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I have seen so many books with titles like: "So-and-So, the Man Who Wrote Shakespeare", "Was Shakespeare a Woman?", and "The Truth Behind Shakespeare". I have head many people say that Marlowe wrote the plays acredited to Shakespeare. Each theory has reasons and logic behind (well, most do anyway), yet they are all so different.

I thought it would be an interesting question to pose. Who do you think wrote Shakespeares plays?

I myself believe that Shakespeare wrote the plays acredited to him, but I can understand why others would believe otherwise. Frankly, I'm just glad that the plays were written, whoever did the writting.

I heard that as well, rather disappointing. I was going to do a research paper on the topic but couldn't find enough information. Are there any books you'd reccomend bardlover?

The idea is that if he was not extensively schooled/of noble birth he would not know of the happenings of noble or know of so many world events and things of that nature, not that the quality of his writing would inherently suffer.

There are many. Shakespeare: The Evidence is a good Stratfordian read, and one of my favorite books about Shakespeare in general. Ian Wilson does a great job of compiling evidence. Shakespeare: The Mystery is anti-Stratfordian about Queen Elizabeth or Marlowe one, I can't remember which. Anyway, it's by Sweet. Who were Shakespeare: the Ultimate Who-dun-it is a Marlovian book by Ron Allen. The internet has many sites, for example www.shakespeare-oxford.com or org one. Oxfordians are very big on publishing works via the internet. Also, the Oxfordians resently relased a book called Shakespeare Revealed or something of the sort. The Truth Will Out is about the Candidacy of Sir Henry Neville.

If you decide to do some research, I could email you my works cited list. Just pm me about it.

Sorry. I thought I had quoted you, but being a mod, I accidently edited your post. stressed

I read The Eyre Affair, which had this question as one of the threads through the storyline.
I concluded that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare plays, though he did undoubtedly steal some other peoples plays.
I like the conclusion they reach in The Eyre Affair too, but I won't give it away for anyone who wants to read the book

Also, there is the fact that he uses imagery of a place exactly as it was. Shakespeare never left his city. It's been agrued that it's too much detail to be a coincidence. bardlover, could I see one of those essays. I would really like to read one. ^_^

I read an article recently about this and I have kind of changed my mind and decided it was not the Statford Shakespeare who worte the play.

The main reason is this, Statford Shakespeare's eleven year old son tragically died, but not one of the poems talks about the loss of a child.

Though who did actually write the plays? Who knows. I'm going for the more than one person option.

i think that this whole notion of "who REALLY wrote shakespeare's plays" is alot of twaddle. as the Bard himself wrote, " it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." there is, in fact, a great deal of info available concerning shakespeare's life, as well as when, where, and how he wrote. didn't the extremely jealous robert greene, a contemporary of the Bard's (and a well-known playwright in his day), refer to him as "this upstart crow, who beautifies himself with our feathers"? the idea that an actor, of all things, could not possibly compose plays of such lyrical beauty, is a direct result of class predjudice. the individuals who have insinuated over the centuries that someone else MUST have written shakespeare's plays did so because they simply could not conceive that anyone born into the merchant class w/ only a few years of formal education could have written w/ such sublime intelligence or creativity. thus, it had to have been an aristocrat like sir philip sydney or a member of the intelligencia, like sir francis bacon. most scholars and critics these days lend little or no credence to such theories. as for the books that are STILL being written on the subject--most people love a mystery, even a prefabricated one. whether or not these authors believe what they're writing, they know there's profit to be had from it. my apologies for rambling but this topic brings to mind many colorful (and heated) debates we had in my college shakespeare courses on the very same subject! redface