Picture this: you’re sitting in English class reading Hamlet, and suddenly your teacher says, “Some people don’t think Shakespeare actually wrote this.” Wait… what? It sounds crazy to say. Yet, believe it or not, people have argued for centuries about whether William Shakespeare truly wrote all the plays credited to him. Some people believe Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was the real writer. Others, called Anti-Stratfordians, think someone else secretly wrote the plays under his name. And honestly, it sounds like something straight out of a conspiracy theory, or a random documentary you find on Amazon Prime.
One reason people doubt Shakespeare is because there isn’t much information about his life. According to HISTORY, only a few signatures and legal records connected to him still exist. To add insult to injury, the spelling of his own name seems to be more flexible than you’d think. Some people find that suspicious. Wouldn’t you? They wonder how someone with a fairly normal background could write literature this famous or noteworthy. One of the biggest theories is the Oxfordian Theory; this theory claims Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the real writer behind Shakespeare’s plays. Supporters believed a nobleman would have the education and experience needed to write about royal life so accurately.
According to Penn State University, some doubters thought “a mere country stripling” could not have written works as advanced as Macbeth. Romeo & Juliet, though… well, it’s been done to death, anybody could’ve written it. Well ok not really, but it’s fun to dream.
Other theories are even stranger. Some people believed Francis Bacon hid secret codes inside Shakespeare’s writing. Others thought playwright Christopher Marlowe faked his own death and secretly continued writing plays under the Shakespeare moniker. Because apparently Elizabethan drama wasn’t dramatic or time-consuming already. Even with all these theories, most scholars still believe Shakespeare wrote the plays himself. Playwright Ben Jonson famously called him the “Sweet Swan of Avon,” and many records from the time connect Shakespeare directly to theaters and acting companies. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, there is no strong evidence proving another author was involved.
