William Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare

[Mr.Miskatonic]

@RickJay

I cannot believe this is still a debate but apparently so. In the trivia thread septimus writes:
“Oxford authorship” - the claim that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare - is ridiculous crankery that was invented centuries after Shakespeare died by a guy named Thomas Looney. de Vere died before all Shakespeare’s works were written (there are a bunch of silly excuses for this extremely inconvenient fact in Oxfordian theory) and essentially Looney’s entire hypothesis rests on the notion that a commoner couldn’t have written really brilliant plays.

Ah yes: “But how can Falcon if not posh!”

Whoever wrote Shakespeare also though France had lions and Bohemia had a coastline.

Kyle Kallgren has the best takedown of this IMHO:

Anonymous - Shakespeare Month the Eighth

The deeper you go into any anti-stratfordian arguement the dumber it gets. It some versions they count the number of times a word appeared on a page - never mind how different editions would condense or contract page amounts to fit their needs.

It’s Lord Byron’s fault, really. After him everyone needed their poets to be noble and tormented. Some middle class kid wasn’t gonna cut it.