Was Shakespeare a fraud?

Every year or so this same issue is brought up: did Shakespeare really write all those plays and poems? 2007 is no different, except for one thing, Britain’s top Shakespearean actors have put forth a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" that seeks to breathe new life into this old debate:

Acclaimed actor Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theater in London, unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt" on the authorship of Shakespeare’s work Saturday, following the final matinee of "I am Shakespeare," a play investigating the bard’s identity, in Chichester, southern England.

The debate revolves around a couple of issues. Probably the biggest issue is the fact that the Bard was born into an illiterate family and himself did not receive a higher formal education. The second issue is that there is simply no documentation that supports Shakespeare himself writing all those plays – not to mention no original manuscript in Shakespeare’s own handwriting existing (that we know of).

I have read a lot of Shakespeare over the last few years. All the professors I’ve had who talked about this debate have pretty much dismissed it as a "conspiracy theory", and I tend to agree with them. One professor points out much of the arguments against Shakespeare lay on his lack of a higher education, whereas Christopher Marlowe, for example, would be what we consider college educated. Marlowe is often named as the author who really wrote all of those plays. But as my professor points out, such an argument has its foundation in pitting the upper class (Marlowe) against the lower class (Shakespeare).

The only theory that these professors would even think about believing in is that of the group theory – several people collaborated to write the plays. Of course, Shakespeare himself would have to be at the center of any such group.

But as the Yahoo! article points out, Shakespeare detractors are in fairly good company; Mark Twain, Orson Welles, and Charlie Chaplin are among the skeptics that believe we have the true playwright of so many works wrong. Although to me personally, attaching a few famous names to something doesn’t make it more or less credible. Just look at the number of celebrities today who attach their names to some of the whacky causes they believe in.

Honestly, unless new physical evidence comes to light, I don’t know that we will ever resolve this issue. The pro-Shakespeare camp will continue to rally around the Bard and those who are in favor of a different author, for whatever reason, will continue to raise doubts. The debate is likely to continue in such circles for the foreseeable future!

What do all of you think about the Shakespeare debate? Did someone else write those plays? Or is this just another conspiracy theory?

Read the Yahoo! article here:
Coalition aims to expose Shakespeare

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