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William Shakespeare Mentorship Essay

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Shakespeare: A Question of Authorship
For centuries scholars have been examining the question whether William Shakespeare wrote all the work that has been credited to him. In his short 52 years of life, he is said to have authored 154 sonnets, two epic poems, and 38 five-act plays. Following the death of Shakespeare, many scholars began researching information that may have proven why Shakespeare could not have been the primary author or the author at all for many of these works. Four theories as to why Shakespeare could not have written all the work that has been credited to him include: his limited education as an individual of common birth; the shear difficulty and near impossibility for one individual to write so many varied pieces, not …show more content…

Shakespeare was not born into a wealthy family or a family of superiority; he also did not continue his education at a university. There is no indications of Shakespeare having a mentorship with an older artist, and he did not marry into wealth. Although William Shakespeare was an actor he was not known for starring roles, so all of his talents depended on the success of his writing (“The Life of William Shakespeare.”). At the age of 18, he married a woman named Anne Hathaway and shared three children: Susanna, Hamlet, and Judith; his wife was not part of royal wealth nor any other type of wealth ("The Biography of William …show more content…

Some believe that Queen Elizabeth I, wrote works attributed to Shakespeare because she devoted herself to the study of the classical period and enjoyed theatrics. According to Sir Roger Naunton, Queen Elizabeth translated one of the tragedies of Euripides from Greek to English for her own amusement (Brown). Queen Elizabeth would be a good candidate because she had the best schooling, understand royal court life, and a lot of theater as well as translation. During her time it was unlikely to have a woman writer and Elizabeth actually did write other literary poems found in her possession ("Who Was the Real Author of Shakespeare's

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