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Why Is Shakespeare Still Relevant Today

Decent Essays

William Shakespeare is one of the most famous authors in history. After celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death just last year, many people came to realize just how influential and important his works are to people. Even after all these years, Shakespeare’s work is still so present and relevant today. What if Shakespeare didn’t write any of the plays he has his name on, however? What if William Shakespeare was never who we thought? That is what some people believe. Shakespeare did not write any of the plays, and they were all written by the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere. Although some people think that Edward de Vere wrote the plays, William Shakespeare did write all the plays under his name.

This crazy conspiracy of the plays of William Shakespeare being written by the 17th Earl of Oxford was started by one man, Thomas Looney. Published in 1920, Looney’s book Shakespeare Identified tells all about how Shakespeare could not possibly have written the plays due to his lack of education and instead, the Earl of Oxford wrote them. This Oxfordian Theory has been the …show more content…

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written between 1595 and 1596, when Shakespeare would have been 31 or 32 years old. Oxford was still a child at this time, only nine years old. The only explanation for that would be that Oxford was indeed a child prodigy, like the movie Anonymous claims. Many of the plays were also written after the death of Oxford. The movie once again backs up their claims with the idea that he wrote them all before his death and gave them to another trusted author to be published later. This theory completely ignores the fact that many of the plays; including Macbeth and The Tempest, had been written about current events from the times. These events, like the gunpowder plot, happened after the death of

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