Shakespeare authorship question

Collage of the 4 major alternative candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's works, surrounding the Folio engraving of Shakespeare of Stratford. Clockwise from top left: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby and Christopher Marlowe.

For the purposes of this article the term “Shakespeare” is taken to mean the poet and playwright who wrote the plays and poems in question; and the term “Shakespeare of Stratford” is taken to mean the William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon to whom authorship is credited.

The Shakespeare authorship question is the controversy about whether the works traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually composed by another writer or group of writers. The public debate dates back to the mid-19th century. It has attracted public attention and a thriving following, including some prominent public figures, but is dismissed by the great majority of academic Shakespeare scholars.^[a] Those who question the attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret. Major nominees include Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who currently attracts the most widespread support, statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories. Of the more than 50 candidates proposed, both Oxford and Bacon have won support from notable figures in public life. Supporters of any one of the four main theories are commonly called Oxfordians, Baconians, Marlovians or Derbyites respectively.

Authorship doubters believe that mainstream Shakespeare biographers routinely violate orthodox methods and criteria, and include inadmissible evidence in their histories of the Stratford man. They also claim that some mainstream scholars have ignored the subject in order to protect the economic gains that the Shakespeare publishing world has provided them. Authorship doubters assert that the actor and businessman baptised as "Shakspere" of Stratford did not have the background necessary to create the body of work attributed to him, and that the personal attributes inferred from Shakespeare's poems and plays don't fit the known biography of the Stratford man.Anti-stratfordians also note the lack of any concrete evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford had the extensive education doubters claim is evident in Shakespeare's works. They question whether a commoner from a small 16th-century country town, with no recorded education or personal library, could become so highly expert in foreign languages, knowledge of courtly pastimes and politics, Greek and Latin mythology, law, and the latest discoveries in science, medicine and astronomy of the time. Doubters also focus on the relationship between internal evidence (the content of the plays and poems) and external evidence (biographical or historical data derived from other sources).

The majority of academics specializing in Shakespearean studies, called "Stratfordians" by sceptics, generally ignore or dismiss these alternative theories, arguing they fail to comply with standard research methodology and lack supportive evidence from documents contemporary with Shakespeare. Mainstream scholars reject anti-Stratfordian arguments and say that authorship doubters discard the most direct testimony in favor of their own theories, overstate Shakespeare's erudition, and anachronistically mistake the times he lived in, thereby rendering their method of identifying the author from the works unscholarly and unreliable. Consequently, they have been slow to acknowledge the popular interest in the subject. Support for William Shakespeare as author rests on two main pillars of evidence: testimony by his fellow actors, and by his fellow playwright Ben Jonson in the First Folio, and the inscription on Shakespeare's grave monument in Stratford. Title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records—the type of evidence used by literary historians that Stratfordians believe is lacking for any other alternative candidate—are also cited to support the mainstream view.^[a] Despite this, interest in the authorship debate continues to grow, particularly among independent scholars, theatre professionals and a small minority of academics.

Overview

File:ShakespeareQuestion.jpg

Authorship doubters question the identity of the playwright William Shakespeare.

Authorship doubters

Main article: Shakespeare Authorship Doubters

A fundamental principle of those who question Shakespeare’s authorship is that most authors reveal themselves in their work, and that the personality of an author can generally be discerned from his or her writings. With this principle in mind, authorship doubters find parallels in the fictional characters or events in the Shakespearean works and in the life experiences of their preferred candidate. The disjunction that skeptics perceive between the biography of Shakespeare of Stratford and the content of Shakespeare's works has raised doubts about whether the author and the Stratford Shakespeare are the same person. This perceived dissonance, first expressed in the first half of the 19th century, has been the element that has led such well-known individuals as Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Whitman, Tyrone Guthrie, John Gielgud and Supreme Court Justices Harry A. Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, and Sandra Day O'Conner, and the prominent Shakespearean actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance to publicly announce their doubts, and is the root of anti-Stratfordism. In September 2007, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition sponsored a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" to encourage new research into the question of Shakespeare's authorship, which has been signed by more than 1,700 people, including 295 academics.

Although historically the academic community has considered the topic unimportant, it has achieved some degree of acceptance as a legitimate research topic, and Brunel University of London now offers a one-year MA program on the Shakespeare authorship question. In 2007, the New York Times surveyed 265 Shakespeare professors on the topic. To the question "Do you think there is good reason to question whether William Shakespeare of Stratford is the principal author of the plays and poems in the canon?", 6% answered "yes" and an additional 11% responded "possible". When asked their opinion of the Shakespeare authorship question, 61% answered that it was a "A theory without convincing evidence" and 32% called the issue "A waste of time and classroom distraction", but when asked if they "mention the Shakespeare authorship question in your Shakespeare classes?", 72% answered "yes".[

Mainstream view

Main article: William Shakespeare

In contrast to the methods used by anti-Stratfordians to identify the poet and playwright William Shakespeare, orthodox scholars employ the same type of evidence used to identify other writers of the period: the historical record, and maintain that the methods commonly used by anti-Stratfordians to identify alternate candidates—reading the work as autobiography, finding coded messages and cryptograms embedded in the works, and concocting conspiracy theories to explain the lack of evidence for anyone but Shakespeare—are unreliable and unscholarly, and explain why so many candidates, calculated as high as 56, have been nominated as the “true” author.They say that the idea that Shakespeare revealed himself in his work is a Romantic notion of the 18th and 19th centuries and anachronistic to Elizabethan and Jacobean writers.When William Wordsworth wrote that ‘Shakespeare unlocked his heart’ in the sonnets, Robert Browning replied, ‘If so, the less Shakespeare he!’

John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The mainstream view, overwhelming supported by academic Shakespeareans, is that the author known as "Shakespeare" was the same William Shakespeare who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, moved to London and became an actor and sharer (part-owner) of the Lord Chamberlain's Men acting company (later the King's Men) that owned the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars Theatre in London and owned exclusive rights to produce Shakespeare's plays from 1594 on, and who became entitled to use the honourific of gentleman when his father, John Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms in 1596.

The mainstream view states that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, Gentleman, is identified with the writer in London by at least four pieces of contemporary evidence that firmly link the two. (a) His will registers bequests to fellow actors and theatrical entrepreneurs, two of whom edited his works, namely (Heminges, Burbage, and Condell). (b) His village church monument bears an inscription linking him with Virgil and Socrates, and mentions he was a writer. (c) Ben Jonson linked this 'Star of poets' with his home territory, in calling him the 'Swan of Avon', and (d) Leonard Digges, in verses prefixed to the First Folio, speaks of his 'Stratford Monument'. Lastly, both the authorship doubter Paul H. Altrocchi and the orthodox scholar and biographer of de Vere, Alan Nelson, have uncovered, identified and interpreted an annotation in a book owned by a learned Warwickshire contemporary of Shakespeare's which proves that 'our William Shakespear' of Stratford was an important actor on the public stage.

Although little biographical information exists about Shakespeare of Stratford compared to later authors, mainstream scholars assert that more is known about him than about most other playwrights and actors of the period. This lack of information is unsurprising, they say, given that in Elizabethan/Jacobean England the lives of commoners were not as well documented as those of the gentry and nobility, and that many—indeed the overwhelming majority—of Renaissance documents that existed have not survived until the present day.

Criticism of mainstream view

Lack of Literary paper trail

Some doubters, such as Charlton Ogburn, Jr., have asserted there is no direct evidence clearly identifying Shakespeare of Stratford as a playwright, and that the majority of references to "William Shakespeare" by contemporaries refer to the author, but not necessarily the Stratford businessman. Ogburn further stated his disbelief that Shakespeare of Stratford and the author shared the exact same name, noting that, according to Stratfordian scholar Sir Edmund K. Chambers, not one of Shakespeare of Stratford's six known signatures was actually spelled “Shakespeare” (I.E., Shaksp, Shakspe, Shaksper, Shakspere, Shakspere and Shakspeare).

Independent researcher Diana Price, in Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography, notes that for a professional author, Shakespeare of Stratford seems to have been entirely uninterested in protecting his work. Price explains that while he had a well-documented habit of going to court over relatively small sums, he never sued any of the publishers pirating his plays and sonnets, or took any legal action regarding their practice of attaching his name to the inferior output of others. Price also notes there is no evidence Shakespeare of Stratford was ever paid for writing, and his detailed will failed to mention any of Shakespeare's unpublished plays or poems or any of the source books Shakespeare was known to have read. Anti-stratfordians also note that the only theatrical reference in Shakespeare of Stratford's will (gifts to fellow actors) were interlined—i.e., inserted between previously written lines—and thus are subject to doubt.

Anti-Stratfordian Mark Twain, wrote "Is Shakespeare Dead?" shortly before his death in 1910.

Anti-stratfordian Robert Brazil, in Shakespeare: The Authorship Controversy, notes that Shakespeare of Stratford's relatives and neighbors never mentioned that he was famous or a writer, nor are there any indications his heirs demanded or received payments for his supposed investments in the theatre or for any of the more than 16 masterwork plays unpublished at the time of his death. Mark Twain, commenting on the subject, said, "Many poets die poor, but this is the only one in history that has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a book. Maybe two."

Ogburn, who examined the known evidence for and against the major nominees, notes that we know much more about the lives of other candidates (Bacon, Marlowe, Derby, Oxford) than we do about the life of the presumed traditional author William Shakespeare. Regarding the lack of evidence surrounding Shakespeare, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper noted “[d]uring his lifetime nobody claimed to know him. Not a single tribute was paid to him at his death. As far as the records go, he was uneducated, had no literary friends, possessed at his death no books, and could not write.”

Alternate interpretations

Referring to the metaphor of the swan in "Swan of Avon", traditionally taken to be an epithet of great poets, the de Vere Society claims that "the distinguishing characteristic of the swan, apart from its lifelong fidelity, was its silence - hence the name 'Mute Swan' for the commonest variety of this bird" and asserts that "William of Stratford was a mute participant in all this, it seems." Also, Charles Wisner Barrell published extensive findings showing numerous ties between the Earl of Oxford, the river Avon, and the Avon Valley, where Oxford once owned an estate.

Mark Anderson has suggested that "Greene's Groatsworth of Wit" could imply Shakespeare of Stratford was being given credit for the work of other writers, and that Davies' mention of "our English Terence" is a mixed reference, given that Roger Ascham, an Elizabethan scholar, knew that two of Terence's six plays were said to have been written by members of the Roman nobility.

Public reaction to death

Doubters also question why, when Shakespeare of Stratford died, he was not publicly mourned. As Mark Twain wrote, in Is Shakespeare Dead?, "When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears — there was merely silence, and nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other literary folk of Shakespeare’s time passed from life! No praiseful voice was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years before he lifted his."

History of authorship doubts

Early doubts

During the life of William Shakespeare and for more than 200 years after his death, no one seriously suggested that anyone other than Shakespeare wrote the works. However, some anti-Stratfordians claim that several Elizabethan works hint that Shakespeare’s works were written by someone else, and Diana Price speculates that an authorship debate existed in Elizabethan times, arguing that "all literary allusions [to Shakespeare] with some hint of personal information are ambiguous or cryptic." and maintains that the literary record contains veiled references to that debate, even if the doubts are not explicitly stated.

For example, like Price, Charles Wisner Barrell, Roger Stritmatter, Brenda James, and W. D. Rubinstein all interpret Thomas Edward's L'Envoy to Narcissus (1595), in which Edwards uses allegorical nicknames in praising several Elizabethan poets, to be saying that Shakespeare was an aristocrat. Following a verse about “Adon,” which they take to be an allusion to the mythical Adonis in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and therefore a nickname for Shakespeare, Edwards is read as alluding to a real poet dressed "in purple robes", whose “whose power floweth far.” All of the above-named anti-Stratfordians interpret these verses as pertaining to the same poet. Since purple is, among many other things, a symbol of aristocracy and the Earl of Oxford held the honorary office of Lord Chamberlain of England, Barrell took the lines to mean that Edwards is hinting that Oxford is the real Shakespeare. James and Rubinstein use the same material to theorize that the allusion supports the candidacy of Sir Henry Neville. Roger Stritmatter disagrees, arguing that a passage from the next verse, “differs much from men,/Tilting under Frieries”, may be read as an allusion to a 1583 duel in which Oxford was wounded. Walter Begley and Berthram G. Theobald claimed that Elizabethan satirists Joseph Hall and John Marston alluded to Francis Bacon as the true author of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece by using the sobriquet "Labeo" in a series of poems published in 1598. Among other clues to Bacon's concealed authorship they find in the poems, the five-letter name contains three letters used in Bacon's name, the subject is a Roman lawyer, and two lines in Marston's poem paraphrase two lines in Shakespeare's.

According to one approach, the first doubts about Shakespearean authorship arose as early as 18th century, in certain satirical and allegorical works. In a passage in An Essay Against Too Much Reading (1728) by a "Captain" Golding, Shakespeare is described as "no Scholar, no Grammarian, no Historian, and in all probability cou'd not write English" and someone who uses an historian as a collaborator. The book also says that 'instead of Reading, he [Shakespeare] stuck close to Writing and Study without Book". Again, in The Life and Adventures of Common Sense: An Historical Allegory (1769) by Herbert Lawrence, the narrator, Common Sense, portrays Shakespeare, as a "shifty theatrical character ... and incorrigible thief" who stole a commonplace book from his father, Wit, his crony, Genius, and his half-brother, Humour, which he uses to write his plays.. Thirdly, The Story of the Learned Pig, By an officer of the Royal Navy (1786) is a tale of a soul that has successively migrated from the body of Romulus into various animals, and is residing in a performing pig on exhibition. He recalls his history in other humans, one a chap called "Pimping Billy", who worked at the playhouse with Shakespeare and was the real author of the works.

Debate in the 19th Century

Poet Walt Whitman believed the true author was "one of the 'wolfish earls' so plenteous in the plays themselves".

By the beginning of the 19th century Bardolatry was in full swing and Shakespeare was universally celebrated as an unschooled supreme genius and had been raised to the statute of a secular god. In 1811 Samuel Taylor Coleridge expressed his amazement that "works of such character should have proceeded from a man whose life was like that attributed to Shakespeare.".. Uneasiness about the difference between Shakespeare's reputation and the humdrum facts of his biography began to emerge. In 1850, Ralph Waldo Emerson expressed the underlying question in the air about Shakespeare with his confession, "The Egyptian [i.e. mysterious] verdict of the Shakspeare Societies come to mind; that he was a jovial actor and manager. I can not marry this fact to his verse." That the perceived dissonance between the man and his works was a consequence of the deification of Shakespeare was recognized by J.M. Robertson, who wrote that "It is very doubtful whether the Baconian theory would ever have been framed had not the idolatrous Shakespeareans set up a visionary figure of the Master."

At the same time scholars were increasingly becoming aware that many plays were products of several authors' work, and that now-lost plays may have served as models for Shakespeare's published work, including an earlier version of Hamlet (known today as the ur-Hamlet). In Benjamin Disraeli's novel Venetia (1837) the character Lord Cadurcis, modelled on Byron, suggests that Shakespeare may not have written "half of the plays attributed to him", or even one "whole play" but rather that he was "an inspired adaptor for the theatres". A similar view was expressed by an American lawyer and writer, Col. Joseph C. Hart, who in 1848 published The Romance of Yachting, which for the first time stated explicitly and unequivocally in print that Shakespeare did not write the works bearing his name. Hart claimed that Shakespeare was a "mere factotum of the theatre", a "vulgar and unlettered man" hired to add obscene jokes to the plays of other writers. Hart does not suggest that there was any conspiracy, merely that evidence of the real authors's identities had been lost when the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when old playscripts were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. He speculates that only The Merry Wives of Windsor was Shakespeare's own work and that Ben Jonson probably wrote Hamlet.

In 1856 Delia Bacon, an American (no relation to Francis), was the first to put forth the claim, in an essay published in Putnam's Literary Magazine, that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon. Later that same year William Henry Smith, in a privately-circulated letter, expressed his view that Bacon had indeed written the works, and the following year, published the letter as a booklet. Smith claimed to have held his opinion for nearly 20 years, and to have been unaware of Delia Bacon's recent essay. With help from Emerson, Delia Bacon travelled to Britain to pursue her research. Her book on the theory, The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, came out the same year. In this work she proposed that Shakespeare's work was most likely written by a secretive group of writers led by Francis Bacon. The movement attracted much attention and caught the public imagination for many years, mostly in America. Ignatius Donnelly's claim to have discovered ciphers in the works of Shakespeare revealing Bacon as a "concealed poet" were later discredited by William and Elizabeth Friedman, expert code-breakers, in their book The Shakespeareen Ciphers Examined.

The American poet Walt Whitman declared himself agnostic on the issue and refrained from endorsing an alternative candidacy. Voicing his skepticism to Horace Traubel, Whitman remarked, "I go with you fellows when you say no to Shaksper: that's about as far as I have got. As to Bacon, well, we'll see, we'll see."

20th Century Candidates

Starting in 1908, Sir George Greenwood engaged in a series of well-publicised debates with Shakespearean biographer Sir Sidney Lee and author J. M. Robertson. Throughout his numerous books on the authorship question, Greenwood limited himself to arguing against the traditional attribution, without supporting any alternative candidate.

In 1918, Professor Abel Lefranc, a renowned authority on French and English literature, after a 35-year study of Shakespeare, published the first volume of Sous le masque de "William Shakespeare". Based on biographical evidence found in the plays and poems, he put forward William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby as the author. Many scholars were impressed by Lefranc's arguments, and a large international body of literature resulted.

In 1920, an English school-teacher, John Thomas Looney, published Shakespeare Identified, proposing a new candidate for the authorship in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This theory gained many notable advocates, including Sigmund Freud. In 1922, Looney joined Greenwood in founding The Shakespeare Fellowship, an international organization dedicated to promote discussion and debate on the authorship question.

By the early 20th century, the public had tired of cryptogram-hunting, and the Bacon movement faded. The result was increased interest in Stanley and Oxford as alternative candidates.

In 1923, Archie Webster wrote the first serious essay on the candidacy of playwright Christopher Marlowe, who was first suggested by Wilbur E. Ziegler in the foreword to his 1895 novel, It Was Marlowe: A Story of the Secret of Three Centuries. Marlowe continues to attract supporters, and in 2001, the Australian documentary film maker Michael Rubbo released the TV film Much Ado About Something, which explores the theory in some detail. It has played a significant part in bringing the Marlovian theory to the attention of the greater public.

Since the publication of Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality in 1984, the Oxfordian theory, boosted in part by the advocacy of several Supreme Court justices and high-profile theatre professionals, has become the most popular alternative authorship theory.

Pseudonymous or secret authorship in Renaissance England

Archer Taylor and Frederic J. Mosher identified the 16th and 17th centuries as the "golden age" of pseudonymous authorship and maintain that during this period “almost every writer used a pseudonym at some time during his career.” Anti-Stratfordians have argued that the authorship question is a manifestation of early modern censorship, which caused many authors to hide their identities in one way or another. The connection between the authorship question and the history of censorship, while implied in much earlier scholarship, is made explicit in an article published in the Oxfordian journal, Brief Chronicles, which argues that the need for a pseudonym can readily be explained on the basis of a prevailing "stigma of print."

At least two of the proposed candidates for authorship, the Earls of Oxford and Derby were known to be playwrights, even though no extant work survives under their own name.

Diana Price has analyzed several examples of Elizabethan commentary on anonymous or pseudonymous publication by persons of high social status. According Price, "there are two historical prototypes for this type of authorship fraud, that is, attributing a written work to a real person who was not the real author". Both are Roman in origin:

• Bathyllus took credit for verses written by Virgil, and then accepted a reward for them. In 1591, a pamphleteer (Robert Greene) described an Elizabethan Batillus, who put his name to verses written by certain poets who, because of "their calling and gravity" did not want to publish under their own names. This Batillus was accused of "under-hand brokery."
• A second prototype is the classical comedian Terence, whom the Elizabethan pedagogue and classicist Roger Ascham noted was credited with having written two plays that some Latin sources thought were written by a member of the Roman nobility and a plebian..

An example of Elizabethan authorities raising the issue is provided by the case of Sir John Hayward:

• In 1599 he published The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie IV dedicated to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Queen Elizabeth and her advisers disliked the tone of the book and its dedication, and on July 11, Hayward was interrogated before the Privy Council, which was seeking "proof positive of the Earl's [sc. Essex's] long-standing design against the government" in writing a preface to Hayward's work. The Queen "argued that Hayward was pretending to be the author in order to shield 'some more mischievous' person, and that he should be racked so that he might disclose the truth".

"Shake-Speare" as a pseudonym

The hyphenated "SHAKE-SPEARE" as it appears on the cover of the Sonnets in 1609.

Anti-Stratfordians have alleged a variety of reasons for supposing that the name "Shakespeare" would have made a symbolically apt pseudonym. According to Anderson, among others, the name alludes to the patron goddess of art, literature and statecraft, Pallas Athena, who sprang from the forehead of Zeus, shaking a spear. Both Ogburn and Anderson have argued that the hyphen which often appeared in the name "Shake-speare" indicated the use of a pseudonym. Examples of oft-hyphenated names include Tom Tell-truth, Martin Mar-prelate (who pamphleteered against church "prelates"), and Cuthbert Curry-knave, who "curried" his "knavish" enemies.

Ogburn notes that of the "32 editions of Shakespeare's plays published before the First Folio of 1623 in which the author was named at all, the name was hyphenated in fifteen – almost half." Further, it was hyphenated by John Davies in the famous poem which references the poet as "Our English Terence," by fellow playwright John Webster, and by the epigrammatist of 1639 who wrote, "Shake-speare, we must be silent in thy praise…." Ogburn notes that the hyphen was only used by other writers or publishers, and not by the poet himself (he did not use it in his personal dedications of his two long narrative poems), and concludes that the hyphenation was not by chance, but instead followed a pattern. Another recent article in the Oxfordian online journal Brief Chronicles applies numerical analysis of Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia ("The Servant of Pallas Athena") to argue that although on the surface he seems to be attributing a dozen plays to Shakespeare of Stratford, he is esoterically identifying Oxford as the real author.

Irvin Matus responds that the claim of hyphenation as a marker of a pseudonym is unknown outside of anti-Stratfordian literature, and that no scholar of Elizabethan literature or punctuation has written about hyphens as such. In addition, of the 15 examples of Shakespeare's name being hyphenated in the works, 13 of those were from different editions of only three plays (Richard II, Richard III, and 1 Henry IV) all published by the same printer, Andrew Wise, and the man who took over Wise's business in 1603, Matthew Law. Orthodox scholars also point out that it was common for proper names of real people to be hyphenated in print in Elizabethan times. Matus notes that Elizabethan poet and clergyman Charles Fitzgeoffrey’s name often appeared in print as "Charles Fitz-Geffry;" Protestant martyr Sir John Oldcastle, as “Old-castle;” London Lord Mayor Sir Thomas Campbell, “Camp-bell;” printer Edward Allde, “All-de;” and printer Robert Waldegrave, “Walde-grave.”

"Shakspere" vs. "Shakespeare"

Anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shakspere" (the name recorded at his baptism) or "Shaksper" to distinguish him from the author "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" (the spellings that appear most often on the publications). Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a noted Oxfordian, has stated that most references to the man from Stratford in legal documents usually spell the first syllable of his name with only four letters, "Shak-" or sometimes "Shag-" or "Shax-", whereas the dramatist's name is more consistently printed as "Shake".

Stratfordians reject this convention, pointing out that there was no standardised spelling in Elizabethan England, and Shakespeare of Stratford's name was spelled in many different ways, including "Shakspere", "Shaxper", "Shagspere" and "Shakespeare"; that examples anti-Stratfordians give for Shakespeare of Stratford's name are all handwritten and not printed; that anti-Stratfordians are factually incorrect in that most of those examples were spelled either Shakespeare, Shakespere, or Shakespear; and that handwritten examples of the author's name exhibit the same amount of variation. Stratfordian David Kathman also argues that the anti-Stratfordian characterization of the name—"Shakspere" or "Shakspur"—incorrectly characterizes the contemporary spelling of Shakespeare's name and introduces prejudicial negative implications of the Stratford man in the minds of modern readers.

Debate points used by anti-Stratfordians

Doubts about Shakespeare of Stratford

Literary paper trails

Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem approaches the authorship question by going back to the historical documents and testimony that underpin Shakespeare’s biography. Price believes that centuries of biographers have suspended their standards and criteria to weave inadmissible evidence into their narratives. She offers new analyses of the evidence and then reconstructs Shakespeare of Stratford’s professional life.

Literary biographies, i.e., lives of writers, are based on evidence left behind during the writer’s lifetime, such as manuscripts, letters, diaries, personal papers, receipts, etc. Price calls these "literary paper trails" - the documents that allow biographers to reconstruct the life of their subject as a writer. Price acknowledges that Shakespeare of Stratford did leave behind a considerable amount of evidence, but asserts that none of it traces his alleged career as a playwright and poet. In his case, the first document in the historical record that “proves” he was a writer was created after he died. Price notes that historians routinely distinguish between contemporaneous and posthumous evidence, and they don’t give posthumous evidence equal weight - but Shakespeare’s biographers do.

The central chapter on Literary Paper Trails, and an associated appendix chart, compare the evidence of two dozen other writers with that of Shakespeare of Stratford’s. The criteria are simple and routinely employed by historians and biographers of other subjects. Evidence that is personal, contemporaneous, and supports one statement, “he was a writer by vocation or profession,” qualifies for inclusion in the comparative chart. Price sorted the evidence into numerous categories, which were then collapsed into 9 categories, with a 10th one created to serve as an all-purpose catch-all to ensure that no qualifying paper trail was excluded.

Each of these two dozen Elizabethan and Jacobean writers left behind a variety of records shedding light on their writing activities. For example, historians know how much some of them got paid for writing a poem or a play, or how much a patron rewarded them for their literary effort. Some left behind letters referring to their plays or poems. A few of them left behind handwritten manuscripts or books with handwritten annotations.

Shakespeare of Stratford left behind over seventy historical records, and over half of these records shed light on his professional activities. Price notes, however, that every one of these documents concerns non-literary careers – those of theatrical shareholder, actor, real estate investor, grain trader, money-lender, and entrepreneur. But he left behind not one literary paper trail that proves he wrote for a living. In the genre of literary biography for Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, Price concludes that this deficiency of evidence is unique.

Shakespeare's education

Authorship doubters believe that the author of Shakespeare's works manifest a higher education, displaying knowledge of contemporary science, medicine, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and foreign languages. They further assert that there is no evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford ever attained such an education.

In addition, the writer of the Shakespeare canon exhibited a very extensive vocabulary, variously calculated, according to different criteria, as ranging between 17,500 to 29,066 words. "The plays of Shakespeare," said Henry Stratford Caldecott in an 1895 Johannesburg lecture, "are so stupendous a monument of learning and genius that, as time passes and they are probed and searched and analysed by successive generations of scholars and critics of all nations, they seem to loom higher and grander, and their hidden beauties and treasured wisdom to be more and more inexhaustible; and so people have come to ask themselves not only, 'Is it humanly possible for William Shakespeare, the country lad from Stratford-on-Avon, to have written them?', but whether it was possible for any one man, whoever he may have been, to have done so." As for the role of genius in acquiring knowledge, 18th century critic Samuel Johnson said "Nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them. Shakespeare, however [he may have been] favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned."

Dramatist Ben Jonson is often cited by both sides of the authorship debate.

The Stratfordian position maintains that Shakespeare of Stratford would have received the kind of education available to the son of a Stratford alderman at the local grammar school and at the parish church, including a comfortable mastery of the Bible, Latin, grammar and rhetoric. The former was run by a number of Oxford graduates, Simon Hunt, Thomas Jenkins and John Cottom, and the latter by Henry Heicroft, a fellow at St John's College, Cambridge. Though there is no evidence that he attended a university, a degree was not a prerequisite for a Renaissance dramatist, and mainstream scholars have long assumed Shakespeare of Stratford to be largely self-educated, with such authorities as Jonathan Bate devoting much space in biographies to the issue. A commonly cited parallel is his fellow dramatist Ben Jonson, a man whose origins were humbler than those of the Stratford man, and who rose to become court poet. Like Shakespeare of Stratford, Jonson never completed and perhaps never attended university, and yet he became a man of great learning (later being granted an honorary degree from both Oxford and Cambridge).

Authorship doubters note that as the records of the school's pupils have not survived, Shakespeare of Stratford's attendance cannot be proven, and that no one who ever taught or attended The King's School ever claimed to have been his teacher or classmate, and the school or schools Shakespeare of Stratford might have attended are a matter of speculation as there are no existing admission records for him at any grammar school, university or college. Doubters also point out that there is clearer evidence for Jonson's formal education and self-education than for Shakespeare of Stratford's. Several hundred books owned by Ben Jonson have been found signed and annotated by him but no book has ever been found which proved to have been owned or borrowed by Shakespeare of Stratford. It is known, moreover, that Jonson had access to a substantial library with which to supplement his education. Charlton Ogburn Jr., reports that Ben Jonson's stepfather, a master bricklayer, "provided his stepson with the foundations of a good education." Young Ben went first to a private school in St. Martin's Lane and later at Westminster studied under one of the foremost Elizabethan scholars, William Camden, of whom he wrote: "Camden, most revered head, to whom I owe/ All that I am in arts, all that I know." Ogburn devotes several pages to discussing the poor quality of education at English grammar schools Ogburn specifically rejects Professor T. M. Baldwin's Small Latin and Lesse Greeke for, first of all, misreading the Jonson quotation (leaving out the qualifying "Though thou hadst" and Jonson's subsequent comparison of Shakespeare to the greatest of Classical authors) and secondly, for citing a speculation as if it were fact: "William Shakspere should have learned from someone, at present unguessable, to read English, and about the age of seven, in the course of 1571, have entered the grammar school." .

Possible evidence of Shakespeare of Stratford's self-education includes the fact that certain sources for his plays were sold at the shop of the printer Richard Field, a fellow Stratford native. Some contemporary references have been interpreted to say that Shakespeare's works have not always been considered to require an unusual amount of education: Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare in the 1623 First Folio states that his plays were great even though he had "small Latin and less Greek". And it has been argued by Dr Richard Farmer, that a great deal of the classical learning he displays is derived from one text, Ovid's Metamorphoses, which was a set text in many schools at the time.

Anti-Stratfordians such as Mark Anderson, however, believe this explanation does not counter the argument that the author also required a knowledge of foreign languages, modern sciences, warfare, law, statesmanship, hunting, natural philosophy, history, and aristocratic sports such as tennis and falconry.

Shakespeare's life experience

Anti-Stratfordians believe that a provincial glovemaker's son who resided in Stratford until early adulthood would be unlikely to have written plays that deal so personally with the activities, travel and lives of the nobility. The view is summarised by Charles Chaplin: "In the work of greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. . . . Whoever wrote them (the plays) had an aristocratic attitude." Orthodox scholars respond that the glamorous world of the aristocracy was a popular setting for plays in this period. They add that numerous English Renaissance playwrights, including Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and others wrote about the nobility despite their own humble origins.

Authorship doubters stress that the plays show a detailed understanding of politics, the law and foreign languages that would have been impossible to attain without an aristocratic or university upbringing. Orthodox scholars respond that Shakespeare was an upwardly mobile man: his company regularly performed at court and he thus had ample opportunity to observe courtly life.

In The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate argues that the class argument is reversible: the plays contain details of lower-class life about which aristocrats might have little knowledge. Many of Shakespeare's most vivid characters are lower class or associate with this milieu, such as Falstaff, Nick Bottom, Autolycus, Sir Toby Belch, etc. Anti-Stratfordians have responded that while the author's depiction of nobility was highly personal and multi-faceted, his treatment of commoners was quite different. Tom Bethell, in Atlantic Monthly, commented "The author displays little sympathy for the class of upwardly mobile strivers of which Shakspere (of Stratford) was a preeminent member. Shakespeare celebrates the faithful servant, but regards commoners as either humorous when seen individually or alarming in mobs".

It has also been noted that in the 17th century, Shakespeare was not thought of as an expert on the court, but as a "child of nature" who "Warble[d] his native wood-notes wild" as John Milton put it in his poem L'Allegro. Contemporary playwright Francis Beaumont thought this not a disadvantage. He wrote to Jonson: "I would let slip ... scholarship and from all learning keep these lines as clear as Shakespeare's best are ... to show how far a mortal man may go by the dim light of Nature". John Dryden wrote in 1668 that playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher "understood and imitated the conversation of Gentlemen much better" than Shakespeare, and in 1673 wrote of Elizabethan playwrights in general that "I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson."

Anti-Stratfordians note that it took 12 years for Ben Jonson (whose lower-class background was similar to that of the Stratfordian Shakespeare) to obtain noble patronage from Prince Henry for his commentary The Masque of Queens (1609). They thus express doubt that the true author could have quickly obtained the Earl of Southampton's patronage for one of his first published works, the long poem Venus and Adonis (1593).

Shakespeare's literacy

Anti-Stratfordians such as Charleton Ogburn question the degree of literacy of Shakespeare of Stratford. No letter written by Shakespeare is known to exist, and they maintain it would only be logical for a man of Shakespeare's writing ability to compose numerous letters, and given the man's supposed fame they find it unbelievable that not one letter, or record of a letter, exists. Doubters point out that many dramatists of the time wrote a fluent hand, (dramatists such as Jonson, Marlowe, and Lyly), and that no equivalent samples of playscripts are available as evidence for the literacy of Shakespeare of Stratford. Ogburn also notes that his known signatures offer no proof of writing abilities. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has stated that "the evidence of Shakespeare's handwriting that we do have ... consists of six signatures on legal documents, each suggesting that merely writing his name was a difficult task and, remarkably, that his name was Shaksper rather than Shakespeare."

The six known signatures of Shakespeare

While “many dramatists of the time wrote a fluent hand”, many didn't, and when compared to some other dramatists of the era, the alleged wretchedness of Shakespeare's hand wasn't unique. The hand of Thomas Heywood, one of the most prolific playwrights of the era, is described as “abominable” and “the least legible” of all extant dramatists’ hands of the era. Other notable writers of the era who had what today would be considered illegible hands include Philip Massinger, described as “awkward and untidy”, Sir Thomas Overbury, “barely decipherable scratches”, Michael Drayton, “untidy and loosely written”, Thomas Dekker, “scratchy”, Thomas Nashe, “scrappiness . . . numerous blots . . . generally legible . . .ill-defined”, and Robert Southwell, “fairly legible”.

Mainstream scholars who specialize in studying handwriting of the past, known as palaeographers, say that the handwriting of Shakespeare's time is difficult for modern readers. Shakespeare's signatures are written in secretary hand, a style of handwriting that vanished by 1700, and which can be “confusing and often downright misleading” to those unfamiliar with it. Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, who studied and wrote extensively about Shakespeare’s handwriting, said that “the style of the poet's hand, as shown by his signatures, was that of the ordinary scrivener or copyist of the time (that is, in the native English script) ”, and that "there can be no question of the dramatist's ability to write a fluent hand".

Despite Thompson’s opinion and his use of the signatures to identify Shakespeare’s co-authorship in the anonymous play Sir Thomas More, even some Stratfordians disagree with his assessment because of the appearance of Shakespeare’s surviving signatures, as Irvin Matus admits. British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper notes that "It is true, six of his signatures have been found, all spelt differently; but they are so ill-formed that some graphologists suppose the hand to have been guided.” And Jane Cox, of the Public Record Office (now The National Archives), suggests that clerks wrote the signatures instead of Shakespeare, a position Matus outlines as a possibility but stops short of endorsing.

Other arguments against Shakespeare of Stratford's literacy are the apparent illiteracy of his parents and family. According to authorship researcher Diana Price, Shakespeare of Stratford's wife Anne and daughter Judith appear to have been illiterate, suggesting he did not teach them to write.

Mainstream scholars have responded that most middle-class women in the 17th century were illiterate, and statistical evidence compiled by David Cressy indicates that a large percentage (as high as 90%) of these women may not have had enough education to sign their own names.

Shakespeare's will

Anti-stratfordians note that Shakespeare of Stratford's will is long and explicit, bequeathing the possessions of a successful middle class businessman but making no mention of personal papers or books (which were expensive items at the time) of any kind, nor any mention of poems or of the 18 plays that remained unpublished at the time of his death, nor any reference to the valuable shares in the Globe Theatre that the Stratford man reportedly owned. This contrasts with Sir Francis Bacon, whose two wills refer to work that he wished to be published posthumously. Anti-Stratfordians find it unusual that the Stratford man did not wish his family to profit from his unpublished work or was unconcerned about leaving them to posterity, and find it improbable that he would have submitted all the manuscripts to the King's Men, the playing company of which he was a shareholder, prior to his death.

Stratfordians point out that the complete inventory of Shakespeare's possessions, mentioned at the bottom as being attached (Inventarium exhibitum), has been lost, and that is where any books or manuscripts would have been mentioned. In addition, not one of Shakespeare's contemporary playwrights mentioned play manuscripts in their wills, and for good reason: plays were owned by the playing companies, who sold the publishing rights at their discretion, so all of Shakespeare's plays were not his to dispose of, being owned by the King's Men. It is not known whether William Shakespeare still owned the shares in the Globe Theatre at his death, but three other major share holders besides Shakespeare who were positively known to hold shares when they died—Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, and Henry Condell—also didn't mention Globe shares in their wills.

Shakespeare's funerary monument

Shakespeare's Stratford Bust, from Dugdale's Warwickshire (1656). Doubters note what appears to be a woolsack and the absence of pen and paper suggests the figure more likely represents Shakespeare, the merchant-businessman.

Shakespeare's Stratford Bust, as published by Nicholas Rowe in 1709, with similar woolsack and absence of pen and paper.

Shakespeare's "Stratford monument", with pen in hand, engraved in 1723 by George Vertue.

The Stratford Bust, as it was represented in print between 1656 and 1723. Mainstream critics maintain the first two illustrators were simply inaccurate as to details.

Shakespeare's grave monument in Stratford, built within a decade of his death, currently features an effigy of him with a pen in hand, suggestive of a writer, with an attached inscribed plaque praising his abilities as a writer. But anti-Stratfordians assert that the monument was clearly altered after its installation, as the earliest printed image of the monument in Sir William Dugdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire, published in 1656, merely portrays a man holding a grain sack. The monument is portrayed similarly in Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s works. The earliest record of the pen (which evidently broke from the hand in the late eighteenth century and is now represented by a real goose quill) dates from an engraving of the memorial made by George Vertue in 1723 and published in Alexander Pope's 1725 edition of Shakespeare's plays.

Dugdale drew heraldic arms and monuments competently, but not figures and faces, his biographers say. Dugdale identified Shakespeare as a poet on his drawing and published the monument inscription praising Shakespeare's literary abilities. Anti-Stratfordian researcher Diana Price examined Dugdale's original sketch drawn in 1634 and determined that Dugdale initially drew a flatter cushion in pencil, later inking the drawing, probably off-site. The engraver, Wenceslaus Hollar, freely improvised the engraving more than 20 years later, adding bulges suggesting a sack. She concluded that the monument had not been altered and that all subsequent similar images were derived from Hollar, not from the monument itself.

When the effigy and cushion, made of a solid piece of Cotswold limestone, was removed from its niche in 1973, Sam Schoenbaum examined it and rendered an opinion that the monument was substantially as it was when first erected, with the hands resting on paper and writing-cushion, saying that "no amount of restoration can have transformed the monument of Dugdale's engraving into the effigy in Stratford church."

Oxfordian Richard Kennedy has proposed that the monument was originally built to honour John Shakespeare, William’s father, who was described by Rowe as a “considerable” (although illegal) wool dealer, and that the effigy was later changed to fit the writer. Kennedy’s theory gained the support of orthodox scholars Sir Brian Vickers and Peter Beal. According to Vickers, "[W]ell-documented records of recurrent decay and the need for extensive repair work . . . make it impossible that the present bust is the same as the one that was in place in the 1620s."

Marlovian Peter Farey contends that he has found a riddle embedded in the monument’s inscription, which when combined with a cryptic reference on the tombstone, identifies Marlowe as the true author.

Comments by contemporaries

Comments on Shakespeare by Elizabethan literary figures have been read by anti-Stratfordians as expressions of doubt about his authorship:

Ben Jonson had a contradictory relationship with Shakespeare. He regarded him as a friend – saying "I loved the man" – and wrote tributes to him in the First Folio. However, Jonson also wrote that Shakespeare was too wordy: Commenting on the Players' commendation of Shakespeare for never blotting out a line, Jonson wrote "would he had blotted a thousand" and that "he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." In the same work, he scoffs at a line Shakespeare wrote "in the person of Caesar": "Caesar never did wrong but with just cause", which Jonson calls "ridiculous," and indeed the text as preserved in the First Folio carries a different line: "Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause / Will he be satisfied" (3.1). Jonson ridiculed the line again in his play The Staple of News, without directly referring to Shakespeare. Some anti-Stratfordians interpret these comments as expressions of doubt about Shakespeare's ability to have written the plays.

In Robert Greene's posthumous publication Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592; published, and possibly written, by fellow dramatist Henry Chettle) a dramatist labeled "Shake-scene" is vilified as "an upstart Crowe beautified with our feathers", along with a quotation from Henry VI, Part 3. The orthodox view is that Greene is criticizing the relatively unsophisticated Shakespeare of Stratford for invading the domain of the university-educated playwright Greene. Some anti-Stratfordians claim that Greene is in fact doubting Shakespeare's authorship. In Greene's earlier work Mirror of Modesty (1584), the dedication mentions "Ezops Crowe, which deckt hir selfe with others feathers" referring to Aesop's fable (The Crow, the Eagle, and the Feathers) satirizing people who boast they have something they do not actually have.

In John Marston's satirical poem The Scourge of Villainy (1598), Marston rails against the upper classes being "polluted" by sexual interactions with the lower classes. Seasoning his piece with sexual metaphors, he then asks:

Shall broking pandars sucke Nobilitie?

Soyling fayre stems with foule impuritie?

Nay, shall a trencher slaue extenuate,

Some Lucrece rape? And straight magnificate

Lewd Jovian Lust? Whilst my satyrick vaine

Shall muzzled be, not daring out to straine

His tearing paw? No gloomy Juvenall,

Though to thy fortunes I disastrous fall.

There is a tradition that the satirist Juvenal became "gloomy" after being exiled by Domitian for having lampooned an actor that the emperor was in love with. Anti-stratfordians believe Marston's piece can be interpreted as being directed at an actor, and questioning whether such a lower class "trencher slave" is extenuating (making light of) "some Lucrece rape" (The Rape of Lucrece), with Shakespeare depicted as a "broking pandar" (procurer), implicitly questioning his credentials to "sucke Nobilitie", (attract the Earl of Southampton's patronage of him).

Publications

The First Folio (1623), and its frontispiece, have generated considerable debate.

The First Folio

The First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays, has generated considerable debate among authorship doubters, who have raised questions about the various dedications to "Shake-speare", as well as the famous Folio frontispiece. The engraving itself is usually attributed to Martin Droeshout the Younger.

Born in 1601, Droeshout was only 10 years old when Shakespeare of Stratford retired, and only 14 years old when he died. Seven additional years passed before the Folio's publication. These circumstances, authorship doubters believe, make it unlikely that Droeshout actually knew the playwright personally. Because of this, authorship researchers have questioned the circumstances behind the work, including Jonson's assertion that the engraving was "true to life".

Charlton Ogburn, author of The Mysterious William Shakespeare (1984), also noted that the curved line running from the ear to the chin makes the face appear more of a "mask" than a true representation of an actual person, though art historians see nothing unusual in these features. Stratfordians respond to the claim that Droeshout was too young to have known Shakespeare by noting that the assumption has long been that he worked from a sketch, which was normal practice for engravers.

Geographical knowledge in the plays

Most anti-Stratfordians believe that a well-travelled man wrote the plays, as many of them are set in European countries and show great attention to local details. Orthodox scholars respond that numerous plays of this period by other playwrights are set in foreign locations and Shakespeare is thus entirely conventional in this regard. In addition, in many cases Shakespeare did not invent the setting, but borrowed it from the source he was using for the plot.

Even outside of the authorship question, there has been debate about the extent of geographical knowledge displayed by Shakespeare. Some scholars argue that there is very little topographical information in the texts (nowhere in Othello or the Merchant of Venice are the many canals of Venice mentioned). They also note apparent mistakes: for example, Shakespeare refers to Bohemia as having a coastline in The Winter's Tale (the region is landlocked), refers to Verona and Milan as seaports in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (the cities are inland), in All's Well That Ends Well he suggests that a journey from Paris to Northern Spain would pass through Italy, and inTimon of Athens he believes that there are substantial tides in the Mediterranean Sea, and that they take place once instead of twice a day.

Answers to these objections have been made by other scholars (both orthodox and anti-Stratfordian). One explanation given for Bohemia having a coastline is that the same geographical mistake was already present in Shakespeare's source, Robert Greene's Pandosto, and the play merely reproduced it. Another is the author's awareness that the kingdom of Bohemia in the 13th century under Ottokar II stretched to the Adriatic and that in Shakespeare's time (since 1558) the King of Bohemia also was Holy Roman Emperor and ruled over the Adriatic coast neighboring the Venetian Republic.

It has been noted that The Merchant of Venice demonstrates detailed knowledge of the city, including the obscure facts that the Duke held two votes in the City Council, and that a dish of baked doves was a time-honoured gift in northern Italy. Shakespeare also used the local word, "traghetto", for the Venetian mode of transport (printed as 'traject' in the published texts). Anti-Stratfordians suggest that the above information would most likely be obtained from first-hand experience of the regions under discussion and conclude that the author of the plays could have been a diplomat, aristocrat or politician.

Mainstream scholars assert that Shakespeare's plays contain several colloquial names for flora and fauna that are unique to Warwickshire, where Stratford-upon-Avon is located, for example 'love in idleness' in A Midsummer Night's Dream. These names may suggest that a Warwickshire native might have written the plays. Warwickshire characters from the villages of Burtonheath and Wincot, both near Stratford, are identifiable in The Taming of the Shrew. Oxfordian researchers respond that the Earl of Oxford owned a manor house in Bilton, Warwickshire which, records show, he leased out in 1574 and sold in 1581.

The poems as evidence

Ever since their recovery in 1709 after being out of print for over half a century, the Shakespearean Sonnets have provided a major stimulus promoting inquiry into the author's biography and giving rise in critical ways to the authorship question itself. What man -- or what kind of a man -- wrote these extraordinary poems?

Many scholars interpret the sonnets as personal expressions of emotions and experiences: the English romantic poet Wordsworth, for example, said that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart." Others, such as Sidney Lee and Samuel Schoenbaum, have argued that they are academic exercises having no biographical significance, or dramatizations presented in the voice of a persona who is no more real than the characters "Shylock and Hamlet".

Those who consider the sonnets a key to the author's personality have attempted to identify the "Fair Youth," the "Dark Lady," and the "Rival Poet." Although there is no consensus about how these characters fit into the life of Shakespeare of Stratford, by far the most popular view among traditional scholars is that the Fair Youth is Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573-1624), to whom Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece had previously been dedicated.

Most Anti-Stratfordians read the sonnets as expressions of genuine biographical significance, and argue that these "mystery characters" can be identified as figures in the lives of their proposed candidates, although they do not always agree on the identities of the implicated persons. Since Looney's Shakespeare Identified was published in 1920, Oxfordians generally concur with the identification of the Fair Youth as Wriothesley and, indeed, regard the identification as a major point in favor of their theory. They point out that Wriothesley, during the early 1590s when the seventeen "procreation" sonnets were written, was being urged by his guardian, Lord Burghley, to marry Lady Elizabeth Vere, the eldest daughter of Edward de Vere. However, Charlton Ogburn points out that the "procreation" sonnets do not advocate any particular woman for the youth to marry. They simply exhort him to marry, beget a son, and thus perpetuate the beauty of his own youth through reproduction.

Oxfordians such as Charlton Ogburn also cite Sonnet 76 (among others) as evidence of the author's implication that the plays and poems were written under a pseudonym ("noted weed" in this sonnet means a "well-recognized garment," as in "widows' weeds"):

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

The poet complains in Sonnet 76 of "art made tongue-tied by authority"; this suggests his frustration over censorship of some kind. And in Sonnet 111, Shakespeare laments that "my name receives a brand/ and almost thence my nature is subdue'd/ by what it works in, like the dyer's hand."

Date of playwright's death

Further information: [[:Oxfordian theory#The_1604_issue|Oxfordian theory § The_1604_issue]]

Shake-speare's Sonnets

Dedication from SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS (1609). The phrase "ever-living poet" is interpreted by many anti-Stratfordians as evidence the author was dead by 1609.

Oxfordian researchers believe they can identify evidence that the actual playwright was dead by 1609, the year Shake-speare's Sonnets, appeared with "our ever-living Poet" on the dedication page, words typically used to eulogize someone who has died, yet has become immortal. Shakespeare himself used the phrase in this context in Henry VI, part 1 describing the dead Henry V as "[t]hat ever living man of memory" (4.3.51). And in 1665, Richard Brathwait used the exact same terminology referring to the deceased poet Jeffrey Chaucer, "A comment upon the two tales of our ancient, renovvned, and ever-living poet Sr. Jeffray Chavcer, Knight." Joseph Sobran, in Alias Shakespeare (1997), says that the finality of the title, Shake-speares Sonnets, suggests a complete body of work, with no more sonnets expected from the author, and notes that "the standard explanation is that the Sonnets were printed without (Shakespeare's) permission or cooperation". In fact, there is no record that Shakespeare of Stratford, who was not beyond suing his neighbors over paltry sums, ever objected or sought recompense for the publication. In addition, it is argued that some sonnets may be taken to suggest their author was older than the Stratford Shakespeare (#16, #30, #31, #62, #65, #73, #107, #138), and possibly approaching death.

The academic mainstream responds that the term “ever-living” does not necessarily imply that the person being described was dead. Indeed, anti-Stratfordian researcher, John Rollett, found an example of the epithet being applied to Queen Elizabeth, some eight years before her death. Donald Foster, again, has pointed out that the phrase “ever-living” in fact appears most frequently in Renaissance texts as a conventional epithet for eternal God. In addition, the term "begetter” was frequently and consistently only used to mean "author" in Renaissance book dedications. Bate, leaving out the initials, translates the largely formulaic dedication in modern English as “Thomas Thorpe, the well-wishing publisher of the following sonnets, takes the opportunity upon publishing them to wish their only author all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever living poet.” In addition, some modern Shakespearen specialists, such as Katherine Duncan-Jones, believe the sonnets were published with Shakespeare’s full authorization,

1604-1616 period

Some researchers believe certain documents imply the actual playwright had stopped writing, or was dead by 1604, the year continuous publication of new Shakespeare plays "mysteriously stopped", and various writers and scholars have asserted that The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII, and Antony and Cleopatra, so-called "later plays", were composed no later than 1604. Also, since Shakespeare of Stratford lived until 1616, anti-Stratfordians question why, if he were the author, he did not eulogize Queen Elizabeth at her death in 1603 or Henry, Prince of Wales, at his in 1612. Shakespeare did not memorialize the coronation of James I in 1604, the marriage of Princess Elizabeth in 1612, and the investiture of Prince Charles as the new Prince of Wales in 1613.

Orthodox scholars note that, as well as being a dramatist, was a narrative poet and a sonneteer, not an occasional poet, and that his neglect of Queen Elizabeth’s death was hardly unique. In one of the few such eulogies, Englandes Mourning Garment, Henry Chettle reproaches contemporary poets for their neglect of the queen’s death, including Chapman, Jonson, Shakespeare, Drayton, Dekker, and Marston, none of whom bothered to remark on her passing. Mainstream scholars also note that an expanded version of The Passionate Pilgrim was published in 1612, again with Shakespeare’s name on the title page, but his name was removed from unsold copies after a protest from Thomas Heywood, whose poems had been pirated for the edition and who said in his Apology for Actors (1612) that Shakespeare was "much offended" with the publisher for making "so bold with his name", implying that the author was very much alive at the time.

The Tempest dating debate

The dating debate often revolves around The Tempest, which is considered by many mainstream scholars to have been inspired by William Strachey's description of a 1609 Bermuda shipwreck. Mainstream literary scholar Kenneth Muir, on the other hand, noted "the extent of verbal echoes of the [Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated. There is hardly a shipwreck in history or fiction which does not mention splitting, in which the ship is not lightened of its cargo, in which the passengers do not give themselves up for lost, in which north winds are not sharp, and in which no one gets to shore by clinging to wreckage." Authorship researchers also point to the work of orthodox scholars such as Frank Kermode and Geoffrey Bullough, who believe that many of the words and images in The Tempest derive from Richard Eden's "The Decades of the New Worlde Or West India" (1555) and Desiderius Erasmus's "Naufragium"/"The Shipwreck" (1523).

Oxfordians also cite new research by Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter which they believe confirm the earlier sources cited by Kermode and Bullough. Alden T. Vaughan, however, has challenged the conclusions of Kositsky and Stritmatter in his 2008 paper "A Closer Look at the Evidence", defending Strachey as a probably Tempest source. In 2009, Stritmatter and Kositsky further developed the arguments against Strachey's influence in a Critical Survey article demonstrating the pervasive influence on The Tempest of the much earlier travel narrative, Richard Eden's 1555 Decades of the New World. CS editor William Leahy commented that "the authors show that the continued support of Strachey as Shakespeare's source is, at the very least, highly questionable."

Candidates and their champions

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford is the leading alternative candidate for the author behind the alleged pseudonym, Shake-Speare

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Main article: Oxfordian theory

The most popular modern candidate is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This theory was first proposed by J. Thomas Looney in 1920, whose work persuaded, among others, Sigmund Freud Orson Welles and Marjorie Bowen. The theory was brought to greater prominence by Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare (1984), after which Oxford rapidly became the favored alternative to the orthodox view of authorship. Advocates of Oxford are usually referred to as Oxfordians.

Oxfordians base their theory on what they say are multiple and striking similarities between Oxford's biography and events in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, in particular incidents found in Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, The Taming of the Shrew and All's Well That Ends Well. They also cite his intimacy with Queen Elizabeth I, the Earl of Southampton, court life, his record of travel throughout France and Italy, including to cities used as settings for some of Shakespeare's plays, and his dramatic financial downfall as outlined in the Oxfordian online journal, Brief Chronicles. Oxfordians also point to his extensive education and acknowledged intelligence; the contemporary acclaim of Oxford's talent as a poet and a playwright and his reputation as a concealed poet; the purported parallel phraseology and similarity of thought between Shakespeare's work and Oxford's extant letters and poetry; and underlined passages in his Bible in which they see correspondences to themes and expressions in Shakespeare's plays.

David Kathman argues that incidents in the plays fit many other aristocrats of the day, such as William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby (who also is nominated as an authorship candidate based on biographical parallels found in the works), King James, and the Earl of Essex. Literary scholars consider this type of "biographical-fit" to be unreliable for attributing authorship. But they say that the most compelling evidence against Oxford is his death in 1604, before a number of Shakespeare's plays were written, according to the orthodox dating of the canon. Oxfordians, and some orthodox scholars, respond that the plays are dated to fit Shakespeare of Stratford's known lifespan, and assert that there is no conclusive evidence that the plays or poems were written after 1604, and that in fact no sources used by Shakespeare after that date have been positively identified. (For a dating of Shakespeare's plays according to the Oxfordian theory, see Chronology of Shakespeare's plays – Oxfordian.)

Mainstream Shakespearean critics also assert that Oxford's known poems bear no stylistic resemblance to the works of Shakespeare, but Oxfordians point out that the poetry published under his name is juvenilia, that of a very young man, citing parallels between Oxford's poetry and Shakespeare's early play, Romeo and Juliet. Researcher Kurt Kreiler writes that Oxford’s juvenilia "represent the path to Shakespeare and already foreshadow the sedulous stylist that Shakespeare was to become", according to a book review in the online Oxfordian journal Brief Chronicles.

For a detailed Oxfordian examination of the parallels between Shakespeare's plays and Oxford's biography, see Oxfordian theory: Parallels with Shakespeare's plays

Sir Francis Bacon is often cited as a possible author of Shakespeare's plays

Sir Francis Bacon

Main article: Baconian theory

In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Smith was supported by Delia Bacon in her book The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded(1857), in which she maintains that Shakespeare's work was in fact written by a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, who collaborated for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. She professed to discover this system beneath the superficial text of the plays. Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833–1915) adopted a modified form of this view, founding the Francis Bacon Society in 1885, and publishing her Bacon-centered theory in Francis Bacon and His Secret Society (1891).

Since Bacon commented that play-acting was used by the ancients "as a means of educating men's minds to virtue," a non-esoteric view is that Bacon acted alone and to serve his Great Instauration project he left his moral philosophy to posterity in the Shakespeare plays (e.g. the nature of good government exemplified by Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 2). Having outlined both a scientific and moral philosophy in his Advancement of Learning, only Bacon's scientific philosophy was known to have been published during his lifetime (Novum Organum 1620).

Supporters of Bacon draw attention to similarities between specific phrases from the plays and those written down by Bacon in his wastebook, the Promus, which was unknown to the public for more than 200 years after it was written. A great number of these entries are reproduced in the Shakespeare plays, often preceding publication and the performance dates of those plays. Bacon confesses in a letter to being a "concealed poet" and was on the governing council of the Virginia Company when William Strachey's letter from the Virginia colony arrived in England which, according to many scholars, was used to write The Tempest. There is also evidence that it was not Shakspere's company that played the first known performance of The Comedy of Errors on Innocent's Day 1594-5, but the Gray's Inn Players, and there is further evidence that Bacon controlled this (see Baconian theory).

Despite Percy Bysshe Shelley's testimony that "Lord Bacon was a poet", the main argument usually levelled against Bacon's candidacy is that the little poetry that has been attributed to Bacon is abrupt and stilted, unlike Shakespeare's. It has also been noted that Bacon was still living when the Sonnets were published in 1609, yet he made no effort to claim them or to collect royalties on them.

Christopher Marlowe has been cited as a possible author for Shakespeare's works

Christopher Marlowe

Main article: Marlovian theory

A case for the gifted young playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe was made as early as 1895, but the creator of the most detailed theory of Marlowe's authorship was Calvin Hoffman, an American journalist whose main argument centres on the use of similar wordings or ideas—called "parallelisms"—between the two writers. A.D. Wraight also wrote an influential book promoting Marlowe as the author, but she delves more into what she sees as the true meaning of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Marlowe created a stir with his literary output while attending Cambridge as a scholarship student. The young writer was the first to translate Ovid's Amores into English – translations which were subsequently ordered publicly burned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. His translation and adaptation into blank verse of Lucan's Pharsalia is one of the earliest English verses written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, and has influenced poets from Milton to Wordsworth. While still a university student, Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus was produced in London; shortly after he earned his M.A. and left Cambridge, his play Tamburlaine the Great appeared on the London stage for 200 performances.

Marlowe was said to have been murdered in 1593 by a group of spies, including Ingram Frizer, a servant of Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's patron. A theory has developed that Marlowe, who may well have been facing an impending death penalty for heresy, was saved by the faking of his death (with the aid of people in high places such as Thomas Walsingham and Marlowe's possible employer, Lord Burghley) and that he subsequently wrote the works credited to William Shakespeare while in exile in Italy. Hoffman argued that Shakespeare of Stratford was paid by the conspirators to sign his name on the manuscripts, to conceal the fact that Marlowe was still alive.

Supporters of Marlovian theory also point to stylometric tests and studies of parallel phraseology, which sought to show how "both" authors used similar vocabulary and a similar style.

Mainstream scholars find the argument for Marlowe's faked death unconvincing. They also find the writings of Marlowe and Shakespeare very different, and attribute any similarities to the popularity and influence of Marlowe's work on subsequent dramatists such as Shakespeare.

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby was reported to be writing plays for the "common players".

William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby

One of the chief arguments in support of Derby's candidacy is a pair of 1599 letters by the Jesuit spy George Fenner in which it is reported that Derby is "busy penning plays for the common players." Professor Abel Lefranc (1918) claimed his 1578 visit to the Court of Navarre is reflected in Love's Labour's Lost. His older brother Ferdinando Stanley, 5th Earl of Derby formed a group of players which evolved into the King's Men, one of the companies most associated with Shakespeare. It has been theorized that the first production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed at his wedding banquet.

Born in 1561, Stanley's parents were Henry, Lord Strange, and Margaret Clifford, great granddaughter of Henry VII, whose family line made Stanley an heir to the throne. At the age of eleven, he went to St. John's College, Oxford. He later studied at both London law schools, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. He married Elizabeth de Vere, daughter of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and Anne Cecil. Elizabeth's maternal grandfather was William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, the oft-acknowledged prototype of the character of Polonius in Hamlet. Derby was also closely associated with William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery and later 4th Earl of Pembroke, the two dedicatees of the 1623 Shakespearean folio. Around 1628 to 1629, when Derby released his estates to his son James, who became the 7th Earl, the named trustees were Pembroke and Montgomery.

Asserting a similarity with the name "William Shakespeare", supporters of the Stanley candidacy note that Stanley's first name was William, his initials were W. S., and he was known to sign himself, "Will". They also cite biographical parallels between his life and incidents in the plays. In 1599 he is was reported as financing one of London's two children's drama companies, the Paul's Boys and, his playing company, Derby's Men, known for playing at the "Boar's Head". In addition the company played multiple times at court in 1600 and 1601. Stanley is often mentioned as a leader or participant in the "group theory" of Shakespearean authorship.

Group theory

In the 1960s, the most popular general theory was that Shakespeare's plays and poems were the work of a group rather than one individual. A group consisting of De Vere, Bacon, William Stanley, Mary Sidney, and others, has been put forward, for example. This theory has been often noted, most recently by renowned actor Derek Jacobi, who told the British press "I subscribe to the group theory. I don't think anybody could do it on their own. I think the leading light was probably de Vere, as I agree that an author writes about his own experiences, his own life and personalities."

Other candidates

At least fifty other candidates have also been proposed, including Queen Elizabeth. This argument was first proposed by George Elliott Sweet in 1956, and in 1995 Lillian Schwartz suggested that the engraving of Shakespeare that appears in the First Folio was based on a portrait of the queen.

A less well known candidate, William Nugent, was first put forward in Ireland by the distinguished Meath historian Elizabeth Hickey and was expanded upon by Brian Nugent in his 2008 publication, Shakespeare was Irish!. William Nugent (1550–1625) was a nobleman from Delvin in County Westmeath who was imprisoned by the state for opposing the cess in Ireland in the 1570s, and he rebelled in 1581 losing a number of supporters to the hangman's noose and causing him to flee into exile, first into Scotland, then France and Italy. During his exile he met with most of the great European leaders, such as the Pope, the King's of Spain, France and Scotland, and the Duke of Guise, and was involved in European-wide planning for an invasion of England. He was known for his great literary talents, as described by Irish historian John Lynch: "he learnt the more difficult niceties of the Italian language and carried his proficiency to that point that he could write Italian poetry with elegance. Before that however he had been very successful in writing poetry in Latin, English and Irish and would yield to none in the precision and excellence of his verses in each of these languages. His poems which speak for themselves are still extant." As early as 1577 he was known as a composer of "divers sonnets" in English, to quote his friend Richard Stanihurst writing in Chapter 7 of Holinshed's Chronicles.

In 2007, The Master of Shakespeare by A. W. L. Saunders proposed a "new" candidate — Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke (1554–1628). Greville was an aristocrat, courtier, statesman, sailor, soldier, spymaster, literary patron, dramatist, historian and poet. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, where he met his lifelong friend Sir Philip Sidney, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was Clerk to the Council of Wales and the Marches, Treasurer of the Navy, and from 1614 to 1621, Chancellor of the Exchequer. After the death of his father in 1606, Fulke became Recorder of Stratford-upon-Avon and he held that post until his own death in 1628.

In The Truth Will Out, published in 2005, Brenda James, a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, and Professor William Rubinstein, professor of history at Aberystwyth University, argue that Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English diplomat and distant relative of Shakespeare, is possibly the true author of the plays. Neville's career placed him in the locations of some of the plays at approximately the dates of their authorship.

In a March 2007 lecture at the Smithsonian Institution, John Hudson proposed a new authorship candidate, the poet Emilia Lanier (1569–1645), the first woman in England to publish a book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611). A. L. Rowse had already linked Lanier to Shakespeare in 1973, proposing Lanier as the "dark lady" of the Sonnets. Lanier was born in London, into a family of probable Marrano Jewish extraction, who worked as musicians. They came from Venice and were of Moorish ancestry. Hudson posited that Lanier fits many aspects of the biographical profile implied by the plays. She was also the longterm mistress of Lord Hunsdon, the man in charge of the English theatre and the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Hudson proposed that Lanier lived as a hidden Jew despite her nominal Christianity; this explained what he considered to be Hebrew and Jewish religious allegories in the plays. Also, unlike Shakespeare, she died poor, depised, lacking honour and proud titles, as described in Sonnets numbers 37, 29, 81, 111 and 25.

Francis Carr proposed that Francis Bacon was both Shakespeare and the author of Don Quixote. A 2007 film called Miguel and William, written and directed by Inés París, explores the parallels and alleged collaboration between Cervantes and Shakespeare.

Other candidates proposed include Mary Sidney.; Sir Edward Dyer; or Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland (sometimes with his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and her aunt Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, as co-authors). Malcolm X argued that Shakespeare was actually King James I.

Notes

• a. ^{^} H. N. Gibson writes, "Although it is not properly my business, I feel that in the interests of fairness I ought to point out that most of the sins of omission and commission I have just laid to the charge of the theorists can also be found among the orthodox Stratfordians when they write a panegyric of their hero. . . . Most of the great Shakespearean scholars are to be found in the Stratfordian camp; but too much must not be made of this fact, for many of them display comparatively little interest in the controversy with which we are dealing. Their chief concerns are textual criticism, interpretation, and the internal problems of the plays, and they accept the orthodox view mainly because it is orthodox. The Stratfordians can, however, legitimately claim that almost all the great Elizabethan scholars who have interested themselves in the controversy have been on their side.

References

Further reading

Orthodox

• H. N. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants (London, 1962). (An overview written from an orthodox perspective).
• E.A.J. Honigman: The Lost Years, 1985.
• Frederick A. Keller Spearing the Wild Blue Boar: Shakespeare vs Oxford - The Authorship Question. (iUniverse, June 30, 2009). ISBN 978-1440121401 (Orthodox response to the Oxford theory).
• Irvin Leigh Matus, Shakespeare, in Fact (London: Continuum, 1999). ISBN 0-8264-0928-8. (Orthodox response to the Oxford theory).
• Scott McCrea: "The Case for Shakespeare", (Westport CT: Praeger, 2005). ISBN 0-275-98527-X.
• Ian Wilson: Shakespeare - The Evidence, (Headline Book Publishing, 1993). ISBN 0-312-20005-6 (Mainstream argument)

Anti-Stratfordian

• Bertram Fields, Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare (2005) ISBN 0-060-77559-9.
• George Greenwood The Shakespeare Problem Restated (London: John Lane, 1908).
• George Greenwood Shakespeare's Law and Latin. (London: Watts & Co., 1916). ISBN 1-402-14020-7
• George Greenwood Is There a Shakespeare Problem? (London: John Lane, 1916).
• George Greenwood Shakespeare's Law. (London: Cecil Palmer, 1920).
• Warren Hope and Kim Holston, The Shakespeare Controversy: An Analysis of the Claimants to Authorship and Their Champions and Detractors. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1992. 2nd edition, 2009). (Thorough study of the history of the controversy from an Oxfordian perspective).
• John Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare? (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999). ISBN 0-500-28113-0. (An overview from a neutral perspective).
• Diana Price, Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem (Westport, Ct: Greenwood, 2001). ISBN 0-313-31202-8 Author's website: Diana Price: About Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography (Introduction to the evidentiary problems of the orthodox tradition).
• Mark Twain Is Shakespeare Dead?: From My Autobiography, (Harper & Brothers, 1909). (General anti-Stratfordian)

Oxfordian

• Mark Anderson, "Shakespeare" by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, The Man Who Was Shakespeare (Gotham Press, 2005). ISBN 1-592-40215-1
• Al Austin and Judy Woodruff The Shakespeare Mystery, 1989 Frontline documentary. "The Shakespeare Mystery". (Documentary film about the Oxford case.)
• Jonathan Bond "The De Vere Code: Proof of the True Author of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS" (Real Press, 2009) ISBN 0-956-41279-9
• William Farina De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon (McFarland & Company, 2005) ISBN 0-786-42383-8
• William Plumer Fowler Shakespeare Revealed in Oxford's Letters. (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Peter E. Randall Publisher, 1986). ISBN 0-914-33912-5
• J. Thomas Looney Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. (London: Cecil Palmer, 1920). 1446 pages "'Shakespeare' Identified". ISBN 0-804-61877-1 (The first book to promote the Oxford theory.)
• Richard Malim (Ed.) Great Oxford: Essays on the Life and Work of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, 1550-1604. (London: Parapress, 2004). ISBN 1-898-59479-1
• Bernard Mordaunt Ward The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) From Contemporary Documents (London: John Murray, 1928).
• Charlton Ogburn The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Mask. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1984). ISBN 0-939-00967-6 (Influential book that criticises orthodox scholarship and promotes the Oxford theory).
• Joseph Sobran Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). ISBN 0-684-82658-5
• Roger A. Stritmatter The Marginalia of Edward de Vere's Geneva Bible: Providential Discovery, Literary Reasoning, and Historical Consequence. 2001 University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation. Abstract
• Richard Whalen Shakespeare: Who Was He? The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon. (Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1994). ISBN 0-313-36050-2

Baconian

• N. B. Cockburn, The Bacon Shakespeare Question - the Baconian theory made sane, 740 pages, private publication, 1998 (Contents)
• Barry R. Clarke, The Shakespeare Puzzle - A non-esoteric Baconian theory
• Peter Dawkins: The Shakespeare Enigma, Polair Publ., London 2004, ISBN 0-9545389-4-3 (engl.)
• Amelie Deventer von Kunow, Francis Bacon: Last of the Tudors, trans. Willard Parker (1924)
• Penn Leary, Bacon Is Shakespeare, Cryptographic Shakespeare (n.d.)
• Fellows, Virginia M., The Shakespeare Code (2006) ISBN 978-1-932890-02-5.

Marlovian

• Samuel Blumenfeld The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question (McFarland, 2008) "The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection" ISBN 978-0786439027
• Calvin Hoffman, The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare (Julian Messner, 1955); also published as The Man who was Shakespeare (London: Max Parrish & Co. Ltd., 1955).
• William Honey, The Life, Loves and Achievements of Christopher Marlowe, alias Shakespeare (1982). ISBN 0-950-93950-1
• Archie Webster, Was Marlowe the Man?, The National Review (1923) Vol. 82 pp. 81–86.
• David Rhys Williams, Shakespeare, Thy Name is Marlowe (Philosophical Library, 1966). ISBN 0-806-53015-4
• A.D. Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart Publishers, 1994). ISBN 1-897-76301-8
• A.D. Wraight, Shakespeare: New Evidence (Adam Hart Publishers, 1996). ISBN 1-897-76309-3
• Daryl Pinksen, Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare (Universe, 2008) ISBN 0-595-47514-0
• Wilbur Gleason Ziegler, It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries (Chicago: Donahue, Henneberry & Co., 1895). (Fiction, but with a foreword first proposing the idea)

Rutlandian

• Karl Bleibtreu: Der Wahre Shakespeare, Munich 1907, G. Mueller
• Lewis Frederick Bostelmann: Rutland, New York 1911, Rutland publishing company
• Celestin Demblon: Lord Rutland est Shakespeare, Paris 1912, Charles Carrington
• Brian Dutton: Let Shakspere Die: Long Live the Merry Madcap Lord Roger Manner, 5th Earl of Rutland the Real "Shakespeare", c.2007, RoseDog Books
• Ilya Gililov: The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix, New York : Algora Pub., c2003., ISBN 0-87586-182-2, 0875861814 (pbk.)
• Pierre S. Porohovshikov (Porokhovshchikov): Shakespeare Unmasked, New York 1940, Savoy book publishers

Academic authorship debates

• Jonathan Hope, The Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays: A Socio-Linguistic Study (Cambridge University Press, 1994). (Concerned with the 'academic authorship debate' surrounding Shakespeare's collaborations and apocrypha, not with the various identity theories).

External links

General Non-Stratfordian

• The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, home of the "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identify of William Shakespeare" -- a concise, definitive explanation of the reasons to doubt the case for the Stratford man. Doubters can read, and sign, the Declaration online.
• The Shakespeare Authorship Trust, survey of all the authorship candidates, a site patronised by the actor Mark Rylance and Dr William Leahy of Brunel University, UK
• Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable, an examination of the authorship debate, overview of the major and minor candidates for authorship of the canon, literary collaboration and the group theory, bibliography and forum.

Mainstream

• David Kathman and Terry Ross, The Shakespeare Authorship Page (table of contents)
  • Tom Reedy and David Kathman, "How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts"
• Irvin Leigh Matus's Shakespeare Site (includes several articles defending the orthodox position)
  • Irvin Leigh Matus, "The Case for Shakespeare", from Atlantic Monthly, 1991
• Truth vs. Theory Shakespeare As Autodidact
• T.L. Hubeart, Jr. "The Shakespeare Authorship Question" Brief overview of the rise of anti-Stratfordianism.
• The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust: "Shakespeare's authorship" Brief overview.
• Alan H. Nelson's Shakespeare Authorship Pages - created by a biographer of Oxford who does not believe he wrote Shakespeare

Oxfordian

• The Shakespeare Fellowship current research on the Oxfordian theory
• The Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook. Archive of materials on the authorship question, especially from an Oxfordian perspective.
• Articles by Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter, challenging the methods and conclusions of Stratfordian David Kathman
• Joseph Sobran's response to David Kathman's "historical record" articles
• State of the Debate - Oxfordian vs. Stratfordian
• Shakespeare Oxford Society
• The Shakespeare Mystery (Website for a PBS documentary; includes several articles)
• Joseph Sobran, The Shakespeare Library (collection of Joseph Sobran's Oxfordian columns. Sobran's Alias Shakespeare is mentioned here, also.)
• The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference A yearly academic conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon on Oxfordian theory
• The De Vere Society of Great Britain
• Brief Chronicles: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Authorship Studies. A peer-reviewed interdisciplinary publication, Brief Chronicles is overseen by an Editorial Board of academicians with terminal degrees and distinguished records of scholarship and teaching. The journal publishes research-based notes, articles, and monographs, as well as essays and reviews of books, theater productions, and movies based on the drama and literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

Baconian

• N. Cockburn, The Bacon–Shakespeare Question, private publication 1998 (Contents)
• http://www.baconsocietyinc.org - the first official champions of the Baconian cause. Since 1886 the Francis Bacon Society has engaged with the authorship question and publishes the journal Baconiana "Baconiana"
• http://www.fbrt.org.uk - The Francis Bacon Research Trust, furthering research and understanding into the life, works and contemporaries of Francis Bacon, the Shakespeare plays and the Western Wisdom Traditions.
• Baconian Evidence For Shakespeare Evidence

Marlovian

• Peter Farey's Marlowe Page
• The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection (a Marlovian website/blog started in May 2008, with regular contributions from the world's leading Marlovians)
• The International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society. ("Our Belief is that Christopher Marlowe - in his day England's greatest playwright - did not die in 1593 but survived to write most of what is now assumed to be the work of William Shakespeare.")
• Frontline: Much Ado About Something(website for a TV documentary)
• Marlowe Lives! (collection of articles, documents and links)
• Jeffrey Gantz, review of Hamlet, by William Shakespear and Christopher Marlowe: 400th Anniversary Edition (a sceptical review of a Marlovian book)
• Peter Bull, Shakespeare's Sonnets Written by Kit Marlowe
• German Marlowe-Shakespeare Authorship Webpage

Other candidates

• Cervantes y Shakespeare eran la misma persona (in Spanish) Shakespeare was in fact a disguised Cervantes
• The Master of Shakespeare, A.W.L. Saunders, 2007 Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. Website for the book The Master of Shakespeare, 2007
• Chichester Festival Theatre I Am Shakespeare Webcam Daytime Chat-Room Show by Mark Rylance. A new production by former Artistic Director of The Globe Theatre on the Shakespeare authorship debate.
• Mary Sidney - Website for a book by Robin P. Williams on Mary Sidney's authorship
• I. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (original Russian text)
• HenryNeville.com - Website for a book on Sir Henry Neville's authorship
• LeylandandGoding.com - Animated decryption of the Dedication to the Sonnets and 4 other prefaces to Shakespeare's works that reveal the name Sir Henry Neville
• The URL of Derby (promotes the Earl of Derby)
• Terry Ross, "The Droeshout Engraving of Shakespeare: Why It's NOT Queen Elizabeth".
• Brian Nugent, Shakespeare was Irish! (Co. Meath, 2008), ISBN 978-0-9556812-1-9.