Passage 1 

For centuries, Shakespeare skeptics have doubled the authorship of the Stratfordian Bard’ s literary corpus, offering no fewer than 50 alternative candidates, including Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and the leading contender among the “anti-Stratfordians, ” Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford. Even U. S. Supreme court Justice John Paul Stevens came to believe the skeptics. Steven’ s argument retreads a well-known syllogism: Shakespeare’ s plays are so culturally rich that they could only have been written by a noble or scholar of great learning. The historical William Shakespeare was a commoner with no more than a grammar school education. Thus, Shakespeare could not have written Shakespeare. Steven asks, “Where are the books? You can’ t be a scholar of that depth and not have any books in your home. He never had any correspondence with his contemporaries; he never was shown to be present at any major event. I think the evidence that he was not the author is bound a reasonable doubt. ” 

But reasonable doubt should not cost an author his claim, at least not if we treat history as a science instead of as legal debate. In science, a reigning theory is presumed previously true and continues to hold sway unless and until a challenging theory explains the current data as well and also accounts for abnormities that the prevailing one cannot. Appling that principle here, we should grant that Shakespeare wrote the plays unless and until the anti-Stratfordians can make their case for a challenger who fits more of the literary and historical data. 

I explained this to John, M. Shahan, chair of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (www. DobutAboutWill. Org) , who insisted that although most skeptics hold that the true playwright was the earl of Oxford, their mission has merely been to sow the seeds of doubt. I understood why when I examined the case for de Vere. For example, de Vere’ s supporters glorify his education at both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford and believe that the plays could only have been penned by someone such learning. Yet the plays make many references to the grammar school education that Shakespeare had and not that university life held so dear by the skeptics: instead of Cambridge masters and Oxford dons, Shakespeare routinely reference schoolmasters, schoolboys and schoolbooks. 

As for Shakespeare’ s humble upbringing, his father was a middle-class landowner whose social standing was as high as or higher than that of either Marlowe or Ben Johnson, who were themselves sons of a shoemaker and bricklayer, respectively, and somehow managed to master the belles letters. 

In the end, it’ s not enough merely to plant doubts about Will. Some anti-Stratfordians question Shakespeare’ s existence, but the number of references to him form his own time could only be accounted for by a playwright of that name. And although Shakespeare’ s skeptics note that there are no manuscripts, receipts, diaries or letters from him, they neglect to mention that we have none of these for Marlowe, either. 

In other word, reasonable doubt is not enough to dethrone the man form Stratford-upon-Avon, and to date, no overwhelming case has been made for any other author.