Who Really Wrote Shakespeare? Shakespeare Authorship 101

Excellent. Very interesting. Thank you.

I've encountered the authorship question numerous times before and dismissed the Oxfordian theory due to a lack of compelling evidence, but you present it in a much more convincing and systematic way.

Nice summary. Oh, and to add one last little touch to the mystery, his supposed grave is empty!

Superb. The seething of Stratfraudians is music to my ears. Play on.

Love it that Alex presents his case as a professional lawyer would.

Someone else!

My understanding is that the question is not who wrote Shakespeare but …whom! It was a group effort of some of Englands greatest minds to elevate the English language as had been being done in France by the Pleidians , a society of writers who expanded and edited all the Frankish dialects.

The English group decided to do it thru common theatre , an Art below a soviergn , thus the secrecy. The hustler from Stratford upon Avon was a perfect foil…..plus he had funding and knew all the players. He was a producer!!

Shakespeare as a moneylender? I've never ever heard that before. But I decided I might just be wrong, so I did a Google search. Apparently, it is a common cryptic clue. And the other reference of course was to the play The Merchant of Venice.
I believe there is reason to doubt his authorship. Nevertheless, whilst I have listened to people like Mark Ryalance, Elizabeth Winker and Alexander Wagh, I have never come across this from them. I may have missed it and I'm open to being wrong.

A more important issue of true authorship is that of the New Testament. The New Testament is a complete fabrication, from start to finish. It was written by Josephus Flavius, a Jew who went over to the Roman side, in order to undermine Judaism, which was a thorn in the side of the Roman Empire. He wanted to create an alternative religion for people to flock to, in order to prevent people from converting to Judaism, and he succeeded hugely. The alternative religion that he devised (birth in a manger, a last supper, etc.) was based almost entirely on something known as Mithraism.

Maybe the boxer was on to something after all.

There is an old joke that goes like this:

A boxer is being interviewed, and a reporter asks him, "What do you think of Shakespeare?", and the boxer replies, "I'll moider da bum.". Given that De Vere is the actually the author of the works commonly attributed to William Shakespeare, it seems that the boxer actually landed a solid punch.

One small note of mild interest that I would like to ask someone who is deeply into this rabbit hole. Why did King James continue the £1000 grant as he did to Walsinghome? It was a huge sum of money for someone so frivolous, especially as Oxford was a notorious spendthrift. Any one new to the Crown would have stopped it at once. A dour Scot, James the Sixth was just as tight fisted as Elizabeth. I can only conclude that he consented to this as he was in on the secret. The secret being that Devere controlled and ran a closet team of writers and poets, including Marlowe and Bacon, who's intent was to socially engineer and provide political propaganda. Just as a Government would fund a media channel and a intelligence network today - the two always work hand-in-hand.

I also LOVE the book SWEET SWAN OF AVON by Robin P. Williams on this. Phenomenal research! ❤🎉❤

Excellent research and presentation. There’s absolutely no evidence that Skaksper wrote the works attributed to Shake-speare.

That was wonderfully done, a tour de force. Thank you.

These lectures are fascinating and this one is the best summary of the question. I wonder, though, who was responsible for perpetuating the myth of Shak-spear as author immediately after the death of him and Oxford. What was their motive?

All this can be explained if he had autism, or was dyslexic.

as a layman i whole appreciate your work . thank you

I’ve always liked to claim that the plays were written by a different author of the same name.

I didnt know many if the plays were reworked works of previous plays from medieval times and before even. Oral history.

I've read many books on the authorship controversy and am very impressed about the presentation of these arguments. This is a great video!

it is I who wrote Shakespeare plays

Why is it so hard for Shakespeare to be the author of his own work. There is no real evidence that the man did not write the plays.

concise and great tempo. excellent presentation!

Seems to be an unlimited number of non British experts lecturing us on Shakespear.

We don't know a lot about Shakespeare's life, but non Stratfordians need to do more than just give reasons why they think Shakespeare wasn't the author. They need to provide positive evidence for a different author. I've never seen any.

If you have ever read anything actually wrtten by De Vere, the idea that he wrote the works attributed to the Stratford man is absurd. Oxfordians claim that he wrote deliberately 'badly' so that no one would guess the 'truth'! Ridiculous nonsense. If you want to claim that WS did NOT write the works attributed to him, you need a better cadidate than this bozo

It is curious to note the resistance to the idea that Shakespeare was John Florio. In First fruits there are over 25 phrases that reappear in Shakespeare's plays, another 15 come directly from Michel de Montaigne's Essays (which Florio translated to English), various views of the world that echo the philosophy of Giordano Bruno (Florio's friend). Florio was well acquainted with the plays that underlie many of Shakespeare's works (Italian and French plays) and-great coincidence-all the cities in which some of Shakespeare's plays are set, and in particular Messina, of which he gives us a couple of details from someone who knows the city not from reading its name on a map. Florio was a scholar, knowing Latin and a little Greek, having been in contact with some Greekists. Certainly he knew the Parallel Lives of Plutarch, Suetonius and Ovid. He was hated in London by many people for being an Italian and being culturally very active. Florio's grandmother was a Crollalanza (Shake Speare in Italian) and could have been a perfect pseudonym. Florio or no Florio, it will never come to a real investigation, until the academic power and authority, find the humility to say: let's really put everyone together to study, all the possibilities. I know that for a Brit the idea that Shakespeare was Italian is an almost unbearable shock (like telling a Catholic that Jesus was Chinese), but as the ancients used to say: Plato amicus sed... magis amica veritas. Let's see in the future the evolution of research.

Never understood the 'two right eyes' comment about one of the WS portraits. He's looking slightly to his left. So what?

I'd like to get a new license plate for my car with the following (more or less): ED17DV4T. If you can't decipher this, you're still NOT an Oxfordian. Cheers.

Obviously, Shakespeare did. Duh.

También podría ser Cristofer Marlowe que no era aristócrata pero estaba relacionado con la nobleza y fingió su propia muerte.

Acquisition or possession of a coat of arms wasn’t exclusive to the higher social classes. All social ranks could bear arms. There were many armigerous labourers.

Great Job!

Well done. Spot on.

This is an entirely new conspiracy theory for me! Awesome, and well presented.

It makes a lot more sense to me that the author of the plays was wealthy due to the comedic cruelty directed at lower classes in his plays.

I was trying to find more about how the "tragedies" are actually comedies that we have severely misunderstood. But this information has been very interesting. I wish it had been brought up in my college shakespeare class. At least one class could have gone into the true author lol.

Silly. There is much in Shakspere’s life that is in the plays. But it is true that God didn’t write the Bible. Oh… and by the way… nobody died for my sins. Yet. W. Shakespeare was a forgiving man.
On his behalf, I forgive youse.

Tremendous summary, my one concern is the epitaph on the funerary monument - why would Johnson go to such extreme for someone that nobody had a frame of reference for? According to this talk it was erected at the time of the first folio printing.

Why?

KP

Surely(so to speak!) the most open-minded and logical conclusion - until proven otherwise - is that a male and female group or 'Shakespeare Salon' of playwrights wrote but NOT co-wrote the plays, then submitted them to the group for read-throughs, finessing, minor or not-so-minor changes and suggestions - just as movie screen-writers do. And as always noone points out that (would-be) female playwrights had one other major reason to hide behind a male pseudonym in Elizabethan England because women were not permitted to write plays and have them publicly performed under their own names or using any female name for that matter!
So I'll continue to broad-mindedly believe - until proven otherwise - that the likes of Mary Sidney, Amelia Bassano, Marlowe and Edward de Vere all contributed their own individual but "willfully"(!!) very 'Shakespearean' plays to a Shakespeare Salon or collective - and a Mr. Will 'Spellcheck' Shak'spear from Stratford, real actors, closet actresses and others in the theatre business would also frequently attend the Shakespeare Salon's meet-ups. And much (very productive) fun would have been had by all.
I can't wait for a now long-overdue movie sequel to "Anonymous" that reflects and both entertainingly and intelligently dramatises all of the above and much much more besides..
Paul G

So you are a retired lawyer...I'm one of the most prolific directors of Shakespeare's works worldwide and studied under the founder of UK University drama, Prof Wickham. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Little green men from Mars did not build the pyramids either. When Prof Wickham was confronted with a rebellious graduate student who wanted to write his dissertation on this absurd theory he refused to mark it. All the evidence is there in the brilliant CONTESTED WILL by Prof Shapiro. Oxford was a terrible writer, by the by.

The real question is why people still believe that the guy from Stratford Upon Avon wrote the plays. The reason IMO is authority. People LOVE to be told what they should know. There are vested interests like the Stratford Upon Avon tourist board. There are also insufferable arrogant bar stewards who claim they are this or that in the academic world. And as for criticising Oxfordians as mostly Americans, so what? I'm English and I listen to people who are truth followers not people who might share the same flag as myself.

As a working class boy who went to a grammar school I would love to believe the greatest writer in the history of the world was one of us. The truth is, De Vere had talent and importantly, the best education for a future wordsmith there was possible. Partisanship towards William of Stratford owes a lot to a dislike of privilege. I understand that. Indeed, if anything, the notion that a nobleman was the greatest writer in the English language raises important questions of how education can make such a big difference. It illustrates how much talent there potentially is, if only the right environment was provided for.

I mention that Lorenzo Medici, of wealthy heritage is regarded as one of Italy’s finest poets. Given the opportunity and slim demographic De Vere represents, a thousand "Shakespeares" could be turned out every year, but who would do all the donkey work supporting those capable of such Maslowvian self-actualisation? And let’s appreciate De Vere’s teachers as well. As a chess player, I know that a world champion is not only himself and talent but his environment inclusive of teachers and sufficient wealth to travel and play.

Oh, to have the foresight to be born to wealthy parents!

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A great presentation and a real pity a content provider has to put up so much arrogance and fallacious argument in the comments. The realisation of De Vere as Shakespeare will grow with every funeral of the current generation of teachers of English Literature…

Given another thousand years of pontificating, it will always remain a mystery. So, spend some time doing something useful.

plot twist: this video was funded by the 17th Earl of Oxford