William Shakespeare Authorship

Many people have heard of the name William Shakespeare, or at least read some of his great literary works. However, there are some people who believe that the great William Shakespeare did not write everything that was acclaimed to him. This theory is the basis for the Authorship question, the question of whether or not William Shakespeare wrote all of his literature or did someone else write it under his name. The authorship question has garnered a lot of attention over the years and many a writer of the period has been believed to be the ghost writer behind Shakespeare. Even many respected authors and scholars believe that William Shakespeare did not write his own works; however, there remains a lack of evidence and a lot of guess-work in

Some even dispute the claim that someone born into a lower class family like Shakespeare would have advanced knowledge of the royal court. David Kathman says to this [1] “…points out that nobody in Shakespeare’s day, or for centuries afterward, thought that the plays displayed an accurate knowledge of royal courts.” It seems to be clear that while there is some mystery around his authorship, a lot of the arguments for it being someone other than Shakespeare can simply be disproven, or are blatantly incorrect. Some even go as far to try and prove that he had little to do in the theater world. They state that there is very little documentation of him as a writer, except for what exists to put the name William Shakespeare as the front man for the true writer. However, a lot of this conjecture and just plain wrong, several actors and friends of Shakespeare supported him as an actor and a playwright. There are several things that tie him to the literary and theater world. There is even a legal document that claims that Shakespeare is a great poet! In a legal document wrote by William Camden, in which he argued Shakespeare’s right to bear arms, he lists in him the document as the greatest poet of his time. However, this is mostly ignored by anti-Stratfordians, who instead cite Shakespeare’s will as another piece of evidence. In Shakespeare’s will, disregarding the part that was interlined later about fellow actors buying mourning rings, he doesn’t mention theater, but instead mentions the disposal of his large estate. Many people find it weird that he failed to talk about several of his unfinished works, or anything else to do with theater. However, this is just probably due to the will being written before the unfinished poems were started, and Shakespeare wanted to focus the will on what to do with his possessions rather than what he had done in life. But the