Study the text to find out about a controversy surrounding William Shakespeare's works.

Anna Faszcza Did Shakespeare Really Write Shakespeare?

“To be or not to be, that is a question” and “All the world's a stage….” Sounds familiar? Shakespeare’s words are so frequently used in everyday language that some of us probably don't realise that we quotequote (verb)quote from a classic. Shakespeare was the author of about 38 playsplays [play]plays and 154 sonnetssonnets [sonnet]sonnets. It is said that he is the second most eagerly quoted English writer and the world’s pre‑eminent dramatistpre‑eminent dramatistpre‑eminent dramatist of a nickname Bard of Avon with an IQ of 210.

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We don't know much about Shakespeare’s private life. Scientists suggest that he was born, brought up, and buried in Stratford‑upon‑Avon as the son of John Shakespeare, a glovergloverglover and the town officialtown officialtown official. At the age of 18 he got married to Anne Hathaway who gave birth to three of their children. Soon after getting married, he disappeared for seven years between 1585‑1592, known as the “lost years.” Nobody knew what he was doing during this period because there were no documents about his education and private life.

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The lack of Shakespeare’s biographical information has been a reason to questionquestion (verb)question his identity and consequently his authorshipauthorshipauthorship. No letters or signed manuscriptsmanuscripts [manuscript]manuscripts survived. Only six examples of his signature remained today, which are described as “an illiterate scrawlilliterate scrawlilliterate scrawl” by the sceptics. As a person with a rather humble backgroundhumble backgroundhumble background, his deep knowledge in the fields of the Elisabethan courtcourtcourt, law, politics, foreign countries, hunting, falconryfalconryfalconry, and history presented in his works might raise suspicionraise suspicionraise suspicion. His vocabulary rangevocabulary rangevocabulary range was astonishingly rich. Each and every single piece of his writing was thoroughly examined by experts who say that Shakespeare knew about 30 thousand words while the average language user knows about 12–20 thousand.

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Joseph Hart, an American writer, in his book The Romance of Yachting released in 1848, was the first to declare that William Shakespeare was not the true author of the works attributed to himattributed to him [attribute to sb]attributed to him. He argued that William’s plays involved a number of authors working on them. Hart’s book marked the beginning of the rapidly growing movement of anti‑Stratfordians who questioned Shakespeare’s authorship. They even suggested his being illiterate. But the most fishyfishyfishy thing for them was Shakespeare’s last will, written in an entirely unpoetic, mundanemundanemundane way, which they saw as evidence confirming they suspicions. In the middle of the 19th century, there were about 80 candidates put forward as true authors.

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The leading one was Sir Francis Bacon, an English scientist, lawyer, and philosopher of Cambridge education. He was a member of the Privy CouncilPrivy CouncilPrivy Council and Lord High Chancellor of EnglandLord High Chancellor of EnglandLord High Chancellor of England. The experts noticed that his life experiences were similar to the ones described in Shakespeare’s plays and their style of writing was also very much alike in some passagespassages [passage]passages. Baconian theory of Shakespeare authorship was rejected by legendary cryptographerscryptographers [cryptographer] cryptographers William and Elisabeth Friedman, whose studies proved that all the claims were false.

Another  “real” Shakespeare was Edward DeVere. Due to his knowledge of court life and frequent travels in France and Italy, common settings for Shakespeare’s plays, he was considered one of the most likely alternative candidates. Numerous affinitiesaffinities [affinity]affinities can be seen between his known writings and Shakespeare’s plays in terms of language, motifsmotifs [motif]motifs and rhetorical devicesrhetorical devices [rhetorical device]rhetorical devices. There is one fact, though, that excludes DeVere. He died in 1604, and 12 of Shakespeare’s plays had not been written by then.

The final candidate is Christopher Marlowe, a well‑known playwrightplaywrightplaywright, of almost the exact age as Shakespeare (2 months apart). People thought he was a spy for the British government. He was charged with rebellious atheism, and arranged his fake death to avoid the execution. He went underground and continued writing his famous plays under a pseudonym. Only 13 days after his reported death, there was the first mention of Shakespeare.

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Is there any way to figure out if Shakespeare was genuinely Shakespeare indeed? Linguists have been examining syntaxsyntaxsyntax, grammar, semanticssemanticssemantics, and vocabulary, and comparing pieces of writing from other writers. In the late 1800s, a Polish philosopher Wincenty Lutosławski formalised a method called stylometrystylometrystylometry, which recognised each writer’s style by measuring the average sentence length and the specific arrangement of words.

The problem with the authenticity of Shakespeare’s works results from one thing: there is no surviving evidence if Shakespeare ever received any formal education. Most scholarsscholars [scholar]scholars dismiss all theories based on historical and biographical evidence. The stylometristsstylometrists [stylometrist]stylometrists proved that Shakespeare is… Shakespeare, indeed. The studies, however, point to some cooperation, e.g. sometimes William might have worked together with Christopher Marlowe. It turns out that stylometry can help solve the problem of authorship and determine when the work was written and what makes it structurally distinctdistinctdistinct. And to prove that, after all, the Bard is the Bard.

1 Źródło: Anna Faszcza, licencja: CC BY-SA 3.0.