Why people think William Shakespeare isn't real?

Answer 1

There is evidence or lack of evidence that Shakespeare ever existed. Some feel that his works were written by someone else (such as Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford). It is known that Shakespeare did not invent the story of Romeo and Juliet. It was originally a plodding poem by Arthur Brooks. However, Shakespeare made it his own.

Answer 2

Nobody believes or has ever believed that William Shakespeare was not real. His birth, marriage and death are well-documented as are some of his business dealings, his success in obtaining a grant of arms for his father, and the names and lives of his decendants.

Some people, however, have contended that the person that wrote the plays under the name of William Shakespeare was not William Shakespeare of Stratford, the man we know so much about. The story usually goes that the real author was someone else who, for reasons not entirely clear, used the name of the real man William Shakespeare as a psedonym. Huge and complex conspiracies need to be invented to make any such theory even marginally plausible.

Why do people go to such trouble? Well, it's because they cannot believe that a high-school educated son of a glove maker from a country town could write such fabulous plays. They are, essentially, snobs. They contend that in order to know the stuff he seems to have known when writing the plays he would have to have been a university man, or a noble who could travel all over the place. In the process they generally portray Shakespeare as a bumpkin and an idiot, in line with their prejudices.

Answer 3

There are several portions of Macbeth which show signs of being by a different author, specifically Thomas Middleton. These are all the scenes or parts of scenes including the character Hecate. Clues that they are not by Shakespeare include:

1. Use of a rhythm Shakespeare did not use elsewhere for dialogue.

2. A much sillier tone than the rest of the play. The Porter is funny, but Hecate is silly.

3. Use of songs from Middleton's play The Witch

4. Dance numbers in the middle of a tragedy.

5. Use of character names (for the witches' familiars) drawn from The Witch.

Answer 4

Nobody believes that there was no author of Shakespeare's plays and poems. They did not appear out of thin air. Somebody wrote them. Nobody believes that there was never any person called William Shakespeare, because there is a grave and a monument in the church at Stratford, and piles of documentation which establish that in fact there was a man from Stratford who was an actor and partner in the Theatrical group The Lord Chamberlain's Men and whose name was William Shakespeare. What some people try to say is that some other person was the author, who allowed William Shakespeare the credit for writing all those plays and poems. There is no convincing reason why someone would do something so crazy, no real evidence that anyone did, and all kinds of evidence that the actor and the writer were the same man. Why, then, would people think that the plays were written by someone other than Shakespeare the actor? Because what we know of Shakespeare's life does not satisfy them for some reason. For some, it is irksome that there is so little evidence of Shakespeare's private life, so they imagine that the plays were written by someone whose private life is better known. Some people want the author to have been well-educated; Shakespeare was not, so he couldn't have been the author. Some people want the author to have been an aristocrat; Shakespeare was not, so he couldn't have been the author. Some people want the author to have been a sensitive person who was not concerned with money; Shakespeare was not such a person, so he couldn't have been an author. Some people want the author to be a person who was a female; Shakespeare was not, so he couldn't have been the author. Having once made this decision, based on emotion alone, they then proceed to construct arguments in support of it, usually arguments based on a lack of evidence, or arguments attacking the real evidence because there is a very small chance that it may not imply what it obviously implies. In other words they hold the proposition that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare to an impossibly high standard of proof, and the proposition that Bacon/Oxford/Queen Elizabeth/Santa Claus wrote Shakespeare to practically no standard of proof at all. It's just sloppy wishful thinking which no serious academic would ever take seriously.

Answer 5

Some people are not able to accept when there is a heap of evidence to show the truth of a statement they do not want to believe. It's common enough.

Answer 6

same question as with why do people think Elvis still lives
or there is a monster in the loch ness

there is no answer for that it's just what you want to believe