What Is Shakespeare's Identity?

William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is one of the world’s most revered playwrights. Interestingly, in the nineteenth century, people began to doubt Shakespeare’s identity and the authenticity of his works. Today, the Shakespeare Authorship Question continues to garner interest from people around the globe. The debate has captured the attention of people of all ages and professions, from high school students to lawyers to authors. Modern scholars use various research methods to analyze Shakespeare’s works while other Shakespeare fans hunt through his plays to find secrets hidden within his words. Though the search has been extensive, no one has found much information. However, with the evidence that exists, William Shakespeare of Stratford …show more content…
In Chapter 9 of Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare, Bryson argues that Shakespeare’s childhood in the country introduced him to aspects of nature that a person brought up in the city would not encounter. Shakespeare, growing up around animals and nature, knew all about animal hides and their uses. For example, Bryson points out that Shakespeare knew “lute strings were made of cowgut and bowstrings of horsehair” (243). Shakespeare uses this knowledge in his comedy The Taming of the Shrew to enhance the scenes where Hortensio, a music teacher, teaches Bianca to play the lute. It is unlikely that someone living in an urban area would be exposed to such information; however, this is not the case for Shakespeare, who had a glove maker as a father and grew up in that rural environment, as Doug Stewart mentions on page 2 of his Smithsonian article “To Be or Not to Be Shakespeare.” Furthermore, in Act 4 Scene 3 of The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare references “neat’s foot” which supports Bill Bryson’s claim that Shakespeare’s knowledge of country jargon like greasy fells and neat’s oil were “matters of everyday conversation to leather workers” (243), but would not be known to anyone brought up outside of the country. Additionally, Bryson makes a point that in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, Shakespeare uses distinct imagery that corresponds with a rural …show more content…
In Stewart’s article, he admits that there are no documents about Shakespeare as an author, nor are there are any surviving play drafts. However, in the time period, Shakespeare wasn’t thought of as a genius. Also, Stewart reminds, “Nobody was about to save a laundry list he wrote so they could sell it on eBay” (6). These actions were not the culture in the sixteenth century. People reused paper, and few wrote letters or kept diaries, especially not the lower classes, so the lack of evidence of Shakespeare’s literacy is not surprising. Furthermore, Shakespeare did not receive credit for his authorship because people did not respect playwrights. Though many enjoyed attending plays at the theater for entertainment, play texts were thought of as “trash, like pulp fiction” (6). Plays were not even included in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Another suspicion about Shakespeare is the odd fact that no one mourned for his death. Anti-Stratfordians think that this suggests the commoner William Shakespeare was irrelevant, so he could not have been the real Shakespeare. Anti-Stratfordians argue that someone else who was higher class must have posed as Shakespeare. The truth, however, as Stewart points out on page 7, is that no one mourned for Shakespeare because he was just a middle-class retiree—his plays weren’t

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