Did a poorly-educated actor and father of twins really write the most preeminent, highly lauded plays in the English language? It is perceived as common knowledge that Shakespeare penned great works like "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet," and "Macbeth." But very little is actually known about the man who is now regarded as the greatest writer of English literature. Did the Bard actually write all the works with which he is attributed?
April 23 marks the 400 year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The debate about Shakespeare’s legitimacy has raged for decades, with doubters pointing to a number of reasons that Shakespeare is not the author that history has labelled him. A website devoted to The Shakespearean Authorship Trust, which presents arguments for eight other possible authors of Shakespeare’s work, suggests that the true writers could have been Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere or William Shakespeare. The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition even has a Declaration of Reasonable Doubt denouncing traditional evidence that Shakespeare wrote the literature attributed to him. The Declaration has an accompanying petition, which has been signed by 3337 people — including Mark Rylance, Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater.
The debate is not just another inflated conspiracy theory. A major reason for doubt is that not a single poem, play, letter or other document has been found written in Shakespeare’s own hand, aside from a signature on his will. With a massive amount of written material, how is it that not a single document in his handwriting remains? Additionally, all of Shakespeare’s work has extensive assumed background knowledge. His plays contain myriad foreign languages and references to other works. How could he have learned all these things without letter correspondence — or without an advanced education?
The most likely alternative for Shakespeare’s authorship is Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. There is a slew of evidence showing uncanny similarities between "Hamlet" and de Vere’s life. For example, he was kidnapped by pirates and left on the shore of Denmark. His brother-in-law wrote de Vere a letter that mentioned two courtiers named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Queen Elizabeth I, on whose court he served, is similar to Queen Gertrude. The Shakespeare debate has even made it to Hollywood. A 2011 movie titled “Anonymous” supports Earl de Vere as the true author. Or perhaps, as Virginia Woolf proposed, Shakespeare had an incredibly gifted sister who had a room of her own but due to oppressive gender norms could not publish under her own name.
So why does it matter who the real Shakespeare is? It matters because his works are unfailingly taught in high schools and universities. It matters that we may be revering the wrong author. And it matters that 400 years after Shakespeare has died, leading scholars are still debating this issue. In many ways, the debate seems to say more about us, the contemporaries reading these plays, than it does about Shakespeare himself.
Because if Shakespeare is not actually the author of his works, would that which we call a Shakespeare by any other name smell — or rather, read — as sweet?
