Why is the authorship an issue?
Natural desire to know more about the greatest literary figure of all time.
More than we have?
Yes.
Why?
It's comforting to have everything fit better. To add more than we know. To speculate. To believe in a conspiracy. To counter a conspiracy claim.
Why do people think William Shakespeare wrote the plays?
Contemporary documentary evidence explicitly states that he did.
What types of documentation?
The First Folio, The Second Folio, dedication by Ben Jonson, publishers' registries, etc.
Did Ben Jonson know Shakespeare?
Yes.
Closely?
Shakespeare even performed in Jonson's plays.
Reliable witness then?
Couldn't get much better.

Why wasn't his name clearly associated with each play at the time of their publication?
It wasn't the custom. They were performances, not books. It's like today: You probably remember who acted in Sleepless in Seattle but can you recall who wrote it? Eventually, all the plays were collected and printed under Shakespeare's name.
Anything else?
Records of the plays being performed at The Globe
Who owned the Globe?
William Shakespeare in part.
de Vere?
No.
What other documentation?
In 1594 there are documents showing that Shakespeare performed at Gray's Inn and played A Comedy of Errors.
de Vere there?
No.
Anything else?
In 1598, Ben Jonson had a cast list of his play, Every Man In His Humour, and he listed William Shakespeare as one of the actors.
de Vere there?
No.

Did Shakespeare act in any other of his plays?
Yes. There's a whole series of documents that show that those plays were performed by the theatrical company to which William Shakespeare also belonged.
Didn't de Vere act in these plays also though?
No.
So he had no direct experience of acting in the Shakespeare plays that would be of use in perfecting them and becoming a classic playwright?
No.

But a person must be proven to have been able to write to have written those plays?
We don't have the original manuscripts in anyone's hand so we can't prove nor disprove anything based on writing, but Delius was blind and it didn't stop him writing music. Beethoven was deaf.
But de Vere wrote them, didn't he?
There are no documents that say these texts were written by de Vere or anyone else but
William Shakespeare.
Are there any contemporary records contradicting the authorship of the plays at the time they were attributed to William Shakespeare?
No.
Is there anyone at the time who said they were written by de Vere or anybody else?
No.

But wasn't William Shakespeare illiterate?
Not judging by the paid performances where he had to at least read and perform plays.
But his signatures show he couldn't even write properly?
When have you seen a beautiful signature?
And how many examples of Shakespeare's signature do we have?
Six. Three of the 6 that have survived are from immediately prior to his death when he mightn't have been in the best of shape.
Surely we should have more signatures of someone who was a playwright?
We have none of Greene, Webster, Beaumont and many others. We have just one of Marlowe. Six looks pretty good by comparison.
But didn't Shakespeare vary the way he spelled his own name?
Yes.
How many references to the name of Shakespeare are there from other people?
Scores, well into triple figures.
And are any of those spelled differently?
Yes, many.
So the variant spellings are due principally to people other than Shakespeare himself?
Yes.
And are they all original variant spellings?
No, many merely repeat earlier typographical mis-spellings.
What percentage of all references to the name "Shakespeare" are spelled correctly?
90%.
Did anyone else mis-spell?
Yes, de Vere was a notorious mis-speller as per many documents in his hand that we have today. Bacon. Henslowe. Marlowe. Many others.
Why?
The precision of spelling in Elizabethan times wasn't as developed as it is now. Variation of spelling was common-place in Elizabethan times as English developed.

But Shakespeare didn't have the education to write the plays, did he?
The custom in those days was that you went to Latin Grammar schools. Stratford had one with a faculty of Oxford teachers.
Do we have evidence that William Shakespeare went to that Grammar school?
We have no evidence that anyone did. There are no surviving attendance records. Denying that William Shakespeare attended it is as logical as saying that the school existed, had paid Oxford teachers on twice the normal salaries of the time, but no pupils went there. We also have no evidence that he did not, i.e. that he went to some other school.
But we have evidence of others' education?
Not really. There's no documentary evidence that Ben Jonson attended Westminster School, though we're sure that he did.

But many plays are set overseas and William Shakespeare didn't travel overseas, did he?
He may have travelled overseas. We don't know, and we don't know that he did not.
How could he have known any French that is in his works if he hadn't visited France?
He may have visited France. If not, we know Shakespeare lived in the house of Christopher Mountjoy in London on Silver and Monkwell Street. There he lived with people who were French. London was and is a very cosmopolitan city.
But the plays show that Shakespeare had an intimate knowledge of the Continent. How could he have gained that if we're not even sure he visited there?
The plays show that Shakespeare didn't have an intimate knowledge of the Continent. He made several errors describing the Continent in his plays consistent with someone who might never have even visited there: in The Winter's Tale he writes of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia (landlocked Czechoslovakia); in Two Gentlemen of Verona he writes of travelling by ship between the two inland cities of Verona and Milan; in The Taming of the Shrew he writes of Tranio's father being a sailmaker in Bergamo which is an odd place for a sailmaker to do business as it's in the foothills of the Italian Alps, over 80 miles from the nearest coast. And there are many other errors. What's more difficult is reconciling these errors with someone whom we know travelled extensively on the Continent, such as the Earl of Oxford.

Do we have any contemporary evidence of William Shakespeare having been a playwright of the time?
Yes. Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia (Writ's Treasury) lists 12 plays written by Shakespeare. The best were comedy and tragedy.
Does Meres mention de Vere?
Yes. He's represented as a writer of comedy only - bit of a joker.
Any tragedies?
There's no recorded evidence anywhere of his having written a tragedy.

Why didn't Shakespeare leave his works in his will?
He didn't own them. The publishers and company did. Just as The Beatles can't leave their works in their wills.
Why didn't he leave his library in his will indicating the source of his vast knowledge?
Neither did Francis Bacon, Richard Hooker. Many notable literary figures didn't and don't. The leaving of a library in a will is a very rare and unusual thing to do. However, we know from legal records that Shakespeare's house, New Place, in Stratford-upon-Avon had a library and desks. Presumably Shakespeare felt it unnecessary to explicitly bequeath his library in his will when it was physically embedded in the house he was already leaving. Having said that, an inventory of personal effects that was attached to the will is now lost and that may have included an inventory of his library.

But don't de Vere's poems correlate with Shakespeare's?
No. Analysis shows there are occasional similarities, that were in vogue with other writers of the time, but far more differences.
Are there any similarities between William Shakespeare's words and de Vere's?
Only in so far as you would expect from 2 contemporaries living in the same city in Elizabethan England and each having at least an interest in literature.
But isn't there any computer analysis that can come up with any revealing matches between Shakespeare's and anyone else's work?
Yes. There was a computer analysis done of 58 alternative candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's poems.
Did any match?
No.
Anyone come close?
Sir Walter Raleigh was the closest.
What % match did he get?
2%.
Any measure of academic equivalence for Shakespeare and de Vere?
No.
What about metrics? What is Shakespeare's grade ranking for poems after the computer analysis?
11th. Grade.
de Vere's?
7th.
Where was Bacon? Marlowe?
All miles out and each far less than 2% probability of common authorship.

Is there an insistence over and over again from the Oxfordians, for documentary evidence that this man from Stratford who was also clearly an actor in London was the man who wrote the plays as the texts published say he was?
Yes.
Is there any equivalent documentary evidence that Oxford wrote them?
No.
Any claim by de Vere?
No.

Is any play performed as it was first written?
No-one with any experience of producing plays knows of any play that has been performed on stage without changes being made to the original script presented.
Who makes the changes?
The playwright, if available, else the producer.
Was William Shakespeare present?
Yes.
Was he an actor?
Yes.
Was he a producer?
Yes.
Was he a playwright?
Yes.
Was de Vere present?
No.
Was he a producer?
No.
Was he a playwright?
Of comedies.

Who introduced the First Folio?
Heminges and Condell.
Who were they?
Personal friends and business partners of William Shakespeare, with whom he acted, who knew him well and selected all the plays that had been published and had not been published.
So they published the full set of plays, not a vain William Shakespeare?
Yes.
So they knew Shakespeare aswell?
Yes.
Did they know de Vere?
One was de Vere's brother-in-law.
To whom did they attribute the plays?
Shakespeare.
Not his brother-in-law, de Vere?
No.
But surely he'd have known the real author?
He did.

What was the inspiration for The Tempest?
The colonists that sailed from England to America in 1609 in large part. The storms encountered by one of the flotilla. The Bermuda Triangle is explicitly referred to where the colonists encountered serious difficulties.
How do we know it's that event?
William Strachey's 1610 letter on behalf of the Virginia Company clearly correlates with The Tempest's content, even in the words it uses, catalogue of animals, etc.
When was The Tempest written?
1-2 years after this event in 1610-11
When did de Vere die?
1604

But Hamlet is about de Vere, isn't it? It's de Vere's autobiography.
The story dates back to at least the 13th. Century by Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, 300 years before de Vere's life.
OK. What about after de Vere's life. How many plays were written after de Vere died?
11.
Any of the really great ones?
Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Anthony & Cleopatra, Timon of Athens.
How have these plays been dated?
Counting the lines that Shakespeare wrote, measuring the verse structure, the blank verse, the weak endings, light endings, the use of rhyme, the progressive development of William Shakespeare's style.
Any patterns?
The writing of blank verse improves progressively through the works showing consistent and progressive development. The use of rhyme decreases progressively. The weak endings, the light endings, that meant that you didn't stop at the end of the line but kept on going, run-on lines, progressively increase. Very few people wrote in this blank verse style and progressively improved their use of it.

How many William Shakespeare plays were published after William Shakespeare's death?
16.
How do we know that they were William Shakespeare's.
They are listed in the Stationers' registers.
Attributed to whom?
William Shakespeare.
By whom?
The Stationers with whom the plays were rested and Condell and Heminges who were friends of William Shakespeare so knew who the author was.
de Vere?
No.

What does their publication after William Shakespeare's death tell us about William Shakespeare?
That the publication of his plays was not a big issue to him. They were plays, not books.
Any eulogies?
Yes.
By anyone significant?
Ben Jonson.
And who does he identify as the author of the plays?
William Shakespeare.
Not de Vere?
No.
But didn't Ben Jonson's inscription refer to "Sweet Swan of Avon"? That's obviously accepted to mean Stratford-upon-Avon but it could mean de Vere's beloved Bilton estate where he lived on the River Avon, couldn't it?
He sold Bilton in 1581, 23 years before he died, 42 years before Jonson's inscription.
But didn't de Vere use a coat of arms of the Bulbeck lineage that showed a lion shaking a spear - good pun on Shakespeare, eh?
The Bulbeck crest is of a lion holding a broken spear. No man and no shaking. More importantly the Bulbeck crest had nothing to do with de Vere. His crest depicted a boar - good pun on de Vere, eh?

Any other eulogies?
William Camden, the foremost antiquary of the time, and Ben Jonson's master at the Westminster School.
What does he say about William Shakespeare?
One of the great poets of his time "whom succeeding ages may justly admire".
Does he identify anyone else?
A list of 10 in all culminating with William Shakespeare.
de Vere in that list?
No.

When did the theatres close?
1647.
Any commemorative edition to the end?
The Beaumont and Fletcher Folio. The signatories, the ten survivors of the King's Men, recalled the happier time when Heminges and Condell, "those that had steerage of our company," had presented the works of "that sweet swan of Avon, William Shakespeare".
But both were dead by then. The game was up, who did all these people identify the real author as?
William Shakespeare.
Not de Vere?
No.

Did de Vere's family lay claim to these great works.
No.
Did Shakespeare's family object to Shakespeare being identified as their author?
No.
When was the First Folio published?
7 years after William Shakespeare died in 1623.
When was the eulogy written?
On or before the First Folio publication. Could have been written in 1616 when Shakespeare died.
Was the town in mourning when he died?
We don't know. We don't know that they were not. There were no newspapers in those days.

Isn't there a monument to William Shakespeare in his home-town in recognition of his achievements?
Yes.
When was it erected?
After he died, during the lifetime of his wife.
So, it's reasonable to assume that it's a likeness?
Yes.
Wasn't it repaired and at that time changed from its original to portray him as an author instead of a grain-merchant?
Letters between the Stratford authorities explicitly state that the monument was to be repaired exactly true to the original.
Doesn't an illustration by Dugdale taken before the repair show the monument to be holding what appears to be a sack of grain instead of a quill?
The actual monument shows Shakespeare holding quill and paper on a cushion. Dugdale's illustration of the monument has many inaccuracies, as it appears to have been drawn from memory, and omits the quill though the paper can be discerned. The quill has naturally been stolen several times over the centuries as a memento by visitors to the monument - "Shakespeare's quill" is a valued prize - so it is very likely that the quill had been stolen prior to Dugdale's visit. The cushion has therefore been mis-interpreted by some as a sack of grain. Dugdale made many mistakes though in his illustrations of monuments and graves: he shows Sir Thomas Carew's effigy as being transposed with that of his wife; he shows King Charles' monument with the right foot raised instead of the left; and there are many other Dugdale anomalies that show his pictorial records are clearly unreliable. However, the absent quill is probably due to it being genuinely absent at the time of his visit rather than an error on his part as Dugdale himself says of Stratford: "this antient town...gave birth and sepulture to our late famous Poet Will. Shakespeare, whose Monument I have inserted in my discourse of the Church". So he was clearly aware of Shakespeare's pre-eminence as a poet, not a grain merchant.

Wasn't de Vere just using "William Shakespeare" as a pseudonym? What is a pseudonym?
A false name to cover the real name of the author of a work.
Like?
Mark Twain = Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Any more?
Voltaire, George Eliot. There're many.
What are the characteristics of pseudonyms?
They are names that have no connection to any living person - they are entirely fictitious.
Like de Vere's?
No, quite unlike de Vere's.
What would be the novelty of de Vere's pseudonym if it were true?
It would be the only pseudonym that has direct connection to a living person of the same era who was active in the same field.
Unusual?
Unique.
Not much of a pseudonym then?
Not, in fact, a pseudonym. It would be like John Grisham adopting a pseudonym today and bizarrely choosing something like "Stephen King".
Why would de Vere want to use a pseudonym or front-man?
To avert the wrath of the royal court for allegedly ridiculing it and others in his works.
Avert that wrath to whom?
The living Shakespeare.
What wrath did Shakespeare incur for having these crimes attributed to him?
None.
Which of the court would he have wanted to avoid?
Elizabeth I, during whose reign Shakespeare wrote much and played much of his work.
And who was on the throne when the First Folio was published?
James I.
And the Second Folio?
Charles I.
And these works were all still attributed to William Shakespeare?
Yes.
So whose wrath were they trying to avoid by then?
Nobody's.
What was the point then?
None.
So who would have had to be in on the secret of de Vere being the real author?
Scores. It would have been so extensive that it becomes a serious problem to identify those from whom the secret was being kept.

Didn't de Vere want to just disassociate himself from the plays then?
He could have done a hell of a better job of achieving it, and sustaining it over so much time, and generating no known consternation anyway.
What alternative techniques could he have tried?
Any of many in Shakespeare's plays.
But wasn't he just a sensitive man careful not to be associated with rocking or scoffing at the Establishment?
Firstly, the plays don't scoff at the Establishment. Secondly, there are records of de Vere being a seducer, a cuckold, an adulterer, a sodomite, a drunkard, a blasphemer, a traitor and an assassin, so he was not as astute and sensitive in his behaviour as one might expect.
Anything in de Vere's will that he would be able to reveal after he died, with impunity, the great cover-up?
No. He didn't even leave a will.
Any admission in William Shakespeare's will that "it was actually de Vere what done them"?
No.

1920, by Thomas Looney.
What, over 300 years after de Vere died?
Yes.
So, no contemporary claims?
None.
No contemporary evidence?
None.
No contemporary written linkage?
None.
No contemporary verbal claim?
None.
Nothing?
Nothing.