Shakespeare Authorship Essay

Arin O'Neil
LAII Pd.5
Mrs. Perkins
6 April, 2014
Shakespeare or Foe
Arthur Schopenhauer once stated, “No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.” In 1564, a man was born by the name of William
Shakespeare. He was born to a poor family, was given little education, and had no interaction with sophisticated society. Thirty­eight plays and over 150 sonnets are not attributed to this mysterious man. Those who believe that Shakespeare was the author have no definitive proof.
The Shakespeare Authorship Question is an ongoing debate that is based on the question, who wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare?
While others believe Shakespeare didn't write the plays and sonnents, I believe he did for numerous reasons. First, there is no other proof supporing another author. "No such supporting evidence exists for any other candidate, and Shakespeare's authorship was not questioned during his lifetime or for centuries after his death." This proves he wrote the plays because everyone in this time period accepted he was the writter also nobody else came forth. "And, if we examine the lives of the other potential authors of the plays, we see that they were not associated with any of Shakespeare's contemporary actors or productions of the plays." Those Shakespeare scholars who have responded to such claims hold title pages, testimony by other contemporary poets and historians, and official records but none for the other candidates. "In fact, the first person to make the argument did it as a joke, as Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro points out in his book
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?" A scholar named Samuel schmucker used historical and biographical evidence to show there was no exsitance of Christ. In doing this he argued that
Shakespeare never existed but meant it as an example.
On the other hand, many others have decided on the fake that William Shakespeare did not write the plays and sonnents. Scholars from all over the world have been debateing the authership and most of them have come to the conclusion Sir Francis Bacon was the playwriter.
"The chief one is that it would not have been considered respectable in his day for an aristocrat and gentleman to write plays at all. For this reason, in Elizabethan times some men who wrote plays actually paid for the use of the name of someone unknown to shield their identity." "Bacon furthermore visited many of the foreign countries forming the background for the plays"

Traveling is necessary to create the authentic local atmosphere. There is no record of William
Shakspere's ever having travelled outside of England. "An American, Herbert Janvrin growne, published a pamphlet in 1887 that purportedly deciphered Shakespeare's epitaph, using rules that were a good deal simpler than Donnelly's, and found the message "Francis Bacon wrote
Shakespeare's plays."
Furthermore, Bacon was only one of the many other writer thought to be the writter of
Shakespeare, another well known author was Christopher Marlowe. "As there are variable speculation concerning his death, some of the scholars or researchers working English literature have been arguing that Christopher Marlowe did not die in Deptford on 30th of May 1593. They claimed that he might have faked his death and continue writing by using name William
Shakespeare." When Marlowe faked his death to get out of his charges, Shakespeare came around. "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room."
No one arrgues this is a reference to Marlowe, but it makes much more sense if Marlowe is writing these words rather than if Shakespeare was writing them. "Marlowe’s biographer John
Bakeless suggested that this incident inspired the scene in Romeo and Juliet where Romeo comes between the dueling Mercutio and Tybalt in order to separate them, instead giving Tybalt an opening to stab Mercutio to death." In 1589, Marlowe got into a fight with William Bradley for an unknown reason. Marlowe’s friend Thomas Watson came upon them and drew his sword, saying that he did so to separate them and to preserve the peace.