Why have some people raised doubts about Shakespeare's identity?

Answer 1

Belief in conspiracy theories and other off-the-wall claims is a peculiar phenomenon. All of the information we have about the plays attributed to William Shakespeare suggests that it was written by William Shakespeare, gent. of Stratford-upon-Avon, who was an actor, poet and member of the theatre company The King's Men, famous for being the only one that put on Shakespeare plays. All of it. There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone else wrote them. Nobody even considered such a thing until 1850.

Nevertheless there are some people, most of whom ought to know better, who claim that there is a serious doubt that someone other that W. Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works of W. Shakespeare. The idea is that someone else wrote the plays but for some reason couldn't claim them as their own, and so passed them off as Shakespeare's, with the connivance not only of Shakespeare but just about everybody in the London theatre community of the day.

One of the reasons why people do this is wishful thinking. What we know about Shakespeare suggests that he was perhaps not as exciting a figure as we would like him to be. That is why people made up stories about him being a poacher. Intellectual snobs were offended at his grammar school education. Aristocratic snobs were offended by his descent from a country glover. It would be so much better if he were a university man, or a nobleman of some kind.

Likewise, the truth is that we have found out about as much about Shakespeare's life as we are likely to, and it is not much. If only he were some better-documented person, there would be some interesting research.

For some reason, the phrase "if only he were" easily becomes "he must have been" in the minds of some people.

Another problem that arises in the heads of all kinds of conspiracy theorists is the inability to understand that lack of evidence is not evidence for anything. I am not talking about evidence for a negative proposition: there is plenty of evidence for the proposition that the river Nile does not flow through Morocco. No, these are arguments along the lines of: there are no records that Philip II passed water in the year 1588, so therefore there is at least some doubt that Philip II urinated in 1588. Sorry, there's no doubt at all. The fact that there is no evidence of William Shakespeare owning books is not evidence for anything: it does not prove that he had no books, that he had read no books, or that he could read no books. The fact that the only authenticated examples of Shakespeare's handwriting are his signature does not prove that he couldn't write anything else.

When you take away arguments of this kind, there is really nothing at all behind the so-called authorship controversy.