Questions about Shakespeare authorship question
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is the Shakespeare authorship question?
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians believe Shakespeare was a front to shield the real author, whose identity was concealed for reasons of social rank, state security, or gender. The mainstream scholarly consensus holds that the historical and documentary evidence confirms William Shakespeare of Stratford as the author.
Who are the main alternative candidates proposed as the real author of Shakespeare's plays?
More than 80 historical figures have been proposed as the true author of the Shakespeare canon. The most prominent candidates are Sir Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere the 17th Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley the 6th Earl of Derby. Group theories have also been proposed, including one that names Francis Bacon, Oxford, Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Mary Sidney, and others as co-authors.
When was Shakespeare's authorship first publicly questioned?
Shakespeare's authorship was first openly questioned in 1848, in the pages of Joseph C. Hart's The Romance of Yachting. That same year, Dr. Robert W. Jameson published an anonymous piece posing similar doubts. The controversy emerged only after Shakespeare had been elevated as the English national poet; for the two centuries following his death in 1616, no one had publicly challenged the attribution.
What evidence do scholars cite for Shakespeare's authorship?
Scholars point to title page attributions, official stationers' entries naming Shakespeare as the author, and the testimony of contemporaries including Ben Jonson, John Heminges, and Henry Condell, who knew and worked with him for more than 20 years. The name William Shakespeare was given as that of a known writer at least 23 times during his lifetime. Stylometric studies, including the Claremont Shakespeare Clinic that ran from 1987 to 2010, found that none of the proposed alternative candidates' known works match the authorial profile of the Shakespeare canon.
What was the outcome of the 1987 Supreme Court moot court on the Shakespeare authorship question?
On the 25th of September 1987, three justices of the Supreme Court of the United States convened a one-day moot court to hear the Oxfordian case for Edward de Vere. The justices determined that the case rested on a conspiracy theory and that the arguments were both incoherent and unpersuasive. A retrial held at the Inner Temple in London on the 26th of November 1988, presided over by three Law Lords, confirmed that verdict.
How many people have signed the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about Shakespeare's authorship?
As of the 23rd of April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and the coalition's self-imposed deadline, the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt had been signed by 3,348 people, including 573 self-described current and former academics. The coalition's goal of forcing the academic establishment to acknowledge legitimate doubt by that date was not achieved.