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Authorship of the Shakespeare canon: forum for research and debate


Is this a portrait of William Shakespeare . . . and was he The Bard?
It is remarkable that not one of England's poet-dramatists, at the death of William Shakespeare, wrote a single line lamenting his passing or praising his literary talents. It is strange that Shakespeare's very detailed will lists no books or manuscripts as part of his estate. Perhaps more disquieting still is the man's epitaph, apparently written by him, if we are to take its words literally. It reads (modern spelling):

Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here
Blessed be the man that spares these stones
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Was this embarrassing doggerel written by the author of Hamlet, MacBeth, King Lear, et al.? For over a century the authorship of the Shakespeare canon has been debated vigorously. Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and Benjamin Disraeli are among those who wrote of their doubts that the man from Stratford was the Bard. A sample of their comments:
"I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."

-- Sigmund Freud

"I am...haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."

-- Henry James

"It is a great comfort...that so little is known concerning the poet. The life of William Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something should turn up."
-- Charles Dickens
"Other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man was in wide contrast."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


What do we really know about William Shakespeare? Where did he learn the French, Italian, Latin and Greek that provided the untranslated source material for the plays? At the village school--assuming his attendance--he would have learned only "...small Latin and less Greek." Shakespeare's plays represent the pinnacle of Renaissance art; the culmination of rhetoric, poetry, painting, and science. Never having become a member of the Inns of Court or attended Cambridge or Oxford, how did the man from Stratford gain the knowledge the plays reveal of the law and medicine? Never having been at sea, how did he gain the knowledge the plays reveal of navigation? Never having traveled there, how did he gain the first-hand experience of Renaissance Italy the plays so clearly reveal? Perhaps William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon did not possess the learning these plays exhibit, but others of his time did . . . .

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