The Missing Author: The Shakespeare Conspiracy

Shakespeare was a writer of many plays like Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet but, some people believe that he did not write his plays. In some of the sources they would explain that shakespeare couldn't have wrote the plays. The others sources say otherwise, they say that he could easily imagine how it would be like to be rich and their for him being able to write the plays. From all the evidence that the sources gave, Shakespeare did not or could not write his plays because he was not educated well enough to be able to write the plays with such sophisticated language another reason that Shakespeare was not the writer there's not enough evidence such as copies of the plays.

Many people believe that Shakespeare wrote his own plays and many people do not. The author of article Read claims, "Some of Shakespeare's plays took place outside of London but Shakespeare never traveled outside of London. Shakespeare only had a few legal documents with his handwriting and his plays were written by a different hand. Also people say that the plays was wrote by a scholar and there is no proof that Shakespeare ever attended school" (Fraser). People who do not believe it was Shakespeare who wrote the plays think it was Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or Edward de Vere. So the real question is: did Shakespeare really write his own plays or did someone else? It is Edward de Vere that wrote Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare came from an illiterate family. It was not very possible that he was the only one who knew how to read and wrote, especially as well as he did. Shakespeare had to be very smart with all of the plays that he wrote. Shakespeare wrote 37 plays, not all of them as popular as others,

Sir Francis Bacon is the next suspect. Sir Francis Bacon was an advanced thinker as well as someone of high standing. During the Elizabethan Era, if someone was of high standing and social class, they were so noble that they had no reason to partake in anything revolving the theater, which was beneath them. That being said, it was supposedly it is one of the reasons why he would become anonymous if he was to post anything. The main evidence people use to prove that he was in fact the write was his book Promus. According to Summary of Baconian Evidence for Shakespeare Authorship, the only Shakespeare notebook, which is a collection of words, phrases and sentences, is actually Promus written by Francis Bacon himself. Promus was written between the years of 1594-1956, whereas all of Shakespeare's plays and poems were written in the 1600's. In most of Shakespeare's plays, there were some words, phrases, even sentences used. For example, in Henry V, Act 3, Scene 7, the line “A fool's bolt is soon shot.” is also in Promus. Another one, for example, is in not only one but four plays. In Merry Wives of Windsor Act 3, Scene 4, Henry IV, Act 2, Scene 2, The Taming of the Shrew Act 1, Scene 1 and the Winter's, Tale Act 1,Scene 2, the

Others also say that there was little evidence left behind about his childhood and later his career as a playwright and poet in London (Goode 9-10). Many scholars that studied Shakespeare?s plays found evidence that whoever wrote the plays must have been the best educated man of his time with knowledge on horsemanship, biology, falconry, astronomy, law, botany, several languages like Italian, French, and Latin, and many other subjects that a common man without much formal education would not poses (Lardner 7).

In 1564, a man was born by the name of William Shakespeare. He was born to a poor family, was given little education, and had no interaction with sophisticated society. Thirty-eight plays and over 150 sonnets are not attributed to this ignorant man. Those who believe that Shakespeare was the author have no definitive proof but instead point to Hamlet’s declaration: "The play’s the thing(Satchell 71)." The true author, however, lies hidden behind he name of Shakespeare. Edward de Vere the premier Earl of Oxford is not only considered a great poet in history, but he may also be the great playwright who concocted the sonnets and plays which are now attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford, England.

One of the first men brought up to be the credible writer of each work of art was Sir Francis Bacon (Hechinge). It is believed that he wrote the plays due to his level of education and social status (Hechinge). In the article it states, “As a leading figure of the English Renaissance, he certainly had the biography for it: educated at Cambridge, widely traveled, Bacon was a famous philosopher, one of the inventors of the scientific method, who also led a literary society,” and it is know that someone with an education has a better chance at knowing 29,066 different words (Hechinge). Not only was it believed because of his higher education, but many people believed they found secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays that pointed to Sir Francis Bacon being the writer (Hechinge). A man named Dr. Isaac Platt found out that by extracting certain letters from this line in Hamlet, “"The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables,” ended up with an anagram of “FR. BACONI NATI,” which according to Latin, means that Francis Bacon was the true playwright (Wheeler)

The question about the authorship of the works and the controversy surrounding it was not posed until the 1800s and therefore is a product of modern times. By this time, the growing middle class refused to believe that a simple country-born person could have written one of the most important bodies of work ever created. However, many people chose to believe that only upper and middle class people were capable of producing great English literature. These same people also did not realize that modern English literature was mostly created by working class authors like Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe. This, along with the

      Abstract:  The debate over the legitimacy of the authorship of Shakespearean works has been disputed for centuries. While many scholars have held beliefs that Shakespeare's works have been written by figures such as Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, William Stanley, and others, the most heated debate today is between William Shakespeare and Edward DeVere, the Earl of Oxford. Each side of this debate has many followers, the Stratfordians, or those who claim Shakespeare to be the true author, and the Oxfordians who believe that true credit should go to DeVere. My paper, far from being a complete analysis of the possibilities of Shakespearean authorship, attempts to summarize and rationalize the

The Shakespeare Authorship Question has been around for many years. There is a lot of suspected author components in who actually wrote the works but, a few debaters have tried to prove that Shakespeare was the original author therefore, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The Shakespeare Authorship Conspiracy can be argued that William is not the correct author based on evidence that no documents reveal any qualities of education from Shakespeare; nobody had any type of dramatic reaction to his death in 1616, and Shakespeare’s disputed will mentions nothing specific or anything noteworthy. Few facts and records are known about William and his life. There is no evidence that he had the correct skills to hold such an impacted title.

To be or not to be, is a famous question Shakespeare asked his audience in the Hamlet over 200 years ago, yet people are still asking “To be or not to be Shakespeare? That is the real question.” They are like the foolish man believing he is the wise man, going around teaching a false doctrine. They believe that their favorite candidate for Shakespeare is, and always will be Shakespeare. No matter how obvious that there is no way he was ever Shakespeare. Shakespeare is the real Shakespeare because we have no proof for someone else, why wouldn’t they claim it and two of the four head candidates were dead. Shakespeare is Shakespeare.

To start from the beginning of the controversy, the earliest actual documentation of such findings began in 1785 by an oxford scholar named James Wilmot. It was here that when James came up “empty-handed” of any evidence of Shakespeare’s plays did he come to the conclusion that it had to have been someone else and that someone was Sir Francis Bacon. James however never reported anything and on his deathbed actually destroyed his writings, but not before telling a fellow scholar, James Corton Cowell, his findings. Cowell would leave and make a presentation to the Ipswich Philosophic Society, and so began the greatest mystery of whether William Shakespeare was a famous playwright or a fraud taking credit for the work of someone else.

Shakespeare was one of the most famous people known to literature. He made thirty-eight plays in his lifetime. Being as famous has he was, there was some controversy. Some controversy that a person may believe involving Shakespeare is the authorship conspiracy. Some people believe that there were other authors thats wrote parts of Shakespeare's plays. According to The Telegraph, Edward de Vere wrote poetry similar to Shakespeare's. Some believe that there is references from de Vere in some of the scripts written by Shakespeare. This theory was put forward in the film Anonymous. Another example of controversy that some people believe in is that there are similarities between Sir Francis Bacon and Shakespeare's plays. This theory that was put

This quandary is led by the concept of the unrefined man from the Avon (Hastings 479). One of the first arguments that is ever presented against Shakespeare's authorship is his upbringing. It is argued that a peasant from Stratford could have never accomplished such great achievements and could never have acquired such fame (Friedman 1). Furthermore, "The author, it is argued, was a learned and cultivated poet-dramatist, probably a member of the nobility" (Hastings 480). Moreover, the man from Stratford was "an ignorant and illiterate actor, an 'unlettered peasant,' and an 'ignorant boor,'" who has apparently only sent one letter, and perhaps unsure about how to spell his own name. There is even a possibility that Shakespeare did not write English (Friedman 1).

At first I didn’t think it was possible for him to write all of those plays. After I did my research, I learned that playwrights would put other playwrights’ names on their plays so they would sell. This allowed me to see that it wasn’t Shakespeare’s fault that he was claiming these many plays. They also would put his name on it to pay tribute to him. I learned that Shakespeare did indeed, have a respectable education, despite what anti-stratfordians say. The education that Shakespeare received from his grammar school was a big help, but it was his immense amount of reading that mainly contributed to the writing of the plays. Shakespeare really understood everything about how plays worked, whether it be picking the right actors or making small cramped stages work. Even though he was a commoner who wrote about nobles and royalty, he was exposed to them in such a way that he was able to create entire plays based on the upper class lifestyle. But the opposing side thinks Edward de Vere was the true Bard. But since he died in 1604, and Shakespeare’s big plays were produced after Vere’s death, it leads me to believe de Vere is not the true Bard. Lots of famous and respectable people would disagree with me and claim that Shakespeare isn’t the true Bard. However, the majority of potential evidence points towards Shakespeare being the true Bard. There are too many speculations, conspiracies, and opinions for it to be