I’m amazed at the energy people put in to questioning the authorship of the plays we refer to as Shakespeare’s. Today, in an article on the front page of BBC news, a group called the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (which includes Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance) has whipped up some publicity for their concerns over whether the Stratford-born country boy Will Shakespeare could really have been responsible for the most prominent works of English literature.
Does anyone have the heart to tell them that the question of who authored the Shakespeare canon has been studied in great detail for many years? Or that, despite the healthy need for questioning everything to do with a document-deprived life story, the doubters always seem to be eccentric and willfully contrarian despite the facts and reasonable assumptions we have to hand?
It is one of the most hotly-contested arenas for the juxtaposing views of vocal firebrands and quiet scholars alike, at least since Francis Bacon (1561-1626), philosopher and viscount, was suggested as the real author in the 18th century.