Shakespeare Authorship Essay, Research Paper

No discussion group on Shakespeare would be complete without someone discussing whether the Stratford man really whote all the works attributed to Shakespeare. Some claim Christopher Marlowe to be the author; others, Francis Bacon; and several web pages are devoted to the premise that Count Edward deVere wrote these books.

“Shakespeare Identified”, by Thomas Looney, and he seems to make a pretty strong case in favor of Edward de Vere being the author. The book was written in 1920, though, and I’m not really aware of further evidence/hypotheses. I did hear about de Vere’s Bible being found in 1991, and that it supports de Vere’s claims to authorship.

William Shakespeare is the only literary figure whose very identity is a matter of long-standing and continuing dispute. Was he really the glover’s son from Stratford-on-Avon? Or was he someone else writing under the pseudonym William Shakespeare? The question has been called the foremost literary problem in world literature and “history’s biggest literary whodunnit.” Interest in it has never been greater, and that interest is growing now that a consensus has formed for Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, as the leading candidate. Oxford, a recognized poet, playwright, and patron of acting companies, has eclipsed Bacon, Marlowe, and all the other candidates. The Oxfordian challenge is now being covered in scholarly books, in articles in magazines such as The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, and on television, including an hour-long PBS FrontLine program. The issue has even been debated in a moot court before three justices of the Supreme Court–with an intriguing outcome.