Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare

In 1920, J. Thomas Looney (sadly pronounced 'Lone-ey') wrote a book called: Shakespeare Identified. In it, he detailed how Shakespeare didn't actually write Shakespeare's 42 plays. It was in fact written by Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford who - according to Looney - was the bastard child of Queen Elizabeth I and later, through incest, fathered a bastard of his own that would've inherited the throne of England and the Tudor Line would've carried on if only society knew of this man's genius. All hail King Joffrey!

Again, it's pronounced 'Lone-ey.' 

I'm deadly serious. This is what Mark Twain, Orson Welles, and - not surprisingly - Freud actually believed. 'The Looney Theory' can only be described as hilarious bullshit; up there with the theory that Hitler was gay and the SS was in fact a homosexual militia. What little factual evidence is presented can easily be refuted, and the rest is fictionalised nonsense born out of some crazed fanatic who thought the Tudors were good monarchs.

Why isn't there a birth record? Because people didn't have birth certificates back then. We do however have a record of Shakespeare's christening, which was on the 25th of April - and it was traditional that a baby should be baptised two days after his/her birth. I like to think that Shakespeare was actually born on the 24th rather than the 23rd because then we would share birthdays, but unlike Mr Looney I'm going to use logic and assume Shakespeare entered and departed this world on the 23rd.

Why aren't there any handwritten manuscripts? Because no-one thought Shakespeare would still be around centuries later, and back then actors were able to learn hours of material in the space of a few days. So no-one bothered to keep copies locked away. The first folio of Shakespeare's work was written by several of his best friends who just jotted down what they could remember...meaning that the first performance of Hamlet was probably a lot different from the version Benedict Cumberbatch is performing now. I don't know why everyone was in uproar when they swapped the 'To Be Or Not To Be' soliloquy considering that Hamlet's most famous speech might have been a figment of Richard Burbage's imagination that somehow was committed to history.

Why did he leave his wife his second best bed? Because that was a Tudor/Stuart tradition, and wives were always screwed out of the inheritance back then. Bear in mind that this was almost five hundred years before feminism, over four hundred years before Jane Austen, and people being screwed out of the inheritance still happens now. People coming up with reasons why Shakespeare gave Anne Hathaway his second best bed is like how people come up with reasons why Khan knew Chekhov in Star Trek II.

The rest is mistaking lack of evidence as evidence. There aren't any historical accounts of Shakespeare attending or acting in performances, so logically he never did...right? You have no proof it did happen, therefore it never happened...right? This is known as 'The Luna Lovegood Approach.'

Straight Outta Stratford

Someone once referred to the Looney Theory as Literary Creationism: the idea that something is so perfect it must have been created by a perfect being. Hamlet can't have been written by some guy; it had to have descended from Mount Olympus on a heavenly cloud. Some Grammar School boy from Stratford simply couldn't have penned Macbeth or King Lear. No mortal could contain such genius! His head would explode!

I despise this. We all know that Orson Scott Card is an asshole, George Orwell wasn't a saint, Mozart had a serious drinking problem, Ernst Hemingway loved nothing better than shooting tigers, and part of the reason why Franz Kafka's work is so brilliant is because he was an irritable, awkward little man.

Most of all, I despise the argument that Shakespeare couldn't have written such good works because he didn't go to university. Of course, if Shakespeare had gone to university, he might have known that there are no tigers in France, Verona doesn't have a dock, and the Egyptians didn't have clocks. Also; Charles Dickens didn't go to university either, and no-one thinks that A Tale Of Two Cities was actually written by Queen Victoria's bastard. In fact, the list of great writers who didn't have to pay off student loans (the gits) is probably longer than the list of great writers who did pay off student loans.

It's extremely likely that Shakespeare simply researched things like falconry and Venice without visiting or participating in them; hence his shaky knowledge. Obviously there was no Google in the 1500's, so Shakespeare relied on libraries, friends, and his own imagination. Scotland and Venice may as well be Tamriel and Westeros. When he says "In fair Verona," he means "In bongo bongo land." This is why so many directors these days re-set Shakespeare's work elsewhere; because his work isn't tied to these locations at all. The Tempest works so well because it's setting is just 'a desolate island.' So long as you're able to convery roughly what a location looks like and what age of civilisation it's at then you don't need to set a story in a precise geographic location.

Several times. I've written stories set in Ancient Africa. I've never been to Africa. I've done heavy research on Africa, but I don't live there. I have probably got several things wrong, but I can cower behind artistic lisence. None of my stories open with: "A long time ago, in tribal Africa..." because I'm not trying to write about the struggles of tribal Africa. I'm reducing humanity to a primitive point in civilisation so I can dissect it's inherent problems. It's not about Africa, it's about humanity. Who cares that I confuse Kenyan and Zimbabwe culture?

So Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Sorry, but your really stupid theory is just that: stupid.

Image Sources: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Thomas_Looney
http://blog.dianarodriguezwallach.com/2009/06/im-poet-and-i-didnt-know-it-my-haiku.html
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3owbto