contention is, can it be proven, without doubt, that a largely untutored man from the rural countryside of Stratford-upon-Avon could have acquired sufficient knowledge to have written the works of Shakespeare? The ‘facts’ that are presented to us by the Shakesperian establishment are, in many instances, not facts at all. This questioning of the authorship has stood the test of time. Can we, therefore, assume that the old adage ‘there is no smoke without fire’ applies here? When we begin to look a little deeper into this man’s life, not only can we not find any evidence that he wrote the works, but we can find no evidence whatsoever of how he could have obtained the vast array of technical knowledge required. And, it’s the ‘technical requirements’ that are at the heart of this problem. What’s been fed to us by his biographers in particular is tantamount to rubbish.
I can accept that the accumulation of years aligning the authorship to this man from Stratford-upon-Avon makes it difficult for people to believe that we have the wrong man, as the hype that has, and still is, being fed to us is of the highest calibre. We must, however, refrain from regarding this as some kind of ‘sacred cow’ that cannot be investigated, and neither should we reject a new conclusion simply because it may differ from an old one.
I recently read an article regarding the difficulties we humans have in changing from any entrenched views we may hold. It suggested that ‘the human mind is so constituted that it is unwilling to forsake old and faulty beliefs in favour of new and true ones and that there is an emotional reaction of ignorance to truth’. Perhaps the case against the man from Stratford has not been put across as well as it could have been. Hopefully, this publication will rectify this. I would, therefore, ask the reader to be as open-minded as possible, as I believe there is more than sufficient doubt that this man from Stratford could not have been the author of the plays, and that we have attributed these works to the wrong person.
Amidst all this controversy and spurious ‘facts’ that are presented to us, one fact remains resolute and unchallenged and that is that William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon never once laid claimed to being an author of any kind. Neither did his wife, children, or son-in-law, who was an educated man and a doctor. I would hazard a guess that not many people will have been aware of this fact and that, in itself, must surely raise serious concerns about the authorship. Why not claim ownership of something that was so great it changed the course of English literature and culture? In addition to this strange situation, there isn’t a scrap of contemporary evidence from anyone during his lifetime associating him as a writer of any description.
Not claiming authorship must lead us to conclude that, if he were the author, it was not done for profit, otherwise he would have ‘claimed title’ to much of the Works of Shakespeare and at least made provision for these rights to be transferred to his family when he died. As we shall see, William Shakspere was a very money-orientated person, suing people left right and centre for monies owed to him; it would, then, appear strange that he would give up the monetary rights to these plays, which took decades to complete.
It has to be acknowledged that William Shakspere became a very wealthy man, though how he managed to obtain this wealth remains a mystery. Therefore, it’s not his success as a business man that is in question here, but rather his potential literary skills. He came from what is described as a ‘humble’ background ‑ ‘humble’ meaning, in this instance, ‘poor’ ‑ and neither, as we will see later, was he was meek or mild-mannered. He went to London and amassed a great deal of wealth in a relatively short space of time.
Supporters of alternative authors tend to spend too much of their time denigrating him for the way he seems to have behaved by suing debtors for monies owed. Yet, all successful ‘self-made men’ tend to take a sometimes ruthless approach in their quest for success, and William Shakspere was no exception, nor should he have been. In fact, he is to be applauded for his entrepreneurial ability when you consider the difficulties ordinary people faced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I will outline some of his monetary activities later in this book and convert some of these purchases into today’s value. As you will see, they were indeed substantial. The question is, how did he accumulate this wealth? Was it from being a playwright, or being a business man of some description? It certainly wasn’t from acting, as performers were paid a pittance in those days. This book is, therefore, not an assassination of William Shakspere the man, as he may have been a very fine person, but rather a criticism of the people who peddle myths about him for commercial gain.
Questioning the authorship is a contentious subject with Stratfordians, as they resort to defiant utterances while calling into question our sanity. They admit they have a financial interest in maintaining the current author, but this results in very little constructive debate taking place. They and similar supporters have developed some standard rebuttal phrases, stating that we are picking on the playwright because of his ‘humble’ upbringing and that we are ‘obsessed conspirators’, all of which is becoming rather tedious.
Alternative Authors
The problem we have with these “alternative author” supporters that lay claim to ‘their man’ as having been the author, is that they don’t have sufficient evidence either. Several candidates have been put forward as authors and, unlike our man from Stratford, we have a fairly good documented history of these people, including their educational credentials. However, without direct evidence from these various societies, it becomes a fruitless exercise and deflects attention away from the real issue regarding Shakspere the man.
A recent film reviewer summarised the difficulty with the film Anonymous (2011), which depicted Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as the author, by saying ‘If you can’t convince them, confuse them’. That, unfortunately, is precisely the problem with alternative authors. This film, quite frankly, makes our task more difficult, as it is riddled with inaccuracies, including the portrayal of William Shakspere as a fraud. If someone doesn’t identify himself as being an author in the first instance, how can he or she be accused of fraudulent behaviour? The whole storyline in this film left Stratfordians rubbing their hands in glee that such drivel could have reached the screen.
The Francis Bacon Society claims to have the strongest case, in that they have written evidence of Bacon’s connection with Shakespeare, which is contained in a document known as the ‘Northumberland Manuscript’, which once belonged to Bacon. This document was discovered in 1867 during the demolition of Northhumberland House, in the Strand, London. It contains forty-five unnumbered ‘leaves’. It has Shakespeare and Bacon mentioned on the same page, references to some Shakespeare plays, namely Richard II and Richard III, and various other ‘Shakespeare’ connections. There is also the word ‘honorificabilitudinitatibus’ contained in this manuscript, which also appears in the Shakespeare play Love’s Labour’s Lost. This is an unusual word and can be traced back to a Latin dictionary which was around in the twelfth century, thus finding it in some of Bacon’s writings is curious. This manuscript is held at Alnwick Castle, the home of the Duke of Northumberland.
It is not necessary to be a supporter of this man Shakspere from Stratford in order to be a Shakespearean scholar, and Baconians are no exception. They can point you to similarities of speech, text and grammar in much of Bacon’s writings, as can Marlowe and the Earl of Oxford’s supporters. There is also the extraordinary finding of a Miss Annette Covington of Cincinnati in the USA of the name Francis Bacon, hidden, but clearly visible, in the opening letter of The Tempest in the 1623 folio.
Unfortunately, Baconians have put too much emphasis on Bacon having inserted cyphers in the plays. This they see as being ‘key’ to this conundrum; however, no one has come up with a clear and easily understood cypher as yet. Bacon did indeed use cyphers in some of his writings, even producing a book on the subject. A gentleman by the name of Ignatius Donnelly produced a two-volume set of books called
