On The Impossibility Of Shakespeare Having Written The Plays

The Tooth Fairy Fallacy

Shakespeare’s Six Shaky Signatures: The Only Physical Evidence

The life of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, known as the greatest playwright of all time, contains a great mystery. The man who transformed the English language, the man who gave birth to literary nihilism, the man of such insight into human psychology that he deeply inspired such influential thinkers as Freud, Nietzsche and Huxley, left behind absolutely no traces of any literary activity beside the fact that his name is on the published plays. There are no manuscripts of his poems or plays in his handwriting. There is no evidence that he ever went to school. There is no evidence that he ever wrote anything besides three signatures on his last will and three signatures on official court documents. All six signatures show a man that could barely handle a pen. (pictured above) Shakespeare never wrote a letter apparently because no letters of his exist. Not one, from an era of constant letter writing from 'the greatest writer ever'. No letters exist that were written to him, except for one that was never mailed. There is no evidence that he ever owned any books. His daughter could not read, signing her name on a marriage license with a mark. His parents could not read. In fact, there is not a single record from his lifetime tying him to the writing of the plays: not one record of payment from theater owners or impresario’s or book printers. There is no testimony at all from other writers from during his lifetime, or from anyone for that matter, that discusses a personal relationship to Shakespeare the writer. Personal literary records exist for every other major playwright of the day. But not for the greatest playwright of all time.

Meanwhile the records that do exist for William Shakespeare concern a variety of business dealings and family matters, like births and marriages. The business and legal records show Shakespeare to have been born in Stratford-upon-Avon, married at 18, a father 6 months later, a father of twins 2 years after that and then nothing for 7 years until he turns up in London. That is all anyone knows about the first 25 years of the 'greatest writer in the history of the world'. The remaining evidence shows him to have been a resident of London for many years, working as an actor, as part owner of two theaters, as a landlord, and as a dealer in grain and wool as his father had been. He also loaned money at interest.

How could someone with this meager yet busy life story have possibly written some of the most learned, dense and complicated plays of all-time? Plays densely packed with literary and historical references, plays of which scholars agree that the author would have needed a profound knowledge of English, Latin, Greek and Italian as well as a deep and wide knowledge of history, mythology and multiple subjects like jurisprudence, military matters, foreign geography, seamanship amongst much else?

How is it possible for a man without an education or a grammar school education at best and no known access to books to have accomplished such an enormous amount of learning to support the densely learned dark creative genius seen in the plays? Such that it’s possible to study Shakespeare in every American university? Scholars have determined that the plays are based on many books by ancient writers whose work was not yet translated into English, existing then only in Latin and Greek. Some of those writers are Ovid, Plautus, Horace, Juvenal, Lucretius, Cicero, St Augustine, Terence, Virgil, Seneca, Livy, and Aristotle. All of these authors, and others, are acknowledged as sources for the plays.

On the contrary, Shakespeare never wrote a single word about the people and places of Stratford where he grew up and where he died. Family life and children are for the most part non-existent in Shakespeare. He wrote instead about ancient Romans and ancient Egyptians and English royalty and English and Italian and French nobility with a near constant focus on political power. He never wrote a single word about himself other than in his last will.

Professor Schoenbaum, a major Shakespeare scholar states in Shakespeare’s Lives: “Perhaps we should despair of ever bridging the vertiginous expanse between the sublimity of the subject [the plays and poems] and the mundane inconsequence of the documentary record”.

There is indeed a ‘vertiginous expanse’ between the life record of William Shakespeare and the achievement of creating plays of such enormous dark genius. The only evidence that Shakespeare did anything literary is that his name appears on published versions of the plays and poems. E.K. Chambers, one of the most respected and well known of all Shakespeare scholars states in his William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems: “the canon of Shakespeare’s plays rests primarily on the authority of title-pages”.

In an essay entitled “Why The Shakespeare Hoax Is So Important” the notion that the true author of the plays was kept hidden for reasons having to do with controlling perception of the plays is explored in depth. Knowing the facts of the situation and using basic logic leads one to easily see that Willam Shakespeare was a front man for a group of people interested in power.

This essay will focus on the ‘vertiginous expanse’ between the ‘mundane inconsequence’ of Stratford William and the enormous complexity, ‘sublimity’ and depth of the plays to give a clearer idea of the impossibility of Stratford William having written them, to add to the the cold fact that there is no actual real evidence showing that he did write the plays.

The authorship hoax needs to be understood. It’s ramifications are enormous.

This Master, This Titan, This Genius

The depth of learning discerned in the plays is such that William Shakespeare has been called “the master of all knowledge”, the “Master of the human mind” and “This master, this titan, this genius”. America’s former leading literary critic Harold Bloom, now deceased, went so far as to say that Shakespeare "invented" what it means to be human. As goofy as that is, still, how is such a claim possibly made for a man who never wrote a letter worth saving, whose daughters and parents were illiterate and for whom there is no evidence that he ever owned a book?

E.K. Chambers on part of the vertiginous expanse-the historical fact that Shakespeare owned no books. “One may reasonably assume that at all times Shakespeare read whatever books, original or translated, that came in his way. It has been asked where he found them in the absence of public libraries. Did he borrow from the Earl of Southampton, or from Jonson or from Camden, or did he merely turn over their leaves on the stationers’ stalls? These are foolish questions, to which I propose no answers.”

Foolish question Mr. Chambers? How so? Why not propose an answer? It’s a very important question, especially for a Shakespeare scholar! There is no evidence at all for any of those suggestions as a source for Shakespeare’s vast learning. Imagine an Elizabethan bookseller allowing someone to stand and read books for hours at a time, day after day.

Shakespeare’s name first appears as an author starting in 1593 with the poem Venus and Adonis. In 1598 when he was 34 years old his name first appeared on single-play booklets called ‘quartos’. Only a few plays appeared in his lifetime with his name on them. Most were published anonymously.

Which brings us to the mother lode: The First Folio. Seven years after his death, thirty-six Shakespeare plays were published together in a book now called the First Folio. Many of the plays had never been printed before, with a few being previously unknown. The First Folio is the key to the entire Shakespeare phenomenon, almost all by itself giving the world the plays, as well as the idea that Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon wrote them. The book begins with an elaborate eleven page introduction that includes a bizarre portrait of the author and three dedications to Shakespeare from contemporary authors including Ben Jonson. This lengthy introduction is carefully designed to give a sense of certainty that William Shakespeare was the author of the plays and that he was a man of remarkable genius whose work would live forever. The introduction has many odd and mysterious elements that suggest it to be an elaborate and sophisticated hoax. For instance the two editors, Heminges and Condell, were actors who never before and never again edited and/or published a book. We’ll examine the First Folio in more detail at another time. Remember that it was published seven years after Shakespeare died. Francis Bacon was still alive. The Earl of Oxford was dead for 19 years.

Two First Folio's, Holy Relics, Trinity College Library, Dublin

Bacon and Shakespeare Together, Trinity College Library, Dublin

During Shakespeare’s lifetime not a single person made a reference to him personally as a writer, whether published in a book or pamphlet, in a letter or entry in a diary. As Diana Price cites in her detailed and exhaustively researched book Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence For An Authorship Problem “All of Shakespeare’s undisputed personal records are non-literary, and that is not only unusual. It is Bizarre. Statistically it is also an impossibility”. Ms. Price continues, “Over seventy historical records survive for Shakespeare, but not one reveals his supposed primary professional occupation of writing. Indeed the only evidence that proves Shakespeare wrote anything are six shaky signatures.”

In Elizabeth “don’t call me an anti-vaxxer” Winkler’s excellent recent book entitled Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies that contains a detailed survey of the entire history of the Shakespeare authorship problem, Winkler writes that “No such void exists for other major writers of the period. Though many left fewer documents, the ones they did leave identified them as writers in payment records, manuscripts, letters and diaries”. Her claim is backed up by Diana Price’s earlier exhaustive research. It is only in the First Folio, assembled seven years after the death of the Bard, that a personal, literary reference to Shakespeare first appears, written by Ben Jonson, a writer who was a close personal friend of Francis Bacon’s.

Diana Price again: “Shakespeare’s documentary evidence further suggest that he was uncomfortable using a pen. His biographical trail is bookless. Shakespeare’s will has not a trace of literary sensibilities in its composition or its content.”

‘Stratfordians’ love to label as ‘conspiracy theorists’ those of us who claim that Shakespeare could not have been the author . (Stratfordians are those who claim William of Stratford wrote the plays). I would instead say that since the overwhelming preponderance of evidence shows the Stratfordian claim to be a literal impossibility, that to know the facts of the Bard’s biography and yet still believe that Shakespeare was the author of the plays is to commit a logical fallacy. The logical fallacies were spelled out by the ancient Greek philosophers in order to better determine truth in any argument. They are important and are of a great help to determine sophistry and baloney in any debate. They need to be studied. For example there’s the “strawman fallacy” where you misrepresent someone's argument to make it easier to attack. There’s the “appeal to authority fallacy” where you claim that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true. There’s the “fallacy of appeal to emotion” where you attempt to manipulate an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument.

The Tooth Fairy Fallacy

Stratfordians, regarding Shakespeare, fall into the “tooth fairy fallacy”. That’s when you fall asleep after putting a tooth under your pillow and wake up to find the tooth gone, replaced by money. Money money money. The only logical explanation being that the tooth fairy took the tooth and left the money, because your parents told you the tooth fairy would come and…parents never ever lie! For the Stratfordians, if a publisher put Shakespeare’s name on the plays, then the only possible explanation is that Shakespeare wrote the plays. And if Stratford wrote the plays, he somehow acquired a great deal of learning, including Latin, Greek, Italian and French to go along with many many hours of study of the great books. Stratfordians are children who think publishers never lie.

Stratfordians are further burdened, having built up an image of a humble Stratford genius, such as was given by the introduction to the First Folio, where William is portrayed as the ‘’gentle’ and ‘sweet swan of Avon’. (Which is a colossal in-joke, because there is little that is gentle or sweet in Shakespeare. The plays are instead filled with some of the most vicious, duplicitous and violent scenes in theater history. But words placed in the mind just so have tremendous staying power, especially when they are continually reinforced. Imagine making a terrible discovery about someone to whom you were close, such as discovering that a best friend, or a parent or a sibling has habitually been lying to you for their own benefit. It can be so painful to believe that it is simply easier to ignore the facts.

The following are some of the facts about Shakespeare’s life as agreed to by both “Stratfordians’ and “anti-Stratfordians”, who are those who think someone other that William of Stratford wrote the plays. The record of William Shakespeare’s life remains sparse despite a desperate searching throughout England for many centuries looking for the tiniest mention of the national poet, hoping for a some scrap of literary-based biographical evidence connecting him to the knowledge and ability to be able to have penned the plays. (For an example of a recent non-literary biographical discovery about the Bard® go here). It is believed that no man’s life has ever been more investigated and studied than Shakespeare’s. The following is most of what has been found.

Just the facts

In 1594 a record was made of the baptism as William Shakspere (note spelling of his last name) dated April 26th 1594. Subtract a few days and April 23rd, the feast of Saint George the patron saint of England, became Shakespeare’s official birth date.

There is no proof his father (John) or mother (Mary) knew how to write. His father was once the ‘bailiff’ or chief magistrate of the Stratford town council-but he always signed his name with a mark and not a signature. You did not have to be able to read to be the bailiff. A scrivener could do that for you. Only about 20% of Stratfordians back in the 1500’s could read or write. Stratford, it is said, at the time was a particularly dirty and backward town of about 1,500 souls. At any rate, nothing survives to indicate his parents could read or write. His father made gloves, traded timber and barley and engaged in illegal wool trading.

The records for Shakespeare for the next 18 years are a total blank. There is no evidence that he ever went to school. There was a school in Stratford but there is no record that William attended. At best, if he had attended he would have learned some Latin grammar and arithmetic. It is highly doubtful that he would have become fluent in Latin even if he did go to school, especially since most scholars think that he left school at age 13 to help to support the family, although no one knows for sure. Shakespeare did have five younger brothers and sisters.

At 18 a record surfaces of his marriage to Anne Hathaway. His name on the marriage license is spelled William Shagspere. Six months later they had a daughter Susanna and three years later twins, Hamnet and Judith. The next 7 years are again completely blank, with no records at all having surfaced. These seven years from 1585-1592 are called by scholars ‘the lost years’. This is where the ‘could have’, ‘must have’, and ‘certainly did’ come into play for Shakespeare biographers, who try to make sense of the enormous learning and life experience the man would have needed since he does have his name on the plays. Some say he worked in a law office, since the plays betray a deep knowledge of the law. Some say he became a soldier since military matters are so precisely detailed in the plays. Some think he traveled to Italy since many of the plays take place in Italy and show a detailed knowledge of Italian language and geography. There are many attempts to fill out these 7 ‘lost years’. But no one knows for sure what the Bard was doing. Shakespeare “biographies” are very popular but they are almost entirely fictional.

All that is known is that he left for London at some point. It has recently been surmised by scholars that he went in order to help his father’s illegal trade in wool. In 1592 a record has surfaced that he loaned a man named John Clayton 7 pounds. This is known because William sued him 8 years later to recover the debt. In 1592 it was also recorded that probable Shakespeare plays were performed as recorded by an impresario named Phillip Henslowe in his now famous Henslowe’s diary. Shakespeare’s name was not yet on the plays, as they were listed as anonymous. Phillip Henslowe, the age's chief diarist of the theatre, recorded payments to 27 different playwrights, but no payments to Shakespeare are recorded. Henslowe’s diary never acknowledges Shakespeare at all. The plays mentioned by Henslowe are Taming Of The Shrew, Titus Andronicus and 1 Henry VI.

As for the possibility of self-education during the ‘lost years’, imagine Shakespeare with a wife and three kids spending 10 hours a day standing at a bookstall reading as much as ten hours a day like a university student. Essentially that is what biographers like E.K. Chambers are suggesting. Books were expensive and there were no public libraries. Any time or opportunity for the incredible deep learning needed as evidenced by the plays is extremely unlikely, and anyway there simply is no evidence that it happened. Instead, as we will see, we find Shakespeare to have been involved in multiple money making activities, as Mr. Chambers admits. The learning is assumed to have happened because it must have because…Shakespeare’s name is on the plays! Which is proof enough for great scholars, who think that it is silly to question a name on a play! Maybe they think Shakespeare was a phenomenal speed reader with a super extraordinary memory wo needed no sleep. Or perhaps knowledge was simply zapped into his head by an angel. The more logical view is that someone else wrote the plays and used Shakespeare as a front man and that during the ‘lost years’ William was engaged in the same trades as his father: dealing in grain and wool and real estate, while getting involved in the theater world and doing a little acting.

In 1593 Shakespeare’s name appears on a poem called Venus and Adonis. It was the first appearance of the name William Shakespeare in print. Highly sexual, dense, mythological, innovative, with strict rhymes and meter, the poem contains a new take on the ancient myth of two lovers separated by death. In other words the poem bears no relation at all to the life of a glover’s son from a small town with three children. In all of his writing Shakespeare would never once mention Stratford. He would almost never write of working class commoners without scorn and derision and his plays deal almost exclusively with the nobility and the very wealthy upper classes who wielded great power. The great mystery begins with Venus and Adonis which was the most popular work by “Shakespeare” during his lifetime. Sex sells. Two other poets, Marston and Hall, immediately cast suspicion on the poems supposed author. The authorship controversy thus began with the very first published work with the name Shakespeare on it.

In 1594 another very long poem was publushed titles The Rape Of Lucrece, in strict meter and rhyme concernong a story important to ancient Rome as written about by Livy and Ovid. A poem that displays great learning and a tremendous and advanced skill with poetry.

That’s it for the historical record until 1595 when Shakespeare was paid as an actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men for a performance at court. Hmmm….sure…LOTS of actors have been great poets! Not.

In 1596 William’s son Hamnet dies. The following year’s records for the performance of three comedies have surfaced, still without Shakespeare’s name on them, the plays being The Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing.

Here Is Where It Gets Interesting

By 1597 Shakespeare was wealthy enough to buy one of the largest houses in Stratford. No one knows how he got the money after doing odd jobs in London for years (or reading for 10 hours a day). Playwrights, much less poets, were not known to make much money. The clear implication is that this is around the time when he was paid off to be the front man. This same year, records show Shakespeare became a shareholder in the Globe Theater, the theater whose motto was “All the world’s a stage”. Also, soon after buying the house in Stratford and becoming part owner of the Globe it so happened that plays began appearing with his name on them. Money. Tooth fairy.

In 1598, the first quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays appeared that identified him as author on the title page: these are the third edition of Richard II, and the second edition of Richard III. (Two very super patriotic pro-England, pro-Tudor plays. Just sayin’) The first edition of Love’s Labor’s Lost appeared. Prior to the printing of these specific playbooks, Shakespeare’s plays did not bear his name. (Folger Shakespeare Library)

To save time I will skip ahead- - plays continue to appear but very few with the name Shakespeare on them.

In 1607 his daughter Susanna marries physician John Hall. John Hall kept detailed case notes and even recorded Stratford poet Michael Drayton as being an excellent poet, but he never mentioned his own father-in-law as a poet. Nobody in Stratford at all knew Shakespeare was a poet.

Shakespeare left London by all accounts for good in 1609 and retired as a playwright.

Various legal proceedings fill the final 10 years of Shakespeare’s life as some of his greatest plays are published and performed, such as Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet.

In 1616 he died under mysterious circumstances leaving behind his previously mentioned last will. Nobody took notice of his death. Other poets, even minor ones received send-offs, including Francis Beaumont, a much lesser writer who died the month before Shakespeare. Beaumont was buried in Westminster Abbey with great ceremony and tributes from many fellow writers. Nothing of the kind was done for Shakespeare.

Regarding that last will-every item in Shakespeare’s possession is detailed…for instance his famous second-best bed that he bequeathed to his wife Anne Hathaway. Amongst all the possessions listed there is not a single book mentioned. Where were his books? He was a wealthy man when he died. There is no mention of any unpublished plays or poems. The entire country of England has been turned upside down looking for a book that was owned by Shakespeare, or a script of a play of a poem. They don’t exist.

“We are told that this man, who never owned so much as a single book, wrote, without any education or apprenticeship in the literary and dramatic arts, poems and plays that invoke the legends of hundreds of figures from Greek and Roman mythology - poems and plays that demonstrate the writer's easy familiarity with and competence in Latin, Greek, Italian and French - poems and plays demonstrative of a linguistic facility so agile and confident that he sometimes would compose (as in scenes such as Henry the Fifth III. iv) in languages other than English”. ~ Professor Daniel Wright, Director, The Shakespeare Authorship Research Centre

Bullet Points: The Lack Of Evidence Shakespeare Wrote The Plays

-There is not a single surviving manuscript of a poem or a play in Shakespeare’s own hand.

-More astonishing- there’s also not a single surviving letter written by Shakespeare, not one, in an age of near-constant letter writing.

-Even more curious, there is also not a single letter from anyone at all to anyone else that mentions Shakespeare as a writer.

-From the greatest playwright of all time the only record of his writing AT ALL is six signatures. "The point about the signatures becomes even more stark when one sees the signatures of other famous writers of the era - they are all ornate and carefully constructed, like celebrity autographs." *

-Shakespeare owned no books. Did he have someone read the books to him and then by memory transform them into remarkable ground breaking new art- some of the greatest plays of all time?

-Shakespeare’s own children did not know how to write. Shakespeare’s parents did not know how to read or write.

-Not a single person in his hometown knew he was a writer.

-There is not a single record referring to him as a writer from a personal source.

There are many more details to this story. I’m trying to keep it simple. To go into the fascinating weeds I suggest the following three books:

Shakespeare's Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem by Diana Price

Who Wrote Shakespeare By John Michell

Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature, by Elizabeth Winkler

PART II: The Nature Of The Plays-The Master Of All Knowledge

Let’s say Shakespeare was born with a special talent as a great storyteller. One doesn’t need an education to tell a good story. Let’s say Shakespeare did go to school, that he could read, and that he even learned some Latin. It is very doubtful that he actually could have learned well enough to read all the ancient Roman poets and to translate their thoughts and work into aspects of a character in a play reflecting a character's personal philosophy.

At any rate plays are a special kind of a story told exclusively thru dialogue. They are much more difficult to write than just telling a cool story bro. The Shakespeare plays, especially, are more than just stories with beginnings, middles and ends, featuring unusual or eccentric characters. They are densely packed with literary and historical references, some of which, such as Julius Caesar, were of events 1600 years removed from the time of the writing of the play.

The plays are so dense with learning that Shakespeare has been called “the master of all knowledge”. The plays are drenched in philosophy using somewhere between 15,000-20,000 words-more than any other writer has ever used by FAR. No one else comes close to using so many new words. This includes hundreds of new words that were invented by Shakespeare. That can only come thru book learning and a knowledge of multiple languages. The plays show an in-depth knowledge of the following fields:

Philosophy

Mythology

History

Astronomy/Astrology

Botany

Law

Music

Seamanship- using words and phrases of an extremely technical nature

Military strategy and soldiering

Medicine

Sports- hunting and falconry

Italian geography in specific detail

There is the knowledge of ancient books themselves, as mentioned above, leading to many ideas in the plays that comprise a deep understanding of human psychology.

To top it off, the plays themselves are not just straight dramas with beginnings middles and ends. They show a great familiarity with the dramatic form of theater. Foreshadowing abounds…drenched in irony the plays themselves are like 4 sided jewel boxes where each drawer contains a gem, say a pearl from Act 1 scene two that foreshadows and resonates with a pearl from a drawer opened for Act 4 scene 2- both drawers containing emeralds or onyx and sapphires that relate to other gems in other drawers throughout the plays. Both pearls connect to a similar exploration of some aspect of a character’s psyche. This level of sophistication can be achieved only by a very experienced playwright. Imagine hundreds of drawers for each play.

Hidden Alchemy, Hidden Themes

On top of the acknowledged depth and complexity, emerging today in the plays are formerly unnoticed references to arcane subjects like alchemy, which very few people knew much about in Shakespeare’s day. Scholars are still discovering new depths of hidden references and hidden meaning in the plays. This is after 400 years of studying the plays, the last 200 years in great detail by thousands of scholars. These hidden meanings were purposely placed in the plays, but have no impact on the telling of the surface story. Unless one is an adept, an initiate into a secret society, like Freemasonry, the hidden language has little meaning. The meanings however, are sitting there, undeniably in the text, slowly being revealed by new close readings.

Here is one example among a great many: Jennifer Rampling is an associate professor of history at Princeton University, specializing in the history of science and alchemy. Author of The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700 (2020). Rampling explores alchemy’s role in Elizabethan England, including its influence on Shakespeare’s plays. In a 2024 Folger Shakespeare Library article, she highlights how alchemy’s “rich, mysterious imagery” provided material for poets like Shakespeare, despite its controversial status after scandals. In Henry V, the king’s speech about distilling “goodness” from evil (Act 4, Scene 1) uses alchemical metaphors of purification.

This angle of an alchemical understanding of Shakespeare took hundreds of years to come to the surface. Ted Hughes a modern British poet, also explores such themes in Shakespeare's works, interpreting them through the lens of alchemy and the process of individuation as well as the plays being a creation of modern Myth via the enactment of mythic rituals, reflections of alchemical mythic transformations, where characters undergo symbolic changes that mirror an alchemical process.

I contend that these occult aspects of the plays were written for early Freemasons, who were then obligated to promote the plays seeing as to how they could easily see that they were authored by a brother. I’ll be providing the evidence that I have found for this aspect of the plays soon.

Here’s a quote from Hughes’ book Shakespeare and the Goddess Of Complete Being. Hughes: “according to my argument this lineage of the boar (taken together with the storm that comes with it, and the flower in the hand of the babe that rides it) is the key to Shakespeare’s ethical system.” These kind of interpretations don’t emerge from the writing of talented blokes, even homespun geniuses, that no one ever saw with a book in their hand and who never wrote a letter worth saving. It’s simple. It’s impossible. It didn’t happen. Someone else wrote the plays.

Alchemy is just one hidden theme. See my podcasts for many other hidden themes, from the mystery school initiation allegory that is The Tempest to the symbolism of Freemasonry in Macbeth to demon possession in Hamlet. Somehow the guy from Stratford with three kids and a wife who the records show did business as a theater owner, malt broker, wool broker, money lender, costume broker, landlord and real estate investor had time to educate himself on his own, to such a depth, in multiple languages with dense reading material like Machiavelli, Giordano Bruno, Cicero, Horace, Paracelsus and John Dee such that today there are entire libraries filled with books only on Shakespeare with books about the books about the books of criticism on Shakespeare, by thousands of scholars, with new books coming out all the time after centuries of close reading revealing undeniable hidden themes still emerging such as alchemy. But…the great literary “master of all knowledge” couldn’t hold a pen. Ted Hughes died having never publicly admitted the truth that I’m sure he knew, claiming in his book on alchemy, Shakespeare and the goddess that Shakespeare was a ‘glover’s son’. Well I guess he was. So maybe it was Hughes’ remark was a poetic use of Shakespearean ambiguity? Or maybe Hughes did not have the stones to admit what I’m sure he knew. It’s the Shakespeare effect, and it’s utterly surreal. A terrible beauty was born.

Pink Unicorns On The Sheep's Meadow

I’d more readily believe in pink unicorns having lunch on the Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park than Stratford Will, the man who was never seen with a book, the man who never wrote a letter worth saving, the man who never wrote a single word about himself besides his last will, being the writer of these plays. It is just not possible.

How the Shakespeare Authorship Question Blew Up

Brave Delia Bacon (no relation to Baron Lord Verulam)

In 1856 a brilliant American named Delia Bacon published a remarkable article in Putnam’s Monthly magazine that started a tempest. In the article, titled William Shakespeare and his Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them, Delia persuasively argues using agreed upon, verifiable biographical facts that William Shakespeare could not possibly have written the plays that bore his name because of his lack of an education, his lack of access to the centers of power and nobility that are portrayed in the plays, and his inability to travel to the foreign countries depicted in the plays, and the fact that no one, during his lifetime ever once mentioned him personally as a writer, while his plays were being performed and sold in book shops. She followed it up with a 700 page book. She knew even then that the only records relating to Shakespeare’s literary activities is that his name is on the front of the plays, and she wasn’t afraid to say it. As a quick aside I just want to say: how hard is it to fake a name on a book?

At about the same time as Delia’s article and book an Englishman named William Henry Smith published Bacon and Shakespeare : an inquiry touching players, playhouses, and play-writers in the days of Elizabeth. William Henry made a similar argument.

Previously, others had raised the authorship question, even dating back to the days of the life of Shakespeare. I will skip over that early history of the SAQ. It is interesting but unimportant. We don’t want to get lost in the weeds and come back covered in names and dates we don’t need.

Delia’s book, and her forceful personality, gained her the admiration of other writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emerson and Walt Whitman. Whitman called her "the sweetest, eloquentist, grandest woman…that America has so far produced”. The daughter of a minister, born in a log cabin, Delia overcame childhood poverty to become a schoolteacher and an author who bested Edgar Allan Poe in a short story contest. He later was gracious enough to give her second book a glowing review. Moving to New York City she became involved in the theater and wrote a play. Puzzled by the enormous gap between the bare facts of William Shakespeare's life and his vast and learned literary output, she began her book on the Bard, intending to prove that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were written by a coterie of men, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. Ten years later her book was published.

Delia went to England to do further research and was put in a mental institution. She died soon after in New Haven at the age of 48. But with her book, Delia (and William Henry Smith) ignited a fierce debate that continues to this day. The controversy eventually so intrigued Mark Twain that his last book, published in 1909, was about the authorship controversy.

The list of doubters concerning the authenticity of Shakespeare’s authorship has continued to grow and now includes, among others, the well-known Shakespearean actors Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi who have published “The statement of reasonable doubt”.

The last bastion of certainty that the man from Stratford wrote the plays is in academia, but even that is slowly changing. The University of London offers an excellent, free on-line course called Introduction to Who Wrote Shakespeare.

Truth matters