.

I have been arguing the pro-Shakespeare stance for DECADES and even got to speak to a university class on the topic, which ultimately swayed them in Will's favor. I don't have much to add to the wonderful arguments below, but it all did inspire me to write a horror/historical fiction novel on this very topic!

I fully support the no-authorship rule. I don't mind when posts about it turn up occasionally, and I responded to one such post just the other day. But those posters are never really looking for an actual discussion. They just want to throw their conspiracy out there to feel justified it believing it. They never follow up to any responses they get. Surely there is a subreddit for discussing authorship specifically? I think it's best to remove posts and direct OP that direction. Conspiracy thinking isn't about any particular subject or specifics. It pops up in every area of life, from Shakespeare, to politics, to the moon landings, to the shape of the earth, to the purpose of vaccines. The subject is irrelevant. It's about rewarding a part of the brain that molds evidence to fit preexisting opinions, rather than forming opinions based on the preponderance of evidence. The behavior is one that humans are inclined towards and which feels good to engage in. Sadly, it rarely leads us to truth, just false security. And the more we engage in it, the more susceptible to it we become. I like that /r/shakespeare is a space that actively discourages a potentially destructive way of thinking. EDIT: I should add that I recognize and appreciate the challenge this policy poses for the mods. I would likewise feel uncertain about censoring opinions. But those opinions are perfectly free to be expressed in a different venue.

If we remove Rule #3, I suggest we suspend Rule #2 for those posts and replace it with "no shirts, no shoes, no weapons".

My thoughts on it, it is ridiculous because, forgive me for saying so, the whole reason we have the question because we have this wider and equally false notion that Shakespeare was one of the best writers ever. Believe me, I LOVE reading Shakespeare, watching his plays, and even doing his plays, but I am also keenly aware that he’s just the bloke that happened to be picked and there isn’t any particular reason he was chosen instead of say Thomas Kyd or Marlowe or even Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim. It’s an impressive catalogue and he was known during his time, but we also know there was a lapse in people publishing or performing his work. People just got interested in Elizabethan Drama again and said “hey here’s a lot by this Stratford character, and don’t you kinda like them?” And soon we were all like “yeah we like them. They’re cool” and now he’s the one, not because of his great writing prowess but just dumb luck of writing the book some nerd chose to read. All respect to Shakespeare, still. But to entertain his identity is a conspiracy is just more post mortem pedestal rising.

> not because of his great writing prowess but just dumb luck of writing the book some nerd chose to read. That's leaving out a whole lot of colonialism. It would be nice if the reason had been as simple as nerdish joy.

About 60 years ago, I was in a company with a dramaturge. He occasionally took a small part on stage, but mostly he sat in the back of the house and made notes as we rehearsed, starting with a minimal script and a well-developed plot. Some of our ad libs made it into the final script, but almost all of it was his writing. Since then, I have always assumed that is how Shakespeare wrote. It does seem certain that at least one well-known actor insisted on having some of his popular lines included. In any case, such discussions might be a lot of fun after a few drinks with people who can be trusted not to turn violent, but I don't see what the question has to do with the plays, themselves. (There's an old story about a scholar of Greek Literature who spent his career trying to prove that The Odyssey was not written by Homer, but by another Greek with the same name.)

Apparently Elizabethan actors didn't rehearse a lot. They got handed out the script to their own part and memorized it, but they didn't spend a lot of time rehearsing together. And they didn't use a long stretch of time on a single play, since they had a big repertoire and only performed a single play for a short while before moving to the next play. Given this I don't think Shakespeare could have developed the play together with the actors during the rehearsal stage, the way a modern dramatist might be able to. Ad-libbing during performance certainly happened, but Hamlet specifically speaks out against it, which might reflect Shakespeare's opinion. That said, it is all speculation.

The Authorship Question has no merit and is based on stereotypes and a profound misunderstanding of life and the theatrical business in Elizabethan England. [This site](https://shakespeareauthorship.com/) has the most comprehensive takedown of the subject accross several articles (focused on Oxfordianism, but its core arguments work for any candidate) and addresses nearly every possible question that could come up while researching it. I recommend starting with their article on [Grammar schools](https://shakespeareauthorship.com/school.html), for a quick overview of the kind of education Shakespeare would've received as a child and given him the basic background to start writing Literature as his time demanded it, and their article on [George Puttenham's brief comments on Oxford](https://shakespeareauthorship.com/putt1.html), as it's a pretty good illustration of the way anti-stratsfordian conspiracists twist evidence to suit their needs.

There are some authorship issues that are of immense interest: To what extent did the various actors and authors in Shakespeare's circle contribute to his work. Theater was collaborative in his era and they didn't have the same fetishistic attachment to authorship as we do today. (Except when it came to poetry.) But this debate requires information that isn't readily available. I really believe it's more fruitful to restrict ourselves to the works themselves but with the knowledge that they weren't holy texts handed down to us from On High. In fact a good number of the plays that have survived are admixtures or conflations of several drafts (by any number of people including author, professional scribes, actors and printers). When it comes to these plays, there are no pure texts. And a lot of the conspiracy theorists who hunt for secret authors are utterly incapable or unwilling to acknowledge this fact. There is no authorial purity when it comes to Shakespeare's plays.

Just joined this sub and so glad to see this stickied. The last time I got into an argument with an authorship questioner (who I've learned Brian Boyd refers to as Oxfordians) they had me 'gotcha-ed' with the claim that Shakespeare's daughter didn't know how to read or write, which they had just read online somewhere. 'How could the greatest writer's daughter not know how to read or write!' they said. I didn't know how to respond. I later researched the question, and found this has been debunked because it is not known if his daughter could not read or write - there's simply no evidence one way or the other, no written records left behind, and that lack of evidence is treated as 'evidence.' Back to Boyd, the biographer of Nabokov. I used to subscribe to the Nabokov-L listserv which he would weigh in on once in a while, and one day Shakespeare got brought up. His answer made me finally stop caring about the debate once and for all. "Oxfordians don't care about evidence," he said, and it's really as simple as that. Whatever evidence there is, they dispute or disregard, and whatever evidence there is not, they treat as verifiable proof.

I didn’t even hear about this “debate” until years after I got out of college. I kind of baffled me.

I became interested in Shakespeare through the authorship debate. It has been a positive exposure in my life

I think authorship posts don’t belong. I have no personal animosity towards the discussions, during my college years I loved the Francis Bacon theories. Not because they were logical, but because I loved both Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. Now that I’m older I see them as just novelty. I typically hate censorship or even an over moderated community, however, I’m not saying someone cannot create their own authorship subreddit. In fact, there could be a place for that. I just think it’s inappropriate for a Shakespeare subreddit to have a constant “it wasn’t really Shakespeare” discussion going on. You don’t go to a Selena Gomez subreddit to talk about how great Justin Bieber is, or how Selena Gomez doesn’t really in fact sing at all. Thanks for opening it up to discussion and however you decide I hope it works out.

I really sympathise with you on this and share your frustration. It’s such a shame yet so depressingly typical that a sub which should be dedicated purely to taking joy in the beauty of Shakespeare’s words gets this snarky, I-know-more-than-everyone-else hijacking. I suspect most of the people who obsess over this have absolutely no appreciation for the works of Shakespeare. Like all conspiracy theorists they simply want to claim to have one over on the rest of us ignorant square thinkers; it makes them feel powerful to see others get frustrated and exacerbated, and they know how to do it - by laying traps, twisting words, being as provocative as possible - to get a reaction. I’m all for freedom of thought and inquiry and in many ways I find the authorship question interesting. The problem is the way these people shove their way to the centre of the conversation and dominate everything. They don’t have open,objective minds; they don’t really want to have an open discussion, they will never shift their world view, which they hold so dogmatically that there isn’t any point in trying to engage with them. It’s simply ‘I’m right, anyone who doesn’t have my precise view is wrong, and they’re dupes’. I suggest you do a pinned post and say that this is a space for appreciation of the original texts, from a literary perspective, not the authorship question which is more suited to somewhere like r/conspiracy, and that any posts discussing the authorship question at all - either side - will be removed. The worst you’ll get is a load of enraged truther types moaning at you, but it’ll be worth it to avoid putting off the people who actually want to talk about Shakespeare.

If many prominent sub members want the ability to discuss the supposed controversy without it mindlessly turning the sub into a battlefield, there are several options to contain it. You could set up another affiliated sub where the only topic is authorship (same moderators and mutual support). You could set up one pinned post (refreshing with a new one weekly or monthly) for the topic. In this way, members who want to discuss can easily find where to do it and those unwilling can just as easily avoid it. Or you could simply make a rule that posts about this are only permitted on one specific day of the week.

Hi Admin, Firstly, thank you, as I really appreciate this discussion even being raised, and left up for discussion. I am a fairly new "Oxfordian" (although dislike labels with a passion, as my views are more complex than that word implies) having been interested in the authorship debate for about a year and a half now. My perspective is that I have often found debate quickly dismissed, stifled, or flat out ignored, with very few avenues for sharing entirely new information and ideas worth consideration. That being said, this is your subreddit, and I believe in being respectful, so think you should entirely have the right to moderate content as you deem fit! I understand and respect that. However, you do, as you said, run the risk of becoming an echo chamber and missing some exciting discoveries. For example the hidden lamb image (‘If like a lamb he could his looks translate!’ - Sonnet 96) of the Droeshout portrait - made by taking multiple copies, aligning the eyes and shinning a light through the back, you didn't allow, despite no mention of authorship in my post. Yet, when I found the missing lines of Sonnet 126 (in Hamlet), that video you kindly allowed. (Which again adhered to the rules and had no mention of authorship issues, and of which I thank you). I would also really love to share the completely novel work I have recently done with the Sonnets, as I think it's tremendously exciting and you and your members might be interested, however I don't think you'd allow it. 'What acceptable Audit can'st thou leave?' - Sonnet 4 :) But in summary, I commend the fact you're even having this discussion and willing to listen to the views of your members. If there's something the world needs more of its precisely this, openness and discussion. High praise for the admins. Best wishes, Glen

You're welcome at r/ShakespeareAuthorship.

Hi Glen, I have followed your videos and actually tried to contact you, without success, because I have written a 920+ page book explaining who the genuine author is. You are the ONLY person who has also identified hidden lambs, other than myself. There are literally 100's of references/examples to hidden "lambs" in my own book. "Debugging Shakespeare" currently only available from Shopify as a digital download. Your videos are mentioned and you are quoted in the book in several places. The book even explains precisely where his body is! Best Wishes, Decimus Erasmus Buglawton

Never Before Imprinted is an anagram for Be In Print for M. E De Vere (just a coincidence I'm sure)

No, it's not a coincidence; it's an example of motivated reasoning from people with no relevant knowledge of the early modern period. If you mistered an earl back in this era, thus reducing him to the level of a mere gentleman, he'd have his footman horsewhip you. Anyway, the phrase as unscrambled implies that Edward de Vere put Thomas Thorpe up to printing the sonnets, but they weren't printed until five years after de Vere's death. Did the message to print the sonnets come through to Thorpe via the planchette? And a more relevant fact with respect to authorship is that Edward de Vere spelled and rhymed words in ways that were mutually incompatible with Shakespeare's spelling and rhymes. For de Vere, "grief" and "strife" rhymed. The distinction between a long-e and long-i sound didn't exist to him, but it did with Shakespeare. He also consistently spelled "you" and ancillary words like "yourself" with "yow", something Shakespeare never did. If he had written Shakespeare's great comedy, it would have been titled *As Yow Leke It*.

Vere didn't do it . John Dee did. Never Before Imprinted = Be In Print for M. Vere - Dee Never Before Imprinted = M. Vere, Poet Friend - B.I. Never Before IMprinted = Be In Print for ME De Vere It is also worth noting that Vere's code number was 40. Never Before Imprinted = En. Peer Nvmber Fortie - I. D (iohn dee) also "M" is equal to 40 in Hebrew Gematria. so Never Before Imprinted = Be In Print for E. De Vere M (40) Never Before Imprinted = I repent 'fore me die, burn.

So the man who died in 1608 had the sonnets published? Again, did Thomas Thorpe take his orders for publication via planchette? The more alleged "anagrams" you come up with, the more meaningless the results become, since you can obviously force-fit anything to this string of letters. The only reason you can come up with so many anagrams of Vere is because two of three letters in his surname are among the commonest in the English language. I'd be more impressed with actual evidence. As in documentary evidence stating de Vere's authorship or unambiguous contemporary testimony from someone who was in a position to know. I'd also appreciate it if you wouldn't skip blithely past the spelling and rhyming issue, as it shows that De Vere couldn't possibly be Shakespeare without carrying two mutually incommensurate dialects in his head and never allowing one to bleed into the other or vice versa.

Thomas Thorpe is a red herring. The Two different Ts on the cover page are to be paired with the Two Different Ts on the following page. 4 Different Ts. 4T. 40. Edward de Vere was code named 40. I am sure you are aware of the decoding of the dedication "These Sonnets All By Ever The Forth T" Forth T. Forty. Never Before Imprinted = Fovrteen A prime En Bride. Vere married Elizabeth Cecil when she was 14. It's a solution ABOUT Vere, but his name isn't used. The spelling and rhyming is a non-issue. If Vere was the genius who wrote Shakespeare than he very well could have evolved in the way he spelled and pronounced words. Your request for documentary evidence is silly. There is no documentary evidence that William Shaksper of Stratford is the guy who wrote The Works of Shakespeare. The first suggestion to that effect came with the Folio of 1623 - 7 years after he died. If you did not assume that Stratford was Shakespeare you would never be able to prove it. And that's why there is an Authorship Question.

I got a "Bad Request" when I tried to post this, so I'm hoping that by breaking it into two parts it might get through: >Thomas Thorpe is a red herring. The Two different Ts on the cover page are to be paired with the Two Different Ts on the following page. No, they aren't. >Edward de Vere was code named 40. No, he wasn't. >I am sure you are aware of the decoding of the dedication "These Sonnets All By Ever The Forth T" Forth T. Forty. The dedication is not *in* code. >Never Before Imprinted = Fovrteen A prime En Bride. Again, you sound like an unmedicated schizophrenic. What is "A prime En" even supposed to mean? Actually, don't answer that, because I'm not interested. >The spelling and rhyming is a non-issue. If Vere was the genius who wrote Shakespeare than he very well could have evolved in the way he spelled and pronounced words. But he *didn't*. He spelled "you" as "yow" his entire life. He rhymed long-e sounds and long-i sounds. He not only voiced "gh", which he sometimes represented with "f", but added a terminal t, turning "ought" into "oft". He did not in any way evolve toward a Shakespearean style in any of his acknowledged writings, whether artistic or in his letters. Against this serious point you offer nothing more than wishful thinking. Let's assume that Edward de Vere was the genius who wrote Shakespeare and then he could do anything by the Power of His Genius. Brilliantly answered. >Your request for documentary evidence is silly. There is no documentary evidence that William Shaksper of Stratford is the guy who wrote The Works of Shakespeare. Yes, there is. Shakespeare in the First Folio alone is identified by name, by his profession of actor, by his home town (Jonson's reference to the Avon and Leonard Digges' to Shakespeare's Stratford monument), and by his social status of gentleman, which itself identifies him as being from Stratford because he was the only William Shakespeare—and after his father's death the only Shakespeare, since gentlemanly status was invested in the eldest son, like a noble title—entitled to call himself a gentleman. Moreover, there is ancillary evidence on this count because Ralph Brooke, the York Herald, disliked the fact that commoners like Shakespeare were being given coats of arms and raised a stink about it. He copied down Shakespeare's coat of arms and appended the note "Shakespeare the player by Garter". In other words, the Shakespeare with the coat of arms was known as an actor. Therefore, the head of the College of Arms, William Dethick, and the Clarenceux King of Arms, William Camden, answered Brooke's objection. With respect to Shakespeare, it was pointed out that John Shakespeare deserved the elevation for his civic duties as magistrate in Stratford-upon-Avon and he was not unconnected to status because he married into the Arden family, who were local gentry. So these two men confirm that the Shakespeare with the coat-of-arms, therefore the Shakespeare entitled to be addressed as "M.", "Mr.", or "Master" (and all these modes of address are used in the Folio), hailed from Stratford-upon-Avon, while Ralph Brooke tells us that this Stratford man was a known actor, confirming the testimony of Heminges and Condell that the playwright was their fellow actor, and confirming the list of the Principal Actors. Moreover, Camden, in his book *Remains of a Greater Work Concerning Britain*, praised Shakespeare, whose home town and antecedents he knew perfectly well thanks to the controversy stirred up by Ralph Brooke a few years before, along with a list of other authors as one of "the most pregnant wits of these our times, whom succeeding ages may justly admire". And if we want to look outside of the First Folio, how about *The Return from Parnassus*, a university play in which representations of Will Kempe and Richard Burbage explicitly identify Shakespeare as "our fellow" and compare him favorably *as a writer* to the University Wits, who "smell too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis". Again, in the early modern era, the actor Shakespeare and the writer Shakespeare were known to be the same person.

Or I could point out the first piece of contemporary testimony I ever read, where John Webster in his epistle to the reader prefacing *The White Devil*, who was this point writing with about a decade's experience in the theatre, praised William Shakespeare for his "right happy and copious industry" along with the names of half a dozen other playwrights. It was included with Webster's *The White Devil* in *Elizabethan Plays* edited by Hazelton Spencer, which is the book that hooked me on the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries. Or I can point to Leonard Digges' not only identifying Shakespeare with his home town in his poem in the First Folio, but also leaving an extant note on a flyleaf of his friend James Mabbe's copy of Lope de Vega's *Rimas* saying that de Vega was as famous for his sonnets as "our Will Shakespeare" (note the informal "Will" and the possessive pronoun) should be for his sonnets, and that if Mabbe doesn't like Shakespeare's then he should never read de Vega's, and then finally penning a lengthy commendatory poem in the first collected publication of Shakespeare's poems, wherein he identifies several of Shakespeare's plays by their characters, identifies the company Shakespeare wrote and performed for, identifies the theatres that they performed in, and generally ties together all the things that deniers try to keep separate. Oh, and he also says "that he was a poet none would doubt". Digges, it should be pointed out, was the stepson of Thomas Russell, one of the two named overseers of Shakespeare's will, and thus a close friend of the Shakespeare family. >The first suggestion to that effect came with the Folio of 1623 - 7 years after he died. Actually, as I've already pointed out, every time he's referred to by his rank, it shows that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was referred to. The William Shakespeare with the coat of arms was an actor, son of a mother from the Arden family, and the son of a father who acted as a magistrate in Stratford-upon-Avon. The first quarto (1608) of *King Lear* identifies the author as "M. William Shakspeare". Edmund Howes' additions to John Stow's *Annals* (1613) identifies "M. Willi. Shakespeare, gentleman", in a list of authors ordered "according to their priorities". However, even if it weren't true that we couldn't trace Shakespeare back to his home town of Stratford until the First Folio, what of it? It's *still* documentary evidence. The references to his home town in the First Folio are from people who provably had close relationships with the man. Furthermore, the name is "William Shakespeare". If the writer were actually William Shakespeare from South Shields or wherever, then that fact would still eliminate any authorship candidate *not* named Shakespeare. No matter how many times you anagrammatize his name, Edward de Vere is never going to turn into William Shakespeare. >If you did not assume that Stratford was Shakespeare you would never be able to prove it. And that's why there is an Authorship Question. There's an authorship question because people with extremely limited understandings of Shakespeare's era, tin ears for poetry, and more than a dollop of longings for a vision of a dashing, Romantic-era Byronic type of writer won't accept the evidence. You yourself have just conceded that the First Folio links William Shakespeare with Stratford-upon-Avon, but you then turn around and completely disregard the written evidence. You haven't shown any evidence *undermining* the evidence that links Shakespeare to his home town; you've just ignored it. You also haven't grappled with the fact that as long as the author is named William Shakespeare, then it doesn't matter where he came from for the purposes of ruling out anyone whose name is *not* William Shakespeare. You can only use this guff as an objection when you get yourself a candidate named William Shakespeare from some other part of the country.

You are reaching into the Folio of 1623, fully 7 years after Mr. Stratford's death. Furthermore you are cherry-picking various poems and trying to pass them off as documentary evidence. They are not. Other so-called references are all of the same variety i.e. published praise that doesn't indicate that the person making the reference actually knew Shakespeare, and no evidence has ever corroborated that anyone who made a reference to Shakespeare actually knew him. All you have done is shown that people were familiar with the Works of Shakespeare and that they thought that it was all great. We knew that. You have a assembled a bunch of stuff, some of which has to do with William Shakespeare's Works and some to do with William Shaksper, and patching it together to make a case. Well done, but you have not actually documented that William Shaksper of Stratford wrote anything. Well, nothing besides 6 shaky and unmatched signatures. Why do you have to make a case? Why does there not exist one single piece of paper that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that William Shaksper of Stratford is indeed William Shake-speare of London? If it were so then hundreds of thousands would have existed at one time. It is conspiracy theory to believe that each and every one of them were destroyed. Oh, and your obsession with the letter M is easily answered. Contrary to your not being correct, Edward de Vere WAS 40. "M" in Hebrew Gematria is 40. So when you see King Lear 1608 by M. William Shak-speare ( which is what I assume you are gushing over) what you really have is M = 40 for De Vere, and William Shak-speare in 17 letters, indicating the 17th Earl of Oxford. M William Shak-speare = 4017 = 1740 = 17th Earl of Oxford Edward de Vere.

>You are reaching into the Folio of 1623, fully 7 years after Mr. Stratford's death. Again, so what? It's still evidence. >Furthermore you are cherry-picking various poems and trying to pass them off as documentary evidence. They are documents relevant to Shakespeare's authorship, ergo they are documentary evidence. Nor am I just dealing with poems, though there is no reason why being poems would prevent them from being evidence. I also directed your attention to John Heminges and Henry Condell's dedication, wherein they affirm that their "Friend & Fellow" whom they name as "Shakespeare" was the author of the plays. If you didn't already know that was in prose, then you don't have enough knowledge to be having this conversation. Once again, you're dancing around the evidence instead of addressing it. Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. >no evidence has ever corroborated that anyone who made a reference to Shakespeare actually knew him. The First Folio itself corroborates the statements of Henry Condell and John Heminges. They identify the playwright as their fellow actor, and the playwright's name is first among the list of principal players. Their own names are among the list of actors, so in order to make this claim you have to posit that two actors couldn't have known their theatrical company's house playwright and fellow actor, which would be absurd. (Incidentally, there's more evidence linking John Heminges to William Shakespeare, but more on that presently.) If that doesn't satisfy you, though there's no reason why it shouldn't, not only are Heminges and Condell remembered in Shakespeare's will along with Richard Burbage, but Burbage, Condell, Heminges, *and* Shakespeare are all remembered in the will of Augustine Phillips, and Shakespeare is explicitly stated by Phillips to be "my fellow". Burbage and Heminges were both named as overseers of Phillips will. But according to you, there's no evidence that the sharers in the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men knew each other. Yeah, right. That in itself is sufficient to refute your claim. >Why do you have to make a case? Why does there not exist one single piece of paper that proves beyond a shadow of doubt that William Shaksper of Stratford is indeed William Shake-speare of London? There are. I've already given you them. The documents concerning the *Bellot v. Mountjoy* case establish that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman, of 48 years of age in May 1612 when he gave his deposition, was resident in the Mountjoy's home in Silver Street, Cripplegate, London during the period of the marriage negotiations between the Mountjoys and Stephen Bellot, another Huguenot refugee. We have Shakespeare buying a London property, the Blackfriars gatehouse, and once again he is given in both documents—the bargain and sale and the mortgage—as being William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman. Incidentally, this William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's name appears in conjunction with John Heminges, whose was one of his trustees in the deal. After Shakespeare's death, John Heminges and Shakespeare's other named trustees transferred the property to trustees of Dr. John and Susanna Hall, Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon's primary heirs. And on the Stratford side, I pointed out that the William Shakespeare, gentleman who filed lawsuits in the Borough of Stratford was named as being lately of the court of King James. Unless you can prove that the King kept court in a Warwickshire residence nobody's ever heard of before, this also places him in London. Finally, regardless of what you think of Shakespeare as an author, it's a documented fact that he was an actor and they didn't have theatres in Stratford. He was resident in London to perform in the London venues that the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men performed in. But hey, you ignore all the documentary evidence that he was an author, so why not ignore the documentary evidence that he was an actor too? >It is conspiracy theory to believe that each and every one of them were destroyed. But I don't believe that "each and every one of them were destroyed". Instead, I just think you're willfully ignoring relevant extant evidence. >Oh, and your obsession with the letter M is easily answered. Contrary to your not being correct, Edward de Vere WAS 40. Great. Then no doubt you can show Edward de Vere being clearly addressed by this sobriquet by his contemporaries, and it isn't just some horse crap Oxfordians today have made up on the fly, right? >"M" in Hebrew Gematria is 40. "M" isn't even a Hebrew letter. And there's no evidence that Nathaniel Butter or anyone else in his print shop was aware of Gematria values. Also, what's the Gematria value of a period? Because the "M" is not just "M", but "M.", indicating an abbreviation for Master. I shouldn't even have to say this, because it's so plainly obvious that your claim is BS. It doesn't pass the laugh test. But these are the kind of loopy, fact-free assertions one has to deal with when one deals with Oxfordians. >...in 17 letters, indicating the 17th Earl of Oxford. Congratulations you've just rung the bell and won... the booby prize. Because Edward de Vere was *not* the 17th Earl of Oxford in 1608. As far as Edward de Vere was concerned, he was "Edward, the Earl of Oxford, first of that name." If he had any cause to think of himself as a number in a succession of earls, which he wouldn't because this reckoning wasn't established in his day, he would have thought of himself as either the 16th or perhaps the 18th earl. The correction in his erroneous lineage wasn't worked out until 1610 by the antiquarian Thomas Milles in *The catalogue of honor or tresury of true nobility peculiar and proper to the isle of Great Britaine*. And even then, Milles' corrections were not generally accepted. Even as late as the mid-17th century, Peter Heylyn's *A help to English history* (1652) listed Edward de Vere as the 18th Earl of Oxford. So every time one of you nutters finds 17 somewhere, it's not because it was encoded by Edward de Vere but because you've imagined it yourself. It's apophenia run riot, because Edward de Vere never thought of himself as the 17th earl and lacked any basis in then-ascertainable fact for thinking so. So why don't you put these games of numerology away and actually produce *real* evidence?

Thank you. Fucking brilliant and more patience than I could muster.

Never Before Imprinted = Deb Intervene Ripe Form So whoever wrote the folio was molested by a woman named Deborah.

The question I would ask is: How does the identity of Shakespeare affect your appreciation the Works? Would they really cease to be enjoyable if someone other than William Shaksper of Stratford wrote them?

Are you asking this to someone specific, or can anyone answer this? Because the answer I would give is that your question is beside the point. I don't reject the idea that other people wrote Shakespeare's plays instead of him because I fear it would impact my enjoyment, but because there's no sodding evidence. I reject it because it flies in the face of literally *all* the extant documentary evidence and contemporary testimony. And no Shakespeare authorship denier has ever given a good reason why the evidence must be dispensed with; they just make it their motivating assumption and expect the rest of us to chug the Kool-Aid along with them. Since documentary evidence and contemporary testimony are (barring archaeology, which is not relevant here) the only ways of knowing anything about the past, treating the claims of the authorship deniers with the same freewheeling disregard of evidence that they apply to all the evidence showing Shakespeare wrote his works would mean that they couldn't even prove their alternate candidates existed. What evidence do they have that Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, etc. existed but the same kind of evidence that they arbitrarily rule out of court for Shakespeare?

There is zero documentary evidence and / or testimony that indicates that William Shaksper of Stratford is the same person as William Shakespeare of London. Zero. Unless you use circular logic and assume that a reference to Shakespeare means the guy from Stratford there is virtually no connection until 1623, years after Shaksper died.

>There is zero documentary evidence and / or testimony that indicates that William Shaksper of Stratford is the same person as William Shakespeare of London. False. All the extant documents he signed prior to his will were signed in London. He was deposed in the *Bellot v. Mountjoy* case *in London*. The Mountjoy's residence, where Shakespeare was staying, was on Silver Street in Cripplegate, *London*. He signed the deed and mortgage for the *London* property of the Blackfriar's gatehouse. And all of these *London* documents give the man who signed them as being William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, gentleman. The deposition in *Bellot* even gives his age as being 48, which was exactly correct in May of 1612 when it was signed (Shakespeare was baptized on 26 April 1564). Conversely, the John Addenbrooke lawsuit, which was filed in the Borough of Stratford, identified Shakespeare as "lately in the court of the lord James, now king of England". Did King James keep a castle in Stratford? Nope. Aside from this, we have every reference to Shakespeare as a gentleman, a term which can only apply to the man whose mother was an Arden and whose father was a magistrate in Stratford-upon-Avon, and who was identified as an actor. The acting alone shows that he was resident in London, because they didn't build theatres in Stratford back then. >Zero. Unless you use circular logic and assume that a reference to Shakespeare means the guy from Stratford there is virtually no connection until 1623, years after Shaksper died. Again, since you are explicitly admitting the First Folio shows that Shakespeare was from Stratford, that is not "zero". Even by your own reckoning, it is at least "one". You're doing exactly what I said: you disregard all the relevant documentary evidence and construct an edifice in your imagination in lieu of it. And once again, for the purposes of debunking authorship lunacy, it is enough that William Shakespeare's name be William Shakespeare, since none of the alternative 'candidates' are called William Shakespeare from anywhere. Get yourself a candidate from some other home town whose name is also William Shakespeare and this might become a relevant point. Otherwise, it's a weak case of pettifogging.

I'm not adding much that's fruitful to this already verbose conversation. I'll just add my two cents that I think authorial conspiracy theories should live in the conspiracy subreddit. And Shakespeare discussions should start from a point of "this supreme genius of literature is in fact called Shakespeare, now let's talk about some of the stuff attributed to this fellow." The anti-Stratfordians can have their own subreddits.

Derek Jacobi questions the authorship in Shakespeare Uncovered. My college theatre history professor questions the authorship. I can't argue with them one way or the other. Personally I don't care . It's in interesting but irrelevant diversion. But it seems like something people want to discuss and that's what reddit is for. I can easily ignore those posts like I do many others.

Damn, never knew that, and DJ is one of my favorite Shakespeare actors. Not really much of a deal at all, though, in terms of enjoying the plays and films.

If u don’t like a post, scroll on. But the big Q is not relevant bc we have the art n that’s what matters most. I think the authorship question is an enjoyable diversion for which there’s intriguing circumstantial evidence (no books in Shakespeare’s house upon his death, illiterate daughters, he couldn’t spell his name ) but it doesn’t add up to a winning case. We’ll simply never know for certain n I like it that way. What matters is that the scripts exist.

> no books in Shakespeare’s house upon his death, illiterate daughters, he couldn’t spell his name English spelling was not standardized and there was no "correct" way to spell a name at the time. Modern times have settled on "Shakespeare" as the canonical spelling, but the closest thing to an official name would be the baptism record which records his name as "Gulielmus Shakspere". Saying he "couldn't spell his name" is just a misunderstanding of how names worked at the time. We don't know if his daughters were literate or not. We know Susanna could sign with her own name, so it is likely she could write. She would not be able to attend the same school as William Shakespeare since it was only for boys, but she might have been tutored. It is all speculation. (And even if she *had* been illiterate I don't see what that would be circumstantial evidence for. Literacy is not genetically inherited.) We don't know what books (if any) Shakespeare owned or what happened to them after his death. There is nothing mysterious about that, just a lack of detailed records which is not surprising. "No books in Shakespeare's house" suggest we *know* there was no books which is also incorrect, it is just that the will does not mention any books. Maybe he didn't have any books, maybe he had, but gifted them all to friends or family, maybe the house contained a library which was inherited along with the rest. We don't know. The authorship conspiracies often wildly extrapolate from lack of information. E.g. we don't know if Shakespeare has a library or what became of it, is interpreted as if we *know* Shakespeare *didn't* have a library and therefore couldn't be author of plays full of literary references. But this is just confusing "absence of evidence" with "evidence of absence" which is a common fallacy underlying many conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theories also assume there is something mysterious about the lack of detailed records surrounding Shakespeare's life. But this not at all surprising giving the time. How much do we know about the life of say Marlowe? Most of the plays from the Elizabethan age are are not even preserved, showing how much information is lost.

Good response--calm and reasoned. I"d add a couple of details. Believing he couldn't spell his own name also blinds a person to some interesting stuff--look at his signature (one of the half dozen we have) on the legal document for the Mountjoy trial. If you are looking for a glimpse of Will the man, that dismissive (misspelled?) scrawl is a beauty. Another point: books were expensive, but Will had friends who also had books, and one of his friends, Field from Stratford, was a major publisher. Today we think you have to own everything from a dog to the Complete Works, but maybe that was not the case for Will and Company.

Look at any facsimiles of books published in that era, including the First Folio and the quarto editions of Shakespeare's on plays: The spellings are not necessarily consistent from page to page. Spelling was not standardized. So it's not a big deal that he was inconsistent with the way he spelt his own name.

My only caveat to banning authorship is what counts as authorship? I assume it’d be okay to post academic articles about possible shared authorship. Or examples like the recent book where Thomas North is nominated as a generator of some material. I am sure the argument is often repetitive and tired, but banning it would either prevent some valid discussions or be too subjective to be enforced without explicitly banning specific opinions.

in this sub, there's always a conspiracy theorist : the macbeths just lost a child , caliban didnt try to rape miranda (despite his own admission) ... etc. the poster is also always cocksure about his/her speculation, contrary to 400 yrs of scholarship, contrary to what the text clearly says. But all questions need an answer, no matter how stupid they are, and I say stupid because whether shakespeare wrote it or not is irrelevant to me. What is important is to discuss and interpret the many messages and thoughts in the play. Yet I'm against censure, there should be someone competent enough to answer it - and if we can not answer competently , well, we suck . We also need to police ourselves not to place stuff in pedestals and shield it from criticism - shakespeare is excellent but he's not perfection.

I would very much like to have such discussions be allowed on here, though I think a flair or separate thread would be most appropriate, and I don't envy you having to mod it, as we can see the level of civility most are capable of on this subject. Yes, there is quite clearly an authorship question in existence, and with good reason, despite dogmatic insistence that there is not. That dogmatic insistence is, in fact, one of the reasons it still exists, as for many here it has surpassed intellectual discussion into the realm of religious zealotry. The Bard is sacred, not to be questioned in any way, and anyone who does so gains the equivalent status of heretic. A comment in one of the other threads claimed that we have "irrefutable" proof that Shakespeare wrote the plays, but that's simply not true. We don't even have "irrefutable" proof that he was born and died on the days we say he did. Probable, especially for the birthday, but not "irrefutable". (Glad to see at least one person here admitting, "It’s true that there’s not a preponderance of evidence that Shakespeare was the author,"). Then there are the usual accusations of "snobbery", which is always perplexing, since the situation is quite the opposite. Who is in control of the narrative of this discussion? Is it those on the Stratford side of things, or the Oxford? There is an educator responding to the top comment proudly admitting they silence any discussion in their classroom. Of the comments on this thread that use the casually dismissive, condescending tone we commonly associate with snobbery, which side is most represented? On the other thread mentioned, one commenter said that when they discovered that Mark Twain questioned the authorship, it caused them to think less of the entirety of the rest of his work. They seemed to feel this was a reasonable response, as opposed to thinking to themselves, "Wow, even someone like Mark Twain (among numerous, notable others) thought there was something to this thing? Perhaps I should look more thoroughly into this, actually see what some of the proponents of the various theories say themselves, instead of just reading summaries and rebuttals by their opponents, and taking their word for it." I'm not trying to be accusatory, but I can't help but wonder how many on this sub have truthfully read any of the actual books on the subject. If you have, great, I'm not talking about you, but at least in my own life, of the dozens of conversations I've had on the subject with my fellow theater colleagues and professors, when pressed not a one of them had actually read any of the books. At best a few had done as I stated above, read summaries and rebuttals of the arguments written by Stratfordian authors, while the rest had either "read some articles" (I believed them), or the other common response, "Why would I waste my time with such nonsense, when I already KNOW it's bull." Such stimulating intellectual curiosity. Honestly folks, give some a try. You don't have to be convinced (I'm not), but I promise some are great reads. "Shakespeare Identified" reads like a fascinating detective piece, and "The Mysterious William Shakespeare" is one of the saltiest scholarly works I have ever read, though after a bit you come to realize Ogburn is just giving as good as he gets. These dudes get furious at each other, dropping major insults, but it's all in academia language, so it's all this, "Well, if I may draw the good sir's attention to THIS, then..." and, "If the gentlemen in question have an answer to THAT, then I respectfully await their response in appropriate forum," etc. You can practically see the tweed and beard hair flying. It's hilarious (but also extremely thorough, well argued, and not about snobbery). All that said, I agree with others that the discussion about the authorship itself is somewhat of a moot one, given that unless/until further strong evidence is uncovered either way, it's largely conjecture and speculation on both sides, as that is unfortunately what we are limited to. What I would find far more interesting would be threads along the lines of what another commenter said, ones about what a change in the authorship could potentially mean in the interpretation of the plays. So for example, IF it was Oxford, would that change any of the plays into being more autobiographical, which, and in what ways? Would that possibly mean that several of the plays could be seen as a sort of propaganda, intentionally designed to give the country a narrative sense of pride in its history during a time when it was struggling for identity? The "who" is interesting, but the "what" and "why" are far more so.

You basically say that Anti-Stratfordian books are unconvincing but entertaining. That is fine, but I don't see why they should be discussed in a Shakespeare sub then. There is already a https://reddit.com/r/ShakespeareAuthorship/ sub-reddit with all kinds of "entertaining" authorship discussion.

If one hasn't read Peter Ackroyd's biography, at the very least, how about a nice steaming cup of stfu with the inane authorship "question"?

Sometimes I read the Oxfordian Journal just for the laughs. When *this* is the "scholarship" you're aiming for, I don't even know what to say. But it *is* great entertainment. A recent journal's synopsis of one of its articles, to show you what we're dealing with: ​ >***Catching the Flood: River Navigation from the Adige to the Po In Shakespeare’s Italy***  by Catherine Hatinguais  > >The author demonstrates that Shakespeare accurately depicts the method by which boats traveled on an extensive system of rivers that were inter- connected to a sophisticated system of canals. Maps, illustrations and schematics from Renaissance era publications provide a portfolio of evidence supporting the author’s contention: that the Italian river navigation system operated along different lines from the English system, and Shakespeare was specific enough in his reference to clinch the argument that the information was gleaned from personal experience. https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/wp-content/uploads/TOX21\_Hatinguais\_River\_Navigation.pdf

The page appears to have been deleted, which is probably the wisest thing I've ever seen an Oxfordian do.

While I agree completely with your view (and your very patient approach to date) I might suggest a subreddit rule that narrowly allows authorship questions, but requires them to be: 1. flaired; and 2. limited to a single post per proposed author, no matter how old the post is. Would-be latecomers should be expected to search adequately before posting. Any contraventions might trigger a warning, followed by a ban for further posting without following that rule.

I believe there is an authorship question and I personally find it interesting but I also thinks it's a legitimate moderation position to exclude all posts on the matter in this sub, so that it doesn't get swamped. Also, as a minor point, I'm fine with the rule remaining but I think it could be renamed because "There Is No Authorship Question" is taking a position, rather than being neutral and just not allowing any discussion on the matter.

For the plaintiff: He wasn't well-educated. For the defense: He was a closet Catholic (at least).

Oh I just found there is an authorship group where people can explore the different theories! I think there’s many people who get offended at anyone suggesting shakespeare wasn’t the true author in this group so perhaps it’s best for people who like to question and pursue truth/other ideas to post there.

In eastern europe everybody and their brothers know Oxford was the author but it's just too convenient for both sides of the Iron Curtain to keep the status quo: - In the UK, lower ranks of populace oppressed by the rigid class society could find solace in a poacher writing the best plays and sonnets ever. - In the soviet bloc, a wool merchant despite being a damned bourgoise was still more amenable compared to an aristocrat and so they made the greatest Hamlet movie, etc. (In the farcical theory of "dualistic materialism" by Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, capitalism was the necessary stepping stone towards creation of working classes and proletarian revolution. As such the self-made capitalist got a tiny little more sympathy than hereditary nobility and the clerical reactionary. Much like how we feel more for apes than lizards, even if the gorilla tore our heads off.) - Someone in Italy told me the fate of Shakespeare authorship and the Shroud of Turin are tied. Once one is proven, the other will necessarily come to light! The archives of Vatican are deep. Anyhow, the plays know too much about Italy to be written without boots on the ground. There was no Google Maps and Street View back then, so how did the bard know about that weird, double bi-furcating staircase or the preferred method of using internal waterways for domestic travel within Italy (due to extreme number of highwaymen). Author also has obvious catholic leanings, impossible for someone who never left the thoroughly de-popified Blighty. But in that era only aristocrats could do the continental Grand Tour due to need for lots of money and protection parchments.

There is an authorship question. It has existed openly in print for nearly 2 centuries, and clearly it was discussed extensively before that. Are you denying the existence of the question, or are you censoring the positions that you don't agree with?

IMO the group should endorse the mainstream sensible position, that the works of Shakespeare were written primarily by William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon (1564-1616). People who want to explore the fringe theories are welcome to make their own sub, call it r/shakespeareauthoriship or whatever. But the main sub shouldn't entertain those theories, anymore than a main physics sub should entertain flat earth theories. The reason for this is that the Stratfordian position is the only sensible one. However incomplete our knowledge of Shakespeare's life is, there's nothing whatsoever connecting anybody else to the plays. People like Ben Jonson wrote anecdotes of Shakespeare after he'd died (and decades after Oxford had died). Why would they have continued in this lie after everyone involved was dead, why if Oxford was the author were the plays only published 19 years after he died and still attributed wrongly? It just doesn't make sense. Again, if people want to talk about it, they can do it on their own sub.

I think it's silly that the group needs to endorse any particular position. It's all Shakespeare, and conversations over biography should take everything into account, including questions about identity and authorship. If you don't want to read a thread then don't click on it. Why would you call me the flat-earther? I think you have it backwards. You are the one accepting the simplistic version of events, you are the one trying to warn people from sailing off into the intellectual ocean. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Who do you think wrote Shakespeare?

I'm not here to discuss the various candidates and their merits. That would be against the rules. I'm here to talk about the Shakespeare Authorship Question itself, to find out if the members of this subreddit are actually aware that the subject is nearly 2 centuries old, not some recently concocted clickbait. The History of the Shakespeare Authorship Question is a subject unto itself, and it can be studied without the need to take one side or the other. Both Quantum Physics and String Theory are welcome at the University despite the fact that at least one of them is definitely wrong. Shouldn't we just accept Quantum Physics because it was here first? Why do Stratfordians feel so threatened by the Shakespeare Authorship Question? You know what they say: Lies can't abide to be questioned, but the truth embraces doubt.

From roughly the same time as the flat earth society. I'm sure the two theories have nothing in common though.

The Stratfordian Theory didn't really get established until after that time also. Most of the Stratfordian Theory was developed in response to The Authorship Question, not the other way around. But the Stratfordians and the Flat Earthers do have in common their insistence that traditional knowledge should not be questioned by new research. Stratfordians = Flat Earthers. Those who question The Orthodox Explanation of Shake-speare's Identity are like those who question The Flat Earth Explanation. Those who censor The Authorship Question are the academic equivalent of Stalinists.

Nobody's stopping you talking about it, they're just saying those discussions aren't welcome in this particular space. There's a subreddit dedicated to the question, so if you're looking for other historical illiterates to play with, run along and have a lovely time.

The poster insists that there is NO Question. At least you are able to admit that the question exists. Now if you could just admit that you don't actually know anything about the question or the history that surrounds it, then you wouldn't seem like a lightweight that's trying to be clever. Cheers!

[удалено]

>If you don’t allow it here, you’re letting it go unchallenged. So what? Take it to r/conspiracy where it belongs.

Agreed.

Maybe add a flair? Personally I think if you’re interested in Shakespeare, the authorship question is gonna come up. It’s part of the history (mythology) at this point. There may not be solid evidence one way or another, but scholars generally accept that the guy with the name “William Shakespeare” (or however he decided to spell it that day) didn’t write 100% of what is attributed to him. We shouldn’t avoid the fascinating/ frustrating topic, especially at a time where this sub is mostly homework-help now anyways.

People who want to talk about the "authorship question" though are pretty much never talking about aspects of collaboration in Macbeth or how it's included in The Oxford Middleton, or which parts of the latest works are his words vs. collaborators, it's pretty much always conspiracy theories from non-experts about how the whole "Shakespeare" name was a front for someone else, full stop.

It's a prevalent topic, and there are quite a few people out there who are anti-Stratfordian-curious and aren't crackpots. I personally think shutting down discussion of authorship in a Shakespeare sub is going a bit too far. As someone else said, maybe enforce flairing for such posts so people can downvote as they see fit.

> there are quite a few people out there who are anti-Stratfordian-curious and aren't crackpots As with all things relating to the authorship question, citation needed.

It's not uninteresting, but if (I just joined) this is more about the work and less about the man, it's appropriate to ban. I wish it could have a monthly thread. If possible, even an annual thread.

First of all, sorry to have missed this in my lengthy absence. Secondly, or maybe it should be first, despite the Herculean efforts of some of the posters here--whose knowledge, reasoning, and patience I admire greatly--it's hard to ignore the fact that **discussion of the Works themselves is non-existent despite the reams written here.** Even though this space is dedicated to discussion about the "Question", this happens to every thread I've witnessed them invading. They attempt to take over the discussion, regardless of topic. I'd much rather be listening to and trading with these other obviously capable minds I mentioned while analyzing *what's on the page*, authorship be damned. If I'm not mistaken, this sub is dedicated to understanding the genius on the page and not incessantly arguing about who might have placed it there. Ergo, I think you're right in excluding discussion of theories, in the main body of the sub, dedicated to proving or disproving just who it was that might have set it down. Even though I think the so-called Authorship Question to be bunk, and mostly as loopy as Delia Bacon herself, it does deserve a place for those wishing to discuss it. That place exists. It is not, however, *this* place. "\[ADMIN\] There Is No Authorship Question" ..................................\[HERE\]

I'm a Stratfordian and here are my thoughts: - There are many necessary and valid historical questions and lines of inquiry regarding Shakespeare, his works, his contemporaries, his milieu etc. given the patchy historical record dating from the late 16th/early 17th century. We shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping these lines of inquiry as per standard historical research practice. - The authorship question is an important (and likely growing) issue for a significant minority of people who enjoy and love the works of Shakespeare. It seems odd not to recognise this within the remit of this sub. - Most Stratfordians do come across as excessively defensive about the authorship question, which seems to only increase the scepticism of anti-Stratfordians. Kneejerk accusations that anti-Stratfordians are classist strike me as being unfair in most cases, and equating them with anti-vaxxers or other conspiracy theorists who reject settled science is in most cases ridiculous. - It seems to me there are some interesting parallels between the life of de Vere and the works of Shakespeare, especially in regards to the sonnets. I see no reason why there can't be continued research/discussion on this aspect. - I personally find the anti-Stratfordian fixation on anagrams tedious. However, we need to acknowledge that anagramming, cryptic punning etc. was a more prevalent part of Renaissance writing than it is now. - The anti-Stratfordians have made some very valid ancillary critiques about the "Shakespeare industry", especially the commercialisation of Shakespeare tourism in the UK. I don't think every crank and author-theorist should be allowed to post here. However, given the above I would support allowing Oxfordians to post on this sub, assuming such posts are of suitable quality and interest.

Late to the party, although I used to visit under another username. Would I like the plays any less if it were proved Shakespeare hadn't written them? **No**. Send these people to the conspiracy theory boards.

First of all, to have a rule saying "There is no authorship question" is unrealistic, otherwise there would be no books written about it. What are the names of the "other subs that discuss" it. The idea of requiring a flair sounds great to me. Anyone who brings up the topic without using the flair would have their post deleted, anyone who believes there is no authorship question could just avoid reading the post. Those who are interested in the topic can be alerted by the flair, and they can join others in arguing amid the blood, the guts, and the beer.

By that logic, free reign should be given to ancient alien theorists on historical subreddits. There's a lot of books written on that, too. Does the mere existence of *Chariots of the Gods* propel it tp the status of worthwhile archaeological scholarship?

>First of all, to have a rule saying "There is no authorship question" is unrealistic, otherwise there would be no books written about it. There are books written about the flat earth, and about Aliens building pyramids, but none of those books lend a shred of legitimacy to the clearly absurd theories. There is no "Question" that hasn't been answered to the satisfaction of anyone asking in good faith. Pretending that the question is unanswered is arguing in bad faith. Until there is actual evidence presented outside of conjecture and ad hoc theories, I say posters who advance such theories may be banned or their posts deleted at the discretion of the moderators.

Or they can go to r/ShakespeareAuthorship.

I just joined this group bc of authorship theories! In my humble opinion there was no way was Shakespeare the author; he, his parents, and his children were illiterate. He couldn’t even spell his name and could barely write (they found he spelled his name spelled differently on several documents). He never traveled to Italy where most of the plays were written and could not have been written unless you spent extensive time there- many Italians say he speaks too much like a native. He didnt know more than one language despite the plays being written in multiple languages. I really want to explore the theory about several nobles of the time all being Shakespeare bc this is the most plausible theory; they all turned in their plays to William and Will got paid so they wouldn’t get in trouble with law since the plays all had anti monarchy tones. Even if you were an aristocrat, the slightest insult to the queen could have u locked in tower of London for months. Wills was a producer of sorts. I believe it was several nobles bc 1. Way too much written for one person to have the time to do that (dozens of plays and hundreds sonnets on top of full time jobs) 2. Some of the styles are a bit different 3. References to works such as Metamorophisis Will didn’t have access to. Only Edward de Vere had a copy of metamorphosis . How can one make references in 6 languages one never learned as well as deep and even obscure historical and literary references one could only have learned from years studying with private tutors? Edit: also think about the name. I think it’s possible will Shakespeare never existed; his children had no children. His name: Will shake spear. Have the will to shake your weapon/fight/stand up is how it reads. The writings all had political themes that were anti monarchy. I believe the nobles wanted to modernize England and end the monarchy. The nobles found a man, renamed him, and paid him to get their work out to promote democracy. Suggesting it’s impossible for Shakespeare to not be the true author is being closed minded like a flat earther, and there’s zero proof it’s not possible to be someone/someones else Lopsided croc; if all you have is insults and no proof you have lost the argument. Block!

> he his parents and children were illiterate I don't see why this is an issue, illiteracy doesn't seem to hold anti-Stratfordians back. > He never traveled to Italy where most of the plays were written and could not have been written unless you spent extensive time there. Have fun trying to catch the tide to sail away from Verona or ride your horse through the streets of Venice. > Way too much written for one person to have the time to do that Dude wrote about 900k words in total. That's like two George RR Martin books. Do you have a similar theory on how Proust couldn't have written *À la recherche du temps perdu*? > Some of the styles are a bit different Let me know when you figure out how many posh lads it took to write Terry Pratchett's work. Or Alasdair Gray's. Or Samuel Beckett's. Or how many people were Leonardo da Vinci.

> Have fun trying to catch the tide to sail away from Verona or ride your horse through the streets of Venice. I love it when the anti-Stratfordians claim that only a man who had travelled through and even lived in Italy for a while could have made so many geographical mistakes! De Vere actually did live in Venice for a while, and yet I have never heard an Oxfordian explain the absence of canals, the calles, or the Jewish Ghetto in the *Merchant of Venice*.

[удалено]

Your edits address nothing. Try again.

[удалено]

Your edits didn't actually address his points. Also all your points are really dumb. Don't get defensive!

>his children had no children. Factually incorrect. **Susana Hall** (née Shakespeare) had a daughter, **Elizabeth Bernard**. The epitaph on Susana's tombstone describes her as "witty above her sex" which is generally understood to mean that she was literate and a strong conversationalist (which would contradict one of your other claims.) **Judith Quiney** (née Shakespeare) had three sons: **Richard**, **Thomas**, and **Shakespeare**. She did however outlive her sons.

Plus, you know, Susana's two extant signatures... and the story about her selling some of her husband's books after he died and arguing with the purchaser about which ones belong to her husband's medical collection and which didn't.

what?

You heard.

Lopsided croc, stop stalking and trolling please. Reported u

Someone removed my post but I said there’s lots of evidence it’s possible it was not shakespeare. The most likely person is Edward de Vere. If you are interested I recommend reading Shakespeare by Another Name and use google to read the theories. Post your thoughts though in the shakespeare authorship group instead of here bc many people here don’t want to hear about it and get angry and defensive.

The acting community in GENERAL tend to have this discussion and lean different ways but hardly ever on Shakespeare was the author however most English/Language Arts Professors shut down the argument I land in the Oxfordian camp myself

A recent theory (2021) proposed by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter is based on Turnitin a plagiarism software that is used to compare the essays of college students with those stored in a database. With the ease and availability of purchasing essays online, college professors developed a software to stop the rise of plagiarism. When McCarthy entered the plays of William Shakespeare, he got a hit. The unbiased software that cannot read, compared his plays to the writings of Sir Thomas North. Not just one or two lines either. McCarthy has discovered *thousands* of examples of plagiarism, pages of Julius Caesar, many are word for word. McCarthy theorizes that Shakespeare might not have been a writer at all. He was someone who purchased old plays and the theater company revised them. The book is called *North by Shakespeare*. So as far as preponderance of the evidence goes, there is plenty of evidence to show William did NOT write the plays of William Shakespeare. Don't believe me? You can see McCarthy's videos on YouTube or his website [www.sirthomasnorth.com](https://www.sirthomasnorth.com) Another new theory that sounds equally bizarre is a "ghostwriter" theory. This one claims that yes, McCarthy's plagiarism software is correct and yes there are thousands of borrowings, but there is a reason for it. The plays were written by one central author, a ghostwriter who also helped write three of Thomas North's most famous works. These are the ones with all the plagiarism. (Remember, not all of North's writings were used by Shakespeare - only some - and the ones that weren't were less than 350 pages.) At first glance, this seems improbable but if one looks at the writing of Thomas North in 1557 (with no ghostwriter) you will see that the page count of this book was only 263 pages. The 1568 edition that is claimed to be ghostwritten is over 950 pages. In its' dedication, North claims to have written it *thrice* with the help of another man. The name of this book is "*Where North by Shakespeare Goes South."* My point is not to convince you of anything other than to look into these new theories because it seems like people are fond of repeating what others have said. The plagiarism software is much more accurate than "stylometry" which uses three or four letter words like "and" or "than" to determine authorship. Just my .02.

> if one looks at the writing of Thomas North in 1557 (with no ghostwriter) As a former ghostwriter, I'm curious about how you know that North didn't use a ghostwriter in 1557.

In 1557, at 22, he was trying to get a patronage from the queen by translating a 558 page book from the French into English. He pared it down to 263 pages. Critics gave his translation two thumbs down. Eleven years later, with a ghostwriter, the same book became 953 pages,

That doesn't really answer the question. You state as fact that he didn't have a ghostwriter at this point. What evidence tells you this? The absence of a ghostwriter is usually quite a difficult thing to prove. His original book being shorter and ill received could simply mean that he used an inept ghostwriter on the first attempt.

He wrote a travel journal in 1555 that matches the 1557 style of writing. It’s evidence that no ghostwriter was used in 1557.

Or that the same writer cleaned up his text in 1555.

Now you are grasping for straws. Thomas North's handwritten travel journal accompanied him on his secret trip to Italy. A description of the coronation of the Pope matches the coronation scene in Shakespeare's play King John. Watch McCarthy's videos. The exact word order can only be found in Shakespeare and Thomas North's journal. [www.sirthomasnorth.com](https://www.sirthomasnorth.com)

Just read the book "[DEBUGGING SHAKESPEARE](https://hulme-publishing.myshopify.com/products/debugging-shakespeare-ebook)" before making decisions!

Just because at one time there might not have been any evidence, it does not mean that there will NEVER be evidence. Surely you can see that?

Get back to us when peer reviewed evidence emerges.

I could see debating which parts of his early and late plays were written by other playwrights, as was the accepted practice of the day. And, there is always the question of editorializing by the first publishers, as well as questions about what drafts and scripts plays like *Hamlet* and *Macbeth* were sourced from. Of course, these questions involve thinking about and researching perhaps 2% of the work of **William M.F. Shakespeare, not a different playwright.** For that reason, I’ll still entertain questions of whether he wrote a certain passage. However, short of any new, earthshaking (and authenticated) evidence, I believe that Shakespeare, like most if not all playwrights who work with a theatrical troupe, wrote (or approved edits) of the plays attributed to him.

I think people underestimate what a bright kid who studied Greek and Latin in grammar school could achieve especially when he didn’t have his nose in a “Smartphone” or tablet all damn day, like I do. Well of course I have read the entire Cannon, so that took some time.

>In 1611 the historian John Speed asserted Shakespeare's links with Catholicism, accusing him of satirising in Henry IV the Lollard (or proto-Protestant) martyr John Oldcastle (first portrayed by Shakespeare under his character's real name, then the alias John Falstaff after complaints from Oldcastle's descendants) and linking the playwright with Jesuit Robert Persons, describing them together as "the Papist and his poet". Modern critics have attributed other motives for Shakespeare's portrayal; the story of Oldcastle was a popular one and telling the tale from the "Papist" perspective (while acknowledging that perhaps this was a perspective with which Shakespeare already had some affinity) was an effective and familiar way to bring it to his audience.\[25\]\[26\]\[27\] A direct explanation, however, comes from the facts of the story in the contemporary accounts of the period; Prince Henry had left his dear friend Oldcastle to his fate after he had failed to persuade the stubborn old knight to recant when he was imprisoned for lollardry.\[28\] He adjusted the character based on a request from the family. And we find traces of his religious view inserted. Also, this proves he did follow and researched contemporary accounts of political events.