WHo are the other people who could have written Shakespeare's plays?

Answer 1

Because there is no actual evidence that anyone apart from Shakespeare wrote his plays, the field is pretty well open for wild speculation. There are dozens of people who have been proposed as the author of Shakespeare but the front runners are Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe and Francis Bacon. Since neither de Vere or Bacon showed any aptitude for poetic writing, and both de Vere and Marlowe were demonstrably dead when most of Shakespeare's plays were being written, these are pretty sketchy suggestions indeed.

Answer 2

A lot of people have been suggested as someone who might have written Shakespeare's plays apart from Shakespeare. There are serious problems with all of them.

For example, Edward de Vere. Yes, he was known as a writer, although any sample of his writing which we have is inferior to the worst of Shakespeare's writing. He was also interested in drama, to the extent of sponsoring his own theatre group and having a well-known playwright as his secretary. This fact makes it really unlikely that he would have written plays and, instead of giving them to his own company either under his own name or his secretary's, have given them to a rival company under the name of someone he hardly knew. (There is no reason why he or anyone could not have admitted that he wrote the plays himself: playwrights were well-respected and aristocratic and scholarly people openly wrote plays. Being an actor was another thing, although aristocrats regularly performed as amateurs in masques in the Jacobean court) But the killer reason why de Vere could not have written all of Shakespeare's works is that he died in 1604, and some of the plays were written after that date because they have references to events which took place when de Vere was cold in the ground.

Another candidate is Sir Francis Bacon, who was indeed around at the time. He was a very scholarly man, and a noted writer, but he never showed any interest in drama, and the style of his writings, like The New Atlantis, is nothing like Shakespeare's.

Then there is Christopher Marlowe, who was a playwright and a good one who died just as Shakespeare's career was starting to take off. He could only have written Shakespeare's plays if he had faked his death, which involves a very complicated conspiracy theory. Marlowe's death, alas, is all too well authenticated.

Some people who wish Shakespeare was a woman have suggested that Queen Elizabeth wrote the plays, but in fact, although she was an accomplished linguist, musician and a consummate politician, she showed no interest in drama or writing of that kind. The playing company she sponsored specialized in acrobatic shows, not drama. And, like de Vere and Marlowe, she was dead before many of the plays were written.

If you are prepared to accept remote possibilities as probabilities, then it is of course possible to suggest any number of names as possible authors of Shakespeare. However, there is only one person who, on the balance of probabilities, wrote Shakespeare's plays: William Shakespeare.

Answer 3

There are a few theories:

one is Christopher Marlow, playwright, presumed dead in a fight

another is the Earl of Southampton

even queen elizabeth I