Shakespearean authorship question

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The frontispiece of the First Folio (1623), the first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. Most sources state that the engraver was Martin Droeshout (born 1601). This has often been surprising to historians, since the Shakespeare portrait was called "true to life" by Ben Jonson, yet Droeshout was only fifteen years old when Shakespeare died. It has also been considered odd that Droeshout was only 22 years old when the portrait was made, an unusually young age for an engraver. Anti-Stratfordians find these ambiguities suspect and note features in the engraving that make it appear more of a "mask" than a true represention of an actual person.

The term Shakespearean authorship question refers to scholarly debates dating back to the 18th century over whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually written by another writer, or a group of writers, using "William Shakespeare" (or the hyphenated version 'Shake-Speare') as a pen name. While many candidates for alternative authorship have been proposed, including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere (Earl of Oxford), it is generally accepted that Shakespeare's plays are correctly attributed.

[edit] Overview

[edit] Why question Shakespeare?

Title page from the 1609 edition of SHAKE-SPEARE'S SONNETS. The hyphenated name appears on The Sonnets, A Lover's Complaint and on 15 plays published prior to the First Folio, where it was hyphenated on 2 of the 4 dedicatory poems.^[1]

Dedication page from The Sonnets. Both The Sonnets and the hyphenated name have stirred controversy within the authorship debate, particularly the Sonnet's dedication page including the puzzling words "our ever-living Poet."

Admirers of Shakespeare's works are often disappointed by the lack of available and factual information about the author. In "Who Wrote Shakespeare" (1996), John Michell notes "The known facts about Shakespeare's life ... can be written down on one side of a sheet of notepaper." He cites Mark Twain's satirical expression of the same point in the section "Facts" in "Is Shakespeare Dead" (1909).

For example, there are large gaps in the historical record of his life; there are no surviving letters written by him; his detailed will mentions no books, plays, poems or writings of any kind; he expressed no direct opinions about his art; and almost nothing is known about his personality. Much can be inferred about him from his writings, but the lack of concrete information leaves him an enigmatic figure.

Conventional scholars agree that the lack of information about Shakespeare is disappointing, but find it unsurprising given the passage of time, and given that the lives of middle-class people were not recorded as fully as those of politicians and the aristocracy. They also note that information about Elizabethan theatre practitioners is fragmentary, and that a similar scarcity of information is the case with other period playwrights.

Anti-Stratfordians (defined below) do not simply find the scarcity of information about Shakespeare disappointing: they find it remarkable. They assert that the available information about Shakespeare's life offers no proof that he was able to write the works attributed to him. They further suggest that other, better-recorded figures of the period are more likely candidates for the authorship, and claim that Shakespeare was simply a frontman for the true author who wished to remain anonymous.

[edit] Conventional view

The conventional view is that Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He then moved to London and became a poet, a playwright, an actor, and sharer (part-owner) of the favoured acting company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), which owned the Globe Theatre and the Blackfriars Theatre in London. He divided his time between London and Stratford, and retired there in 1613 before his death in 1616. Shakespeare's name appears on the title pages of fourteen of the fifteen works published during his lifetime. In 1623, after the death of most of the proposed candidates, his plays were collected for publication in the First Folio edition.

This actor is further identified by the following evidence: Shakespeare of Stratford left gifts to actors from the London company in his will; the man from Stratford and the author of the works share a common name; and that commendatory poems in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's works refer to the "Swan of Avon" and his "Stratford monument".^[2] Conventional scholars assume that the latter phrase refers to the funerary monument in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, which refers to Shakespeare as a writer (comparing him to Virgil and calling his writing a 'living art'), and was described as such by visitors to Stratford as far back as the 1630s.^[3]

From the above evidence, the conventional view is that Shakespeare's plays were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford, who left his home town and became an actor and playwright in London.

[edit] Authorship doubters

For authorship doubters, evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford was merely a front man for an anonymous playwright arises from several sources: perceived ambiguities and missing information in the historical evidence supporting Shakespeare's authorship; the assertion that the plays require a level of education (including knowledge of foreign languages) greater than that which Shakespeare is known to have possessed; evidence suggesting the author was deceased while Shakespeare of Stratford was still living; perceived doubts of his authorship expressed by his contemporaries; plays that he appeared to be unavailable or unable to write; coded messages apparently hidden in the works that identify another author; and perceived parallels between the characters in Shakespeare's works and the life of the favored candidate.

[edit] Terminology

[edit] Stratfordians and anti-Stratfordians

Those who question whether William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the author of Shakespeare's plays call themselves anti-Stratfordians. Those who have no such doubts are referred to as Stratfordians. "Stratfordians" themselves view the question of authorship as settled, and thus do not use a name for themselves.

[edit] Terms for adherents to specific candidates

Those anti-Stratfordians who identify Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, or Christopher Marlowe as the author of Shakespeare's plays are commonly referred to as Baconians, Oxfordians, and Marlovians, respectively.

[edit] Shakspere vs. Shakespeare

There was no standardised spelling in Elizabethan England, and throughout his lifetime Shakespeare of Stratford's name was spelled in many different ways, including "Shakespeare." Anti-Stratfordians conventionally refer to the man from Stratford as "Shakspere" (the name recorded at his baptism) or "Shaksper" to distinguish him from the author "Shakespeare" or "Shake-speare" (the spellings that appear on the publications) who they claim has a different identity. They point out that most references to the man from Stratford in legal documents usually spell the first syllable of his name with only four letters, Shak- or sometimes Shag- or Shax-, whereas the dramatist's name is consistently rendered with a long "a" as in "Shake".^[4]Stratfordians are hostile to this convention, because it implies that the Stratford man and the playwright always spelled their names differently, though they did not.^[5] Because the 'Shakspere' convention is controversial, this article uses the name 'Shakespeare' throughout.

[edit] Common arguments used by all anti-Stratfordians

Although there are several different factions with anti-Stratfordian thought, supporting different candidates, certain arguments are common to all factions.

[edit] Shakespeare's education

[edit] Literacy

Signatures of Shakespere's daughters Judith (pigtail mark) and Susanna Hall

6 existing signatures of Shakspeare, between 1612 and 1616 (note that the reproductions are imperfect, suggesting non-existent gaps in some of the strokes).^[6] 1. From a deposition in a court case (1612) 2. Small signature from the seal-ribbon of a conveyance document regarding property in Blackfriars (1613). 3. Small signature from the seal-ribbon of a mortgage document regarding the same property (1613).4. Decayed small signature from the first page of Shakespeare's will (1616). 5. From the second page of the will. 6. "By me William Shakspeare" from the third page of the will.

Some anti-Stratfordians remark on the fact that Shakespeare's father and his wife seem to have been illiterate, since they made marks on official documents instead of signing their names.[2] His daughter Judith did the same, suggesting that Shakespeare may not have taught her to write (as was normal for middle-class women in the seventeenth century).^[7] However, his other daughter, Susannah, was able to sign her name.^[8]

Stratfordians assert that Shakespeare himself was clearly literate, since several signatures survive and it was necessary for actors to be able to read.^{[citation needed]} Anti-Stratfordians point out that there are no surviving letters from Shakespeare. They maintain it would only be logical for a man of Shakespeare's writing ability to compose numerous letters, and given the man's supposed fame they find it remarkable that not one letter, or record of a letter, exists.[3]

[edit] Education

Anti-Stratfordians often note that there is no evidence that Shakespeare possessed the education required to have written the plays. The Stratfordian position is that Shakespeare was entitled to attend the The King's School in Stratford until the age of fourteen, where he would have studied the Latin poets and playwrights such as Plautus.^[9] The records of pupils at the school have not survived, so it cannot be proven whether Shakespeare attended or not^[10].

There is no evidence that Shakespeare attended a university, although this was not unusual among Renaissance dramatists.^{[citation needed]} Traditionally, scholars assume that Shakespeare was partly self-educated.^{[citation needed]} A commonly cited parallel is his fellow dramatist Ben Jonson, a man whose origins were humbler than Shakespeare's, who rose to become court poet. Like Shakespeare, Jonson never completed and perhaps never attended university, and yet he became a man of great learning (later being granted an honorary degree from both Oxford and Cambridge).

The parallel with Jonson has been questioned,^{[citation needed]} since there is clearer evidence for Jonson's self-education than for Shakespeare's. Several books owned by Ben Jonson have been found signed and annotated by him^[11] but no book has ever been proved to have been owned or borrowed by Shakespeare. In addition, Jonson had access to a substantial library with which to supplement his education.^[12] One possible source for Shakespeare's self-education has been suggested: David Kathman has pointed out that some of the sources for his plays may have been sold at the shop of the printer Richard Field, a fellow Stratfordian of Shakespeare's age.^[13]However, there is no concrete evidence to support this new theory.

Stratfordians note that Shakespeare's works have not always been considered to require an unusual amount of education: Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare in the 1623 First Folio states that his plays were great even though he had "small Latin and less Greek". And it has been argued that a great deal of the classical learning he displays is derived from one text, Ovid's Metamorphoses, which was a set text in many schools at the time.^[14]However, this explanation does not counter the argument that the author also required a knowledge of foreign languages, modern science and the law.^[15]

[edit] Shakespeare's will

William Shakespeare's will is very long and explicit, listing the possessions of a successful bourgeois in detail. However, anti-Stratfordians find it notable that the will makes no mention at all of personal papers, letters, or books (books were rare and expensive items at the time) of any kind. In addition, no early poems or manuscripts, plays or unfinished works are listed, nor is there any reference to the shares in the Globe Theatre that the Stratford man supposedly owned, shares that would have been exceedingly valuable.^[16]

In particular, anti-Stratfordians note at the time of Shakespeare's death, 18 plays remained unpublished, and yet none of them are mentioned in his will (this contrasts with Sir Francis Bacon, both of whose wills refer to work that he wished to be published posthumously).^[17] Anti-Stratfordians find it unusual that Shakespeare did not wish his family to profit from his unpublished work or was unconcerned about leaving them to posterity. They do not think it probable that Shakespeare would have submitted all the manuscripts that he wrote to the King's Men as the individual and the company were separate entities.

Orthodox scholars consider this argument to be based on a mistaken understanding of the ownership of work in the English Renaissance theatres. As was the normal practice at the time, once he had submitted his work, Shakespeare's plays were owned jointly by the members of the playing company of which he was a shareholder, the King's Men.^[18] Indeed, it was two of his fellow shareholders – John Heminge and Henry Condell – whose names were attached to a dedicatory epistle to the 1623 First Folio.

It is not certain what the ownership status of an unperformed play by Shakespeare would have been – but it is also not certain that any of Shakespeare's plays were unperformed.

[edit] Shakespeare's class

Anti-Stratfordians believe that a provincial glovemaker's son who resided in Stratford until early adulthood would be unlikely to have written plays that deal so personally with the activities, travel and lives of the nobility. The view is aptly summarized by Charles Chaplin: "In the work of greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. Whoever wrote [Shakespeare] had an aristocratic attitude."[4] Orthodox scholars respond that the glamorous world of the aristocracy was a popular setting for many plays in this period. They add that numerous English Renaissance playwrights, including Christopher Marlowe, John Webster, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and others wrote about the nobility despite their own humble origins.^{[citation needed]}

Anti-Stratfordians further suggest that the plays show a detailed understanding of politics, the law and foreign languages that would have been impossible to attain without an aristocratic or university upbringing. Orthodox scholars respond that Shakespeare was an upwardly mobile man: his company regularly performed at court and he thus had ample opportunity to observe courtly life. In addition, his theatrical career made him wealthy^{[citation needed]} and he eventually acquired a coat of arms for his family and the title of gentleman, like many other wealthy middle class men in this period. Against this argument is the fact that it took Ben Jonson (who had a similar low class to Shakespeare) 12 years from his first play to obtain noble patronage from Prince Henry for his commentary The Masque of Queens (1609). Anti-Stratfordians thus express doubt that Shakespeare could have obtained the Earl of Southampton's patronage for one of his first published works, the long poem Venus and Adonis (1593).

In The Genius of Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate points out that the class argument is reversible: the plays contain details of lower-class life in which aristocrats might have little knowledge. Many of Shakespeare's most vivid characters are lower class or associate with this milieu, such as Falstaff, Nick Bottom, Autolycus, Sir Toby Belch, etc.^[19] Anti-Stratfordians assert that while the authors depiction of nobility was highly personal and multi-faceted, his treatment of the peasant class was quite different, including comedic and insulting names (Bullcalfe, Elbow, Bottom, Belch), often portrayed as the butt of jokes or as an angry mob.^[20]

It has also been noted^{[citation needed]} that in the 17th century, Shakespeare was not thought of as an expert on the court, but as a 'child of nature' who "Warble[d] his native wood-notes wild" as John Milton put it in his poem l'Allegro. Indeed, John Dryden wrote in 1668 that the playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher "understood and imitated the conversation of Gentlemen much better" than Shakespeare, and in 1673 wrote of Elizabethan playwrights in general that "I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson."

[edit] Hyphenation of the name "Shake-Speare"

Anti-Stratfordians also question the historical hyphen often appearing in the name “Shake-speare”, which they believe indicates the use of a pseudonym.^[21] Stratfordians respond that the hyphened version was not consistent and that the hyphen was merely misplaced, so the issue should be discounted. Charlton Ogburn states that there is no reason the hyphen should be consistent, and noting, it was always used by other writers or publishers and not the poet himself (he did not use it in his personal dedications of his two long narrative poems).

Ogburn also points out that of the “32 editions of Shakespeare’s plays published before the First Folio of 1623 in which the author was named at all, the name was hyphenated in fifteen – almost half.” It was also hyphenated in A Lovers Complaint, on the title page of the Sonnets, and in two of the four dedicatory poems in the First Folio. Further, it was hyphenated by John Davies in the famous poem references the poet as “Our English Terence”, by fellow playwright John Webster, and by the epigrammatist of 1639 who wrote, “Shake-speare, we must be silent in they praise…” Ogburn concludes, “the hyphenation was frequent, not occasional, and clearly conscious and purposed, not “misplaced”.^[22]

Even a limited survey of 16th- and 17th-century texts, however, shows that proper names that are compounds of common words, like "Newcastle" or "Oldcastle," are spelled either with or without hyphens, randomly. The same text, the same author, can employ both, with no discernible pattern. The early texts of the play Sir John Oldcastle demonstrate this clearly.^[23] Oxfordians respond that in the case of Shake-speare, as Ogburn notes, the use of the hyphen was not random or occasional and did, in fact, follow a noticeable pattern.

[edit] Comments by contemporaries

Comments on Shakespeare by Elizabethan literary figures can be read as expressions of doubt about his authorship.

Ben Jonson had a contradictory relationship with Shakespeare. He regarded him as a friend - saying "I loved the man"^[24] - and wrote tributes to him in the First Folio. However, Jonson also wrote that Shakespeare was too wordy: commenting on the Players' commendation of Shakespeare for never blotting out a line, Jonson wrote "would he had blotted a thousand" and that "he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped."^[25] In the same work, he scoffs at a line Shakespeare said "in the person of Caesar" (presumably on stage): "Caesar never did wrong but with just cause", which Jonson calls "ridiculous",^[26] and indeed the text as preserved in the First Folio carries a different line: "Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause / Will he be satisfied" (3.1). Jonson ridiculed the line again in his play The Staple of News, without directly referring to Shakespeare. Some anti-Stratfordians interpret these comments as expressions of doubt about Shakespeare's ability to have written the plays.^[27]

In Robert Greene's posthumous publication Greene's Groatsworth of Wit (1592; published, and possibly written, by fellow dramatist Henry Chettle) a dramatist labelled "Shake-scene" is vilified as "an upstart Crowe beautified with our feathers", along with a quotation from Henry VI, Part 3. The orthodox view is that Greene is criticizing the relatively unsophisticated Shakespeare for invading the domain of the university-educated playwright Greene.^{[citation needed]} Some anti-Stratfordians claim that Greene is in fact doubting Shakespeare's authorship.^[28] In Greene's earlier work Mirror of Modesty (1584), the dedication mentions "Ezops Crowe, which deckt hir selfe with others feathers" referring to Aesop's fable (the Crow, the Eagle, and the Feathers) against people who boast they have something they do not.

In John Marston's satirical poem The Scourge of Villainy (1598), Marston rails against the upper classes being 'polluted' by sexual interactions with the lower classes. Seasoning his piece with sexual metaphors, he then asks:

Shall broking pandars sucke Nobilitie?

Soyling fayre stems with foule impuritie?

Nay, shall a trencher slaue extenuate,

Some Lucrece rape?". And straight magnificate

Lewd Jovian Lust? Whilst my satyrick vaine

Shall muzzled be, not daring out to straine

His tearing paw? No gloomy Juvenall,

Though to thy fortunes I disastrous fall.

There is a tradition that the satirist Juvenal became 'gloomy' after being exiled by Domitian having lampooned an actor that the emperor was in love with.^[29] So Marston's piece could be taken as being directed at an actor, and as questioning whether such a lower class "trencher slave" is extenuating (making light of) "some Lucrece rape". One interpretation is that it refers to The Rape of Lucrece, with Shakespeare depicted as a "broking pandar" (procurer), implicitly questioning his credentials to "sucke Nobilitie", that is, attract the Earl of Southampton's patronage of him.

[edit] The idea of secret authorship in Renaissance England

In support of the possibility of Shakespeare as 'frontman', anti-Stratfordians point to contemporary examples of Elizabethans discussing anonymous or pseudonymous publication by persons of high social status. Roger Ascham in his book The Schoolmaster refers to his belief that two plays attributed to the Roman dramatist Terence were secretly written by "worthy Scipio, and wise Lælius", because the language is too elevated to have been written by "a seruile stranger" such as Terence.^[30] Describing contemporary writers, the dramatist and pamphleteer Robert Greene wrote that "others ... which for their calling and gravity being loth to have any profane pamphlets pass under their hands, get some other Batillus to set his name to their verses."^[31] (Batillus was a minor poet in the reign of Augustus Caesar).

[edit] Evidence in the poems

Both orthodox scholars and anti-Stratfordians have used Shakespeare's sonnets as evidence for their positions.

Orthodox scholars assert that the opening lines of Sonnet 135 are strong evidence against any alternative author, or at least any not named William:

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus. (the italics and capitalisation are those of the original text)

The italicised puns on Shakespeare's name continue in Sonnet 136 which concludes "And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will".

In any case, imaginative works can be playful and imaginative, so the use of the name "Will" proves that the writer either:

a) was named William and wanted to create a poetic conceit based on Will/will; or

b) was not named William and wanted to create a poetic conceit based on the pretense that he was.

While Oxfordians contend that a nobleman would not have wanted to be known as a playwright, orthodox scholars point out that this argument does not apply to poetry, which was a skill expected of an Elizabethan courtier. Poems such as Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece or Venus and Adonis, long narrative works on classical subjects, were a prestigious and respectable form of composition, unlike 'merely popular' plays. Oxfordians respond that the contents of the Sonnets, as well as the narrative poems, touched on matters of personal and political scandal which positively required the adoption of a nom de plume by the author. They cite Sonnet 76 as clear evidence of the author's confession of the need for such a ruse:

Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?

It has also been argued that Sonnet 145 contains a pun, ("..hate away.."), on the name of his wife Anne Hathaway. Orthodox scholars find it significant that both of Shakespeare's major poetic works, the narrative poems and the sonnets, were published immediately after periods in which the theatres had been closed by an outbreak of plague. This pattern, it is suggested, is more consistent with composition by a professional dramatist looking for an alternative source of income than an anonymous nobleman composing coincidentally during a theatre closing.

[edit] Candidates and their champions

[edit] History of alternative attributions

The first direct statements of doubt about Shakespeare's authorship were made in the 18th century, when unorthodox views of Shakespeare were expressed in two allegorical stories. In The Life and Adventures of Common Sense (1769) by Herbert Lawrence, Shakespeare is portrayed as a "shifty theatrical character ... and incorrigible thief".^[32] In The Story of the Learned Pig (1786) by an anonymous author described as "an officer of the Royal Navy," Shakespeare is merely a front for the real author, a chap called "Pimping Billy."

Around this time, James Wilmot, a Warwickshire clergyman and scholar, was researching a biography on Shakespeare. He travelled extensively around Stratford, visiting the libraries of country houses within a radius of fifty miles looking for records or correspondence connected with Shakespeare or books that had been owned by him. By 1781, Wilmot had become so appalled at the lack of evidence for Shakespeare that he concluded he could not be the author of the works. Wilmot was familiar with the writings of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was more likely the real author of the Shakespearean canon. He confided this to one James Cowell. Cowell disclosed it in a paper read to the Ipswich Philosophical Society in 1805 (Cowell's paper was only rediscovered in 1932).

Diagram illustrating the time spans of the best-known authorship candidates. Note that Marlovians do not believe that Marlowe died in 1593. Note also that the last Shakespeare publication was in fact The Two Noble Kinsmen in 1637.

These reports were soon forgotten^{[citation needed]}. However, Bacon would emerge again as the most popular alternative candidate in the 19th century when, at the height of bardolatry, the "authorship question" was popularised. Many 19th century doubters, however, declared themselves agnostics and refused to endorse an alternative. The American populist poet Walt Whitman gave voice to this skepticism when he told Horace Traubel, "I go with you fellows when you say no to Shaksper [sic]: that's about as far as I have got. As to Bacon, well, we'll see, we'll see."^[33] Since the 1980s, the most popular candidate has been Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, whose case was put forward by John Thomas Looney in 1920, and Charlton Ogburn in 1984. The poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe has also been a popular candidate. Many other candidates have been suggested but have failed to gather large followings.

The Earl of Oxford, from the 1914 publication English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard. Oxford is the leading alternative candidate for the author behind the pseudonym, Shake-Speare.

[edit] Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Main article: Oxfordian theory

The most popular latter-day candidate is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. This theory was first proposed by J. Thomas Looney in 1920, whose work persuaded Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Marjorie Bowen, and many other early 20th-century intellectuals [5]. The theory was brought to greater prominence by Charlton Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare (1984), after which Oxford rapidly became the favored alternative to the orthodox view of authorship. Advocates of Oxford are usually referred to as Oxfordians.

Oxfordians base their theory on what they consider to be multiple and striking similarities between Oxford's biography and numerous events in Shakespeare's plays. Oxfordians also point to the acclaim of Oxford's contemporaries regarding his talent as a poet and a playwright; his closeness to Queen Elizabeth I and Court life; underlined passages in his Bible that they assert correspond to quotations in Shakespeare's plays;^[34] parallel phraseology and similarity of thought between Shakespeare's work and Oxford's remaining letters and poetry (Fowler 1986); his extensive education and intelligence, and his record of travel throughout Italy, including the sites of many of the plays themselves.^[35]

Supporters of the orthodox view would dispute most if not all of these contentions. For them, the most compelling evidence against Oxford is that he died in 1604, whereas they contend that a number of plays by Shakespeare may have been written after that date. Oxfordians, and some conventional scholars, respond that orthodox scholars have long dated the plays to suit their own candidate, and assert that there is no conclusive evidence that the plays or poems were written past Oxford's death in 1604. For a dating of Shakespeare's plays according to the Oxfordian theory, see Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays - Oxfordian.

Some orthodox scholars also consider Oxford's published poems to bear no stylistic resemblance to the works of Shakespeare^{[citation needed]}. Oxfordians counter that argument by pointing out that the published Oxford poems are those of a very young man, and as such are juvenilia. They support this argument by citing parallels between Oxford's poetry and Shakespeare's early play, Romeo and Juliet.^[36]

[edit] Sir Francis Bacon

Main article: Baconian theory

Sir Francis Bacon is often cited as a possible author of Shakespeare's plays.

In 1856, William Henry Smith put forth the claim that the author of Shakespeare's plays was Sir Francis Bacon, a major scientist, philosopher, courtier, diplomat, essayist, historian and successful politician, who served as Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613) and Lord Chancellor (1618).

Smith was supported by Delia Bacon in her book The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded(1857), in which she maintains that Shakespeare was in fact a group of writers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser, for the purpose of inculcating a philosophic system, for which they felt that they themselves could not afford to assume the responsibility. She professed to discover this system beneath the superficial text of the plays. Constance Mary Fearon Pott (1833–1915) adopted a modified form of this view, founding the Francis Bacon Society in 1885, and publishing her Bacon-centred theory in Francis Bacon and his secret society (1891).^[37]

Since Bacon commented that play-acting was used by the ancients "as a means of educating men's minds to virtue,"^[38] another view is that Bacon acted alone and left his moral philosophy to posterity in the Shakespeare plays (e.g. the nature of good government exemplified by Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 2). Having outlined both a scientific and moral philosophy in his Advancement of Learning (1605) only Bacon's scientific philosophy was known to have been published during his lifetime (Novum Organum 1620).

Supporters of Bacon draw attention to similarities between specific phrases from the plays and those written down by Bacon in his wastebook, the Promus,^[39] which was unknown to the public for a period of more than 200 years after it was written. A great number of these entries are reproduced in the Shakespeare plays often preceding publication and the performance dates of those plays. Bacon confesses in a letter to being a "concealed poet"^[40] and was on the governing council of the Virginia Company when William Strachey's letter from the Virginia colony arrived in England which, according to many scholars, was used to write The Tempest (see below).

Orthodox scholars are unconvinced by the Bacon theory. They question where Bacon could find the time to write 37 plays, and 154 sonnets, and act in many of these plays whilst leading a well-documented double life as a public official. Baconians counter that Bacon did not become a busy public official until James was in power, so he had ample amount of time on his hands until June of 1607 when he was 46 years of age and was finally moved up to office of Solicitor-General.^{[citation needed]}

Orthodox scholars also feel the claim that Bacon authored Shakespeare’s poetry suffers from the fact that Bacon’s poetry is abrupt and stilted unlike Shakespeare's, and note that Shakespeare discusses legal concepts and terms far more abstractly than Bacon.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Christopher Marlowe

Main article: Marlovian theory

Christopher Marlowe has been cited as a possible author for Shakespeare's works.

The gifted playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe has been a popular candidate even though he was apparently dead when most of the plays were written. A case for Marlowe was made as early as 1895, but the creator of the most detailed theory of Marlowe's authorship was Calvin Hoffman, an American journalist whose book on the subject, The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare, was published in 1955.

According to history, Marlowe was killed in 1593 by a group of men including Ingram Frizer, a servant of Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe's patron. A theory has developed that Marlowe, who may have been facing an impending death penalty for heresy, was saved by the faking of his death (with the aid of Walsingham and Marlowe's possible employer, Lord Burghley) and that he subsequently wrote the works of Shakespeare.^[41]

Supporters of Marlovian theory also point to stylometric tests and studies of parallel phraseology, which seem to prove how "both" authors used similar vocabulary and a similar style. ^{[42] [43]}.

Orthodox scholars find the argument for Marlowe's faked death unconvincing. They also find Marlowe's and Shakespeare's writing very different, and attribute any similarities to the popularity and influence of Marlowe's work on subsequent dramatists such as Shakespeare.

Sir Henry Neville, Elizabethan diplomat, 1562 - 1615

[edit] Sir Henry Neville

The most recent candidate is Sir Henry Neville, a contemporary Elizabethan English diplomat who was a distant relative of Shakespeare. In The Truth Will Out, published in 2005, authors Brenda James, a part-time lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, and Professor William Rubinstein, professor of history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, argue that Neville's career placed him in the locations of many of the plays about the time they were written and that his life contains parallels with the events in the plays.

In particular, James and Rubinstein argue that the history plays do not promote the ruling Tudor dynasty, as is commonly stated, but instead covertly support the Plantagenet cause; Neville, as a descendant of the Plantagenet dynasty, could not be known as the author. They also claim that newly-discovered documents written by Neville while in the Tower of London contain detailed notes which later ended up in Henry VIII. Neville could have arranged for his distant relative Shakespeare to act as front man.^[44]

Neville's life spans the monarchies of both Elizabeth I and King James. He possessed the high level of education and European travel, as well as access to England's finest libraries to write the plays. His brief involvement with the Essex plot ruined any chance of a political career. He would have had the time, motive, access to the royal court and skill to write the great tragedies that directly followed his release from the Tower of London. Several plots in the tragedies mirror events in his life.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Others

Other candidates proposed include Mary Sidney; William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby; Sir Edward Dyer; or Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland (sometimes with his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, and her aunt Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, as co-authors); the Irish rebel, William Nugent; and at least fifty others, including Queen Elizabeth (based on a supposed resemblance between a portrait of the Queen and the engraving of Shakespeare that appears in the First Folio). Malcolm X argued that Shakespeare was actually King James I.

Delia Bacon's view that the plays were the work of a secret society rather than one individual has also been revived. Dion Fortune (penname of Violet Mary Firth) and other students of the occult have argued that Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries were in a secret society interested in hermeticism, Rosicrucianism and alchemy.

Following suggestions by Arab writers that the plays, especially Othello, demonstrated knowledge of Arabic and Islamic culture, the nineteenth century Arab scholar Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804–87) suggested that Shakespeare or his family were originally Arabic, and that the name is a corruption of the Arabic Shaykh Zubair.^[45] The theory was referred to in a speech by Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi. Some sources suggest that the reference was a joke, others that it was serious.^[46]

[edit] Common arguments debated within anti-Stratfordianism

Some sources of evidence cause debate not only between conventional scholars and anti-Stratfordians, but also between the different factions of anti-Stratfordian thought, because the result of the debate favours one candidate over another.

[edit] The 1604 Problem

Oxfordian scholars have cited examples they say imply that the writer of the plays and poems was dead before 1609, when Shake-Speare’s Sonnets first appeared with the words “our ever-living Poet” on the title page. They note that the words “ever-living” rarely, if ever, refer to someone who is actually alive.^[47] Further, some scholars cite 1604 as the year that Shakespeare “mysteriously” stopped writing.^[48] If either proposition proved true, it would be extremely awkward for orthodox Stratfordian scholars, as Shakespeare of Stratford lived until 1616 and there would have been no reason from him to give up a lucrative career at the height of his (alleged) fame. Researchers also cite at least one contemporary document that strongly implies that Shakespeare, the shareholder in the Globe Theatre, was dead prior 1616, when the Stratford man died.[6]

Regarding dates of publication, Mark Anderson, in “Shakespeare by Another Name” stresses the following: from 1593–1603 “the publication of Shake-speare’s plays appeared at the rate of 2 per year. Then, in 1604, Shake-speare "fell silent” and stopped publication for almost 5 years. Anderson also states “the early history of reprints …also point to 1604 as a watershed year,” and noting that during the years of 1593–1604, when an inferior or pirated text was published, it was typically followed by a genuine text that was “newly augmented” or “corrected”. Anderson summarizes, “After 1604, the “newly correct(ing) and augment(ing) stops. Once again, the Shake-speare enterprise appears to have shut down”. Anderson also notes that while Shakespeare made reference to the latest scientific discoveries and events right through the end of the 16th century, “yet Shakespeare is mute about science after De Vere’s (Oxford’s) death in 1604”. Anderson cites, among other examples, that neither a spectacular supernova that appeared in October of 1604, nor Kepler’s revolutionary 1609 study of planetary orbits, cause even a mention in all of Shakespeare’s works.^[49]

Regarding dates of composition, Oxfordians note the following: In 1756, in “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ben Jonson”, W.R.Chetwood concludes that on the basis of performance records “at the end of the year of [1603], or the beginning of the next, tis’ supposed that [Shakespeare] took his farewell of the stage, both as author and actor.” In 1874, German literary historian Karl Elze dated both The Tempest and Henry VIII – traditionally labeled as Shakespeare’s last plays – to the years 1603–04.^[50] In addition, on dating of Henry VIII, the majority of 18th and 19th century scholars, including notables such as Samuel Johnson, Lewis Theobald, George Steevens, Edmund Malone, and John Halliwell-Phillipps, all placed the composition of Henry VIII to before 1604.^[51] And in the 1969 and 1977 Pelican/Viking editions of Shakespeare’s plays, Alfred Harbage argues that MacBeth, Timon of Athens, Pericles, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra, all traditionally regarded as “late plays,” were composed no later than 1604.^[52] For a dating of Shakespeare's plays according to the Oxfordian theory, see Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays - Oxfordian.

[edit] Cryptograms

Followers of esoteric faiths have traditionally been attracted to the authorship question by the hope of finding hidden messages in the Shakespeare canon. Most of the cryptograms they claim to have found have been attributed to Sir Francis Bacon, relying on the fact that he had a first-hand knowledge of government cipher methods.^[53]

Ignatius L. Donnelly, a U.S. Congressman, science fiction author, and Atlantis theorist, wrote The Great Cryptogram (1888), in which he claimed to have found encoded messages in the plays attributing authorship to Francis Bacon—encoded messages that Donnelly alone could discern, however.

The 19th-century authorial debate placed great emphasis on discerning authorial cryptograms in Shakespeare's works. Elizabeth Wells Gallup examined Bacon's "bi-lateral cipher" (in which two fonts were used as a method of encoding) and announced that Bacon was not only the author of the Shakespearean works but also the eldest child of Queen Elizabeth, the product of a secret marriage. However, only Ms. Gallup could reliably distinguish between the "two" fonts.

A common example of a word which looks like an encrypted message of some kind is the word honorificabilitudinitatibus, used in Love's Labour's Lost. Its significance is that it can, among many other anagrams, be rearranged into "HI LUDI F. BACONIS NATI TUITI ORBI", translated by Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence as "These plays, F. Bacon's offspring, are preserved for the world". Unfortunately for those seeing more than an unusual word, it had been used (though rarely) by other writers before Shakespeare. Honorificabilitudo appears in a Latin charter of 1187, and occurs as honorificabilitudinitas in 1300. Dante cites honorificabilitudinitate as a typical example of a long word in De Vulgari eloquentia II. vii. Thomas Nashe used the word in 1599 (cited by the Oxford English Dictionary; see honorificabilitudinitatibus). It also occurs in The Complaynt of Scotland (1549), and in John Marston's play The Dutch Courtesan (1605).

A Shakespeare-related cryptogram is supposedly present in Psalm 46 of the King James Bible. The 46th word from the beginning of the psalm is "shake"; the 47th word from the end of the psalm, counting backwards, is "spear" (if one omits the final "Selah" of the Psalm, this is the 46th word counting backwards). In contrast, in the Bishops' Bible (published in 1568, when Shakespeare was four years old) '"shake" is 47 words from the beginning and "spear" 48 from the end. In the Geneva Bible (1560), the numbers are 47 and 45. In Miles Coverdale's translation of the psalm, which appeared in the Book of Common Prayer of the 1540s, the numbers are 46 and 48. This is supposed by some to be cryptographic evidence that Shakespeare had a hand in writing the King James Bible. It has also been claimed that similar hidden cryptograms, supporting both Shakespeare's^[54] and Marlowe's^[55] authorship, can be found in the Sonnets.

Whether or not a "message" has intentionally been placed in a piece of text must depend on the economics of type-setting it, the degree of flexibility in interpreting the concealed letters, the inner logic of the message, and whether or not the cryptographer had a strong enough motive for concealment.

[edit] The Strachey letter

The 'Strachey letter' is a document that has become important since the early 20th century in several theories due to the fact that many conventional scholars regard it as an inspiration and source for Shakespeare's play The Tempest. The document is a letter, allegedly written in 1610, from William Strachey to a "noble lady" associated with Virginia Company, which describes the shipwreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda. The letter was not published until 1625, but may have circulated in manuscript copies before then. ^[56] However, by the 1970s, the importance of the Strachey letter began to be challenged even by traditional Shakespearean scholars. Kenneth Muir believed "the extent of verbal echoes of the (Bermuda] pamphlets has, I think, been exaggerated."^[57] Muir then cites 13 thematic and verbal parallels between The Tempest and St. Paul's account of his shipwreck at Malta.^[58]

If the letter was a source for The Tempest, it is harmful to Oxfordian theory, as it would mean the play must have been written after the Earl of Oxford's death. However, a significant trend in 21st century scholarship has begun to question the theory that Shakespeare depended on the Strachey letter in writing The Tempest. According to New Cambridge editor David Lindley ^[59], While "the Strachey letter is a possible source for The Tempest, it is not a necessary source, in the way that Ovid or Montaigne both are." Oxfordian scholars agree with Lindley, and have recently pointed to the possible importance of much earlier sources, in particular Richard Eden's The Decades of the New Worlde Or West India (1555)^[60] and Erasmus's Naufragium (The Shipwreck) (1523),^[61] and point to new research that shows these early sources supply more convincing parallels than the 'Strachey' wording and imagery.^[62]

Oxfordians also note that Richard Hakluyt’s 1600 Voyages, Navigations, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation records an eyewitness account by a Captain Henry May of the shipwreck of the Edward Bonaventure in Bermuda in 1593. This ship, it turns out, was at one point owned by the Earl of Oxford himself: a 1582 letter from the explorer Martin Frobisher to the Earl of Leicester states that Oxford “bares me in hand he wolle beye [will buy] the Edwarde Boneaventar” ^[63]

Baconians find the Strachey letter significant, because Francis Bacon was on the governing council of the Virginia colony in 1609. Some claim that the Strachey letter was kept secret from non-council members, citing the council's instructions to Governor Thomas Gates as he set out for Virginia in 1609: "You must take especial care what relacions come into England and what lettres are written and all thinges of that nature may be boxed up and sealed and sent to first of the Council here".^[64] It is open to interpretation whether or not the council had a policy of maintaining confidentiality after the letter was read. Conventional scholars assume that Shakespeare was able to read the letter because a number of his acquaintances were on the board of the Virginia Company, or were friendly with board members.^[65]

[edit] Raleigh's execution

James Spedding, the Victorian editor of Bacon's works, suggested that lines in Macbeth appear to refer to Sir Walter Raleigh's execution, which occurred two years after Shakespeare of Stratford's death and 14 years after the Earl of Oxford's.^[66] The lines in question are spoken by Malcolme about the execution of the "disloyall traytor / The Thane of Cawdor" (1.2.53):

King. Is execution done on Cawdor?

Or not those in Commission yet return’d?

Malcolme. My Liege, they are not yet come back,

But I have spoke with one that saw him die :

Who did report, that very frankly hee

Confess’d his Treasons, implor’d your Highnesse Pardon

And set forth a deepe Repentance:

Nothing in his Life became him,

Like the leaving it. He dy’de,

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,

As ‘twere a carelesse Trifle.(1.4.1)

Several sources had remarked on Raleigh’s frivolity in the face of his impending execution^[67][68] and the assertion that ‘[the Commission who tried him] are not yet come back’ could refer to the fact that his execution was swift (it took place the day after his trial for treason).^[69] Holinshed, the main source for Macbeth, mentions 'the thane of Cawder being condemned at Fores of treason against the king'^[70] without further details about his execution, so whoever wrote the lines in the play has gone beyond the original source. A reference to Rayleigh's execution in Shakespeare would be particularly advantageous to the Baconian theory because Sir Francis Bacon was one of the six Commissioners from the Privy Council appointed to examine Raleigh's case.^[71]

However, more than one Elizabethan traitor put on a brave show for their execution. In 1793, George Steevens suggested that the speech was an allusion to the death of the Earl of Essex in 1601 (a date that does not conflict with Shakespeare's or Oxford's authorship): "The behaviour of the thane of Cawdor corresponds in almost every circumstance with that of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, as related by Stow, p. 793. His asking the Queen's forgiveness, his confession, repentance, and concern about behaving with propriety on the scaffold are minutely described."^[72] As Steevens notes, Essex was a close friend of Shakespeare's patron, the Earl of Southampton. Essex also employed Bacon as an adviser in the latter's early career in Parliament, until Essex fell out of favor, and was prosecuted with Bacon's help.

Most editors of Macbeth simply assume the speech to be fictional and not a deliberate allusion to a specific event.

[edit] Geographical knowledge

Most anti-Stratfordians believe that the plays were written by a well-travelled man, as many of them are set in European countries and show great attention to local details. Orthodox scholars respond that numerous plays of this period by other playwrights are set in foreign locations and Shakespeare is thus entirely conventional in this regard. In addition, in many cases Shakespeare did not invent the setting, but borrowed it from the source he was using for the plot.

Even outside of the authorship question, there has been debate about the extent of geographical knowledge displayed by Shakespeare. Some scholars argue that there is very little topographical information in the texts (nowhere in Othello or the Merchant of Venice are Venetian canals mentioned). Indeed, there are apparent mistakes: for example, Shakespeare refers to Bohemia as having a coastline in The Winter's Tale (the country is landlocked) and in All's Well That Ends Well he suggests that a journey from Paris to Northern Spain would pass through Italy.

Answers to these objections have been made by other scholars (both orthodox and anti-Stratfordian). It has been noted that The Merchant of Venice demonstrates detailed knowledge of the city, using the local word, traghetto, for the Venetian mode of transport (printed as 'traject' in the published texts^[73]). One explanation given for Bohemia having a coastline is the author's awareness that the kingdom of Bohemia at one time stretched to the Adriatic.^[74] Oxfordians find it significant that the Earl of Oxford was travelling in the Adriatic region during the brief span of time in which Bohemia did in fact have a coastline. Anti-Stratfordians suggest that the above information would most likely be obtained from first-hand experience of the regions under discussion; they thus conclude that the author of the plays could have been a diplomat, aristocrat or politician. In all these cases, however, a very important fact is being overlooked: the same geographical mistake was already present in Shakespeare's source, Robert Greene's Pandosto, and the play merely reproduced it.

Conversely, conventional scholars claim that Shakespeare's plays contain several colloquial names for flora and fauna that are unique to the Warwickshire area, for example 'love in idleness' in A Midsummer Night's Dream^[75]; these names seem to suggest that the plays might have been written by a Warwickshire native. Oxfordians point out that the Earl of Oxford owned a manor house in Bilton, Warwickshire, although records show that he leased it out in 1574 and sold it in 1581.^[76]

[edit] Further reading

[edit] Orthodox / neutral

• Bertram Fields, Players: The Mysterious Identity of William Shakespeare (2005)
• H. N. Gibson, The Shakespeare Claimants (London, 1962). (An overview written from an orthodox perspective).
• E.A. Honigman: The Lost Years, 1985.
• John Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare? (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999). ISBN 0-500-28113-0. (An overview from a neutral perspective).
• Irvin Leigh Matus, Shakspeare, in Fact (London: Continuum, 1999). ISBN 0-8264-0928-8. (Orthodox response to the Oxford theory).
• Ian Wilson: Shakespeare - The Evidence, 1993.
• Scott McCrea: "The Case for Shakespeare", (Westport CT: Praeger, 2005). ISBN 0-275-98527-X.
• Bob Grumman: "Shakespeare & the Rigidniks", (Port Charlotte FL: The Runaway Spoon Press, 2006). ISBN 1-57141-072-4.

[edit] Oxfordian

• Mark Anderson, "Shakespeare" By Another Name (2005).
• Al Austin and Judy Woodruff, The Shakespeare Mystery, 1989 Frontline documentary. [7]. (Film about the Oxford case.)
• J. Thomas Looney, Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (London: Cecil Palmer, 1920). [8]. (The first book to promote the Oxford theory.)
• Charlton Ogburn Jr., The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Mask. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1984). (Influential book that criticises orthodox scholarship and promotes the Oxford theory).
• Diana Price, Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of An Authorship Problem (Westport, Ct: Greenwood, 2001). [9]. (Introduction to the supposed evidentiary problems of the orthodox tradition).

[edit] Baconian

• N. Cockburn, The Bacon Shakespeare Question, private publication 1998 (Contents) (A barrister's overview of the evidence)
• Peter Dawkins: The Shakespeare Enigma, Polair Publ., London 2004, ISBN 0-9545389-4-3 (engl.)
• Amelie Deventer von Kunow, Francis Bacon: Last of the Tudors, trans. Willard Parker (1924)
• Penn Leary, Bacon Is Shakespeare, Cryptographic Shakespeare (n.d.)
• Bacon vs Devere : The Evidence
• Fellows, Virginia M., The Shakespeare Code (2006) ISBN-13: 978-1-932890-02-5.

[edit] Rutlandian

• Karl Bleibtreu: Der Wahre Shakespeare, Munich 1907, G. Mueller
• Lewis Frederick Bostelmann: Rutland, New York 1911, Rutland publishing company
• Celestin Demblon: Lord Rutland est Shakespeare, Paris 1912, Charles Carrington
• Pierre S. Porohovshikov (Porokhovshchikov): Shakespeare Unmasked, New York 1940, Savoy book publishers
• Ilya Gililov: The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix, New York : Algora Pub., c2003., ISBN 0-87586-182-2 , 0875861814 (pbk.) - most recent study of the Rutland theory.

[edit] Academic authorship debates

• Jonathan Hope, The Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays: A Socio-Linguistic Study (Cambridge University Press, 1994). (Concerned with the 'academic authorship debate' surrounding Shakespeare's collaborations and apocrypha, not with the false identity theories).

[edit] References and Notes

[edit] External links

[edit] Orthodox

• David Kathman and Terry Ross, The Shakespeare Authorship Page (table of contents)
  • Tom Reedy and David Kathman, "How We Know That Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare: The Historical Facts"
• Irvin Leigh Matus's Shakespeare Site (includes several articles defending the orthodox position)
  • Irvin Leigh Matus, "The Case for Shakespeare", from Atlantic Monthly, 1991
• Truth vs. Theory Shakespeare As Autodidact
• T.L. Hubeart, Jr. "The Shakespeare Authorship Question" Brief overview of the rise of anti-Stratfordianism.
• The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust: "Shakespeare's authorship" Brief overview.
• Tom Veal, Stromata Blog Several articles and detailed sceptical reviews of anti-Stratfordian material
• Alan H. Nelson's Shakespeare Authorship Pages - created by a biographer of Oxford who does not believe he wrote Shakespeare

[edit] Oxfordian

• The Shakespeare Fellowship current research on the Oxfordian theory
• Oxfordian responses to David Kathman's "historical record" articles
• Articles by Joseph Sobran, and Lynne Kositsky and Roger Stritmatter, challenging the methods and conclusions of Stratfordian David Kathman
• State of the Debate - Oxfordian vs. Stratfordian
• Shakespeare Oxford Society
• The Case for Oxford in the Atlantic Monthly, 1991 (subscription required).
• The Shakespeare Mystery (Website for a PBS documentary; includes several articles)
• Joseph Sobran, The Shakespeare Library (collection of Joseph Sobran's Oxfordian columns. Sobran's Alias Shakespeare is mentioned here, also.)
• The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference A yearly academic conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon on Oxfordian theory
• The De Vere Society of Great Britain

[edit] Marlovian

• Peter Farey's Marlowe Page
• Frontline: Much Ado About Something(website for a TV documentary)
• Marlowe Lives! (collection of articles, documents and links)
• John Baker, The Case for the Christopher Marlowe's Authorship of the Works attributed to William Shakespeare
• Jeffrey Gantz, review of Hamlet, by William Shakespear and Christopher Marlowe: 400th Anniversary Edition (a sceptical review of a Marlovian book)
• Peter Bull, Shakespeare's Sonnets Written by Kit Marlowe

[edit] Other candidates

• Mary Sidney - Website for a book on Mary Sidney's authorship
• I. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (original Russian text)
• HenryNeville.com - Website for a book on Sir Henry Neville's authorship
• The URL of Derby (promotes the Earl of Derby)
• Terry Ross, "The Droeshout Engraving of Shakespeare: Why It's NOT Queen Elizabeth"

	The complete works of William Shakespeare
Tragedies:	Romeo and Juliet | Macbeth | King Lear | Hamlet | Othello | Titus Andronicus | Julius Caesar | Antony and Cleopatra | Coriolanus | Troilus and Cressida | Timon of Athens
Comedies:	A Midsummer Night's Dream | All's Well That Ends Well | As You Like It | Cymbeline | Love's Labour's Lost | Measure for Measure | The Merchant of Venice | The Merry Wives of Windsor | Much Ado About Nothing | Pericles, Prince of Tyre | Taming of the Shrew | The Comedy of Errors | The Tempest | Twelfth Night, or What You Will | The Two Gentlemen of Verona | The Two Noble Kinsmen | The Winter's Tale
Histories:	King John | Richard II | Henry IV, Part 1 | Henry IV, Part 2 | Henry V | Henry VI, part 1 | Henry VI, part 2 | Henry VI, part 3 | Richard III | Henry VIII
Poems and Sonnets:	Sonnets | Venus and Adonis | The Rape of Lucrece | The Passionate Pilgrim | The Phoenix and the Turtle | A Lover's Complaint
Apocrypha and Lost Plays	Edward III | Sir Thomas More | Cardenio (lost) | Love's Labour's Won (lost) | The Birth of Merlin | Locrine | The London Prodigal | The Puritan | The Second Maiden's Tragedy | Richard II, Part I: Thomas of Woodstock | Sir John Oldcastle | Thomas Lord Cromwell | A Yorkshire Tragedy | Fair Em | Mucedorus | The Merry Devil of Edmonton | Arden of Faversham | Edmund Ironside
See also:	Shakespeare on screen | Titles based on Shakespeare | Characters | Problem Plays | Ghost characters | Reputation | New Words | Influence on English Language | Authorship Question | Chronology of Shakespeare plays | Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays - Oxfordian | BBC Television Shakespeare