(baptized 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) Many consider William Shakespeare the greatest playwright who ever lived. But to some, he’s simply one of the great pretenders. So little is known about Shakespeare as a person—he was born in Stratford in 1564 as the son of a glove-maker, married a woman named Anne Hathaway, and died in 1616—that examining his life in any detail is all but impossible. Some have claimed that Shakespeare didn’t exist at all, and was instead merely a pseudonym for an accomplished (and well-educated) writer.
According to Vox, the conspiracy theory that Shakespeare wasn’t a real author gained prominence during the mid-19th century, when two books were published on the matter: One was by Delia Bacon, an American playwright, and the other by an Englishman named William H. Smith. Both argued that Sir Francis Bacon—no relation to Delia—was actually the quill behind masterpieces like Hamlet. Or that Shakespeare was actually a whole gaggle of writers using one pseudonym.
The evidence in these books was … a lack of evidence. The authors claimed that there was no written documentation that Shakespeare was well-educated (which, to their minds, cast doubt on his ability to write such memorable works), or that he ever penned a play. Smith wrote: “No plays bearing Shakespeare’s name were published between 1609 and 1622; but in the year 1623 (seven years after Shakespeare’s death) a folio of thirty-six plays was brought out as The Workes of William Shakespeare.’”
Since then, the conspiracy theories have only proliferated, with figures such as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford—a courtier who visited many of the places depicted in the plays—or possibly Christopher Marlowe being suggested as the real Bard. The latter is one of the more elaborate ideas, as it maintains that Marlowe was not murdered in a tavern in 1593 but instead hustled away to France thanks to some well-placed connections. He allegedly then spent the next 20 years writing under the Shakespeare name.
The belief that Shakespeare was not the author of works attributed to him has been voiced by several notable names throughout history, including Orson Welles, Sigmund Freud, and even Mark Twain. Twain was on board with the Bacon theory, and he believed the words Francisco Bacono appeared in code in the First Folio. The belief gained more credence in 2016, when the respected Oxford University Press actually credited Marlowe as co-author of the three Henry VI plays. Among other research, the publishing house cited an analysis of vocabulary between the work and Marlowe’s plays.
But the thing is, we do have evidence that Shakespeare was the real deal. There’s written evidence that he was an actor and playwright, and his work is mentioned in multiple contemporary sources, including a 1598 book called Palladis tamia by a man named Francis Meres, where plays like A Midsummer Night’s Dreams and Titus Andronicus are mentioned specifically.
