If someone asked you who wrote Hamlet? You would naturally say, “Shakespeare, who else?”
But is it the correct answer or to that end, was he the author of any of the great plays that are credited to his name?
Some scholars are in doubt because of some baffling facts about Shakespeare himself!
Here are some of the puzzlers:
How Did Shakespeare Learn So Much?
Shakespeare used more than 21,000 words – a very vast vocabulary by any standard – and initiated a number of phrases that are now commonly used in the daily language.
Apart from the mastery of language, Shakespeare’s plays display his knowledge of law, medicine, history and the ways of the royalty in addition to a deep understanding of human nature in all its aspects.
The question is how did Shakespeare acquire such a wide range and profound knowledge?
As far as we know Shakespeare never attended any school or university other than perhaps the Grammar School in his home town.
Apart from schools, the only other source of knowledge is reading. But Shakespeare could not possibly have taught himself by reading because, unlike today, books were very rare in his time. There were no public libraries. Even the Cambridge University Library, one of the best at that time, could boast of only a few hundred volumes which were considered so valuable that they were chained to shelves.
Geographical Knowledge
Another perplexing factor is that some of Shakespeare’s plays are set in Italy. These plays exhibit the familiarity of the playwright with that country by giving the true location of mountains in relation to towns near them as well as the exact direction of various roads.
This wouldn’t be a problem but for the fact that Shakespeare never left the English shores in his lifetime. Nor did he have any accurate maps to refer to. The maps existing then were quite elementary, hardly containing the details that are often encountered in Shakespeare’s plays with the Italian background.
Scholars wonder how was Shakespeare able to accurately describe a country he never visited?
Shakespeare’s Last Will and Testament
Shakespeare’s will also presents some puzzles. It is a long and clearly expressed document listing his belongings with instructions about how to deal with them. But nowhere in it does Shakespeare allude to his unpublished plays, probably his most valuable possessions.
18 plays came out after Shakespeare’s death and represented a prized property. Silence of Shakespeare about such valuable assets which meant potential gains to his survivors is another puzzling circumstance in the playwright’s life .
Moreover, as a man of letters Shakespeare must surely have owned some books which at that time were considered highly valuable because of their rarity. But strangely enough Shakespeare’s will doesn’t refer to any of his books, papers or unfinished manuscripts.
Puzzle of Shakespeare’s Letters
It can be safely said that during his lifetime Shakespeare must have corresponded with a number of people. Yet not a not a single letter, addressed to or written by him, has been found.
Here it can be said that over the time, Shakespeare’s correspondence may have been lost or destroyed. But if so much writing of the playwright – his handwritten will and specimens of his signatures – have endured, isn’t it unusual that not even a scrap of his correspondence should have survived?
Delayed Authorship Claim
Very few of Shakespeare’s plays were published while he was alive and strangely enough the first of these when they came out were not credited to any author. Shakespeare’s name appeared in print on the title page of Love’s Labour Lost in 1598, full five years after the publication of his first work.
So the question here is: What was the reason that prevented Shakespeare from asserting his authorship for as long as half a decade?
These are some of the circumstances that have given rise to the suspicion that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays that are credited to his name.
Then who wrote them?
Proposed Shakespeare Substitutes
Various names have been put forward as substitutes. These include Edward de Vere, the talented Earl of Oxford; Francis Bacon, the great philosophic genius; Mary Sidney the Countess of Pembroke; and Christopher Marlowe.
All of them were learned, widely traveled and prominent literary figures of the day and might have had a reason for writing under an assumed name. So over the years one or the other of them have enjoyed the status of the most likely candidate for being the substitute of Shakespeare.
Of these, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford is the most enduring candidate still commanding the interest of the Shakespeare doubters.
A highly talented literary figure of his times, the Earl of Oxford was a playwright and a poet. Though none of his plays has survived, his adherents, popularly known as Oxfordians, cite, among other things, the similarities between Shakespeare’s plays and the biography of Oxford to base their claim that he indeed was the substitute of Shakespeare.
Unresolved Controversy
This controversy about Shakespeare’s authorship is nothing new. The debate started in the 18th century and continues to the present day with no resolution one way or the other in sight.
This means that it still remains to be proved conclusively that Shakespeare didn’t write what is ascribed to him.
“More things in heaven and earth…”
On the other hand, if we take a little fanciful view of the matter, isn’t it likely that Shakespeare was a divinely-illuminated genius inspired by a source outside this world?
Who knows?
Remember what the Bard of Avon said in Hamlet:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Was it a prophetic dig at his future doubters?
And for all we know, incensed by all the naysayers, Shakespeare, from high heavens, might be saying:
Who steals my purse, steals trash…
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
