For centuries, people have wondered about the true identity of revered playwright and poet William Shakespeare. As the Shakespeare Authorship Question continues to garner interest around the globe, people of all professions, interests, and ages - from lawyers to school teachers - are questioning the authenticity of the William Shakespeare figure raised in Stratford upon Avon. For decades, researchers and scholars have tried various research methods and analyzed Shakespeare’s works countless times to find any secrets hidden within his words. Though the search has been extensive, they have found little information. However, with the evidence that we have, William Shakespeare from Stratford is undoubtedly the man who authored the works under his
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In Stewart’s article, he notes that what sets Shakespeare apart - what makes his different from de Vere or Francis Bacon - is his ability to write within a sheer range of subjects and vary his writing style. His works are still contemporary, unlike the works of the others that can be considered outdated by modern filmmakers today. Also, in The Shakespeare Authorship Question, the authors use modern techniques and work with computer analysis, graphs, and take a statistical approach to find a correlation between Shakespeare’s writing style and another candidate. The research experiment provided no definite results, and only a weak correlation between Shakespeare and Oxford de Vere that likely was inaccurate due to the large difference between Shakespeare and de Vere’s texts used. On page 246 of Bryson’s book, he notes that Shakespeare’s idiolect - the style of his writing - is like none other - further proving the findings of the authors in The Shakespeare Authorship Question. Shakespeare’s strange habit of using “also” not often, or the number of times he used “hath” as opposed to “has” corresponds to his idiolect and is unlike the idiolect of Francis Bacon’s or de Vere’s. Thus, Shakespeare’s writing style is different from any other person’s and could not have been the work of any other …show more content…
In Stewart’s article on page 6, he makes the point that there are no documents about Shakespeare as an author - only as an actor, and there are no records of his writing drafts or any evidence that he was even literate at all. However, in his time, Shakespeare wasn’t thought of as a genius. No one saved his manuscripts or a lock of his hair to sell on eBay. It wasn’t the culture back then, and it certainly didn’t help that Shakespeare was simply a middle-class playwright. After all, paper was reused and no one wrote letters or kept diaries - especially not the lower classes. Furthermore, playwrights were not respected. Though people enjoyed attending plays at the theater for entertainment, play texts were thought of as “trash.” They weren’t even included in Bodelein Library at Oxford because people disrespected plays. Another common misconception about Shakespeare is the suspicion that no one mourned for is death. Anti-Stratfordians see this fact as a way to prove that the commoner William Shakespeare was irrelevant, and so he could not have been the real Shakespeare. Someone else, higher class and mourned at their death, must have been the ingenious author people revered. The truth, however, as Stewart points out on page 7, was that Shakespeare simply wasn’t mourned for because he was just a
In Stewart’s article, he notes that what sets Shakespeare apart - what makes his different from de Vere or Francis Bacon - is his ability to write within a sheer range of subjects and vary his writing style. His works are still contemporary, unlike the works of the others that can be considered outdated by modern filmmakers today. Also, in The Shakespeare Authorship Question, the authors use modern techniques and work with computer analysis, graphs, and take a statistical approach to find a correlation between Shakespeare’s writing style and another candidate. The research experiment provided no definite results, and only a weak correlation between Shakespeare and Oxford de Vere that likely was inaccurate due to the large difference between Shakespeare and de Vere’s texts used. On page 246 of Bryson’s book, he notes that Shakespeare’s idiolect - the style of his writing - is like none other - further proving the findings of the authors in The Shakespeare Authorship Question. Shakespeare’s strange habit of using “also” not often, or the number of times he used “hath” as opposed to “has” corresponds to his idiolect and is unlike the idiolect of Francis Bacon’s or de Vere’s. Thus, Shakespeare’s writing style is different from any other person’s and could not have been the work of any other …show more content…
In Stewart’s article on page 6, he makes the point that there are no documents about Shakespeare as an author - only as an actor, and there are no records of his writing drafts or any evidence that he was even literate at all. However, in his time, Shakespeare wasn’t thought of as a genius. No one saved his manuscripts or a lock of his hair to sell on eBay. It wasn’t the culture back then, and it certainly didn’t help that Shakespeare was simply a middle-class playwright. After all, paper was reused and no one wrote letters or kept diaries - especially not the lower classes. Furthermore, playwrights were not respected. Though people enjoyed attending plays at the theater for entertainment, play texts were thought of as “trash.” They weren’t even included in Bodelein Library at Oxford because people disrespected plays. Another common misconception about Shakespeare is the suspicion that no one mourned for is death. Anti-Stratfordians see this fact as a way to prove that the commoner William Shakespeare was irrelevant, and so he could not have been the real Shakespeare. Someone else, higher class and mourned at their death, must have been the ingenious author people revered. The truth, however, as Stewart points out on page 7, was that Shakespeare simply wasn’t mourned for because he was just a