Module 2: Additional Shakespeare Articles

The new film 'Anonymous' says the Bard was a fraud.

The new film 'Anonymous' says the Bard was a fraud.

But the hottest candidate for some time has been the Earl of Oxford, himself a patron of dramatists, a courtier-poet of middling talent, and an adventurer who was at various times banished from the court and captured by pirates.

But the hottest candidate for some time has been the Earl of Oxford, himself a patron of dramatists, a courtier-poet of middling talent, and an adventurer who was at various times banished from the court and captured by pirates.

But the hottest candidate for some time has been the Earl of Oxford, himself a patron of dramatists, a courtier-poet of middling talent, and an adventurer who was at various times banished from the court and captured by pirates.

James Shapiro's fine book Contested Will chronicles the long obsession with depriving Shakespeare of authentic authorship of his works, mostly on the grounds that no manuscripts survive but also that his cultural provenance was too lowly, and his education too rudimentary, to have allowed him to penetrate the minds of kings and courtiers.

There has been an attempt by Stratfordians to surmise that William Shaxper attended a grammar school in Stratford.

The works attributed to Shakespeare contain one of the largest vocabularies of any single English writer.

There is a startling incoherence between the story of a young man, with at best a grammar-school education, wandering into London, getting involved in theatre, and then suddenly, even miraculously, possessing one of the greatest vocabularies of any individual who ever lived.

The case against William Shakespeare’s authorship is strong enough to have attracted many famous individuals.

His French in particular is not of the classroom but reflects the vulgar speech of ordinary people.

There is no way of reconciling the immense scholarship shown in Shakespeare’s works with William Shaxper, who from birth was surrounded by illiterate people, had little or no education, and is believed never to have traveled outside England.

As with virtually everything associated with the “historical” Shakespeare, the tourist sites in Stratford are pure speculation.

No other body of writing in the history of world literature has been peopled with characters and situations of such variety, such breadth and depth. No other writer has exercised such a universal appeal.

No other body of writing in the history of world literature has been peopled with characters and situations of such variety, such breadth and depth. No other writer has exercised such a universal appeal.