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William Shakespeare made it big in the theaters of London, but how he achieved such fame is still a mystery. Because we know so little about the true history of William Shakespeare, many myths have arisen surrounding his life.
The most enduring myth is that Shakespeare did not write the plays that bear his name. Instead, the myth goes, someone else wrote the plays, and this mysterious person wanted or needed to remain anonymous. No one can prove these claims, and different people offer different candidates as the "real" William Shakespeare. Most of their arguments are similar, though:
- Shakespeare's education was limited, so he couldn't have commanded the English language so excellently. Someone with a better education must have written his plays.
- Shakespeare didn't widely travel, so he couldn't have written plays set in Egypt, Syracuse, or Italy.
- Shakespeare knew little of foreign languages, so he couldn't have written plays that contain Latin and French passages.
- The plays often depict intimate details of the lives of royalty — a world unknown to the commoner Shakespeare.
The most popular contenders for Shakespeare's throne are Francis Bacon; Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; and Christopher Marlowe — although the complete list of candidates is quite long, including such far-out suggestions as Queen Elizabeth and Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife. Take a quick look at some of the facts:
- The Earl of Oxford died in 1604, but some of Shakespeare's best plays, such as The Tempest, were written after that.
- Christopher Marlowe was also an excellent playwright, but he was killed in 1593, before Shakespeare wrote most of his plays. If you don't believe that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays, you won't accept Marlowe, either.
- That leaves Francis Bacon, a prolific writer. His style is different from Shakespeare's, and we have no reason to believe that he wrote any plays using "Shakespeare" as a pseudonym.
Consider some additional facts. We don't know all the details of Shakespeare's life, but it's indeed likely that he never visited Italy, the setting for many of his plays. Therefore, he never visited the landlocked city of Milan and never knew his mistake when, in The Tempest, he wrote Prospero's lines that describe how he and his daughter, Miranda, were kidnapped and taken to sea.
Milan is far from the sea, a major river, or anywhere a ship could land, but that didn't bother Shakespeare. He knew that the poetry of the moment was more important than getting the geographical details just right.
Shakespeare's plays are full of similar mistakes. These little slips don't affect the plays, and you probably won't even notice most of them, but they reveal an author who lacked a college education. In other words, they tell us that William Shakespeare, not Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays. A few people will never be convinced that William Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him. A few people believe that the Earth is flat, too.
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