“John Shakespeare”?
Wow. That’s actually the punchline of a joke I might make.
“Oh yeah, did you hear they discovered the true identity of Shakespeare?”
“Do tell. Who was it?”
“His name was… John Shakespeare”
(groans)
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I loved his play, While the Horologe Tick’d.
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Bill Bryson has a nice chapter on Shakespeare’s identity in his small biography, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. There are gaps in what we know about Shakespeare, but compared to other authors and historical figures of the time, we know significantly more. I think, in the absence of information, we speculate to fill in the gaps. It’s fun, but it doesn’t make it so.
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“Christopher” Marlowe was always known as Kit. Just saying.
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Chick lit, to be precise.
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The problem with this is that the “real Shakespeare”, whoever that is, may not have left any writing under their own name, so what would we compare it to?
The evidence put forth for Bassano is pretty compelling until we get to the comparison with her known book of poetry. Could it be she was talented enough to write in more than one style?
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Wasn’t that the plot of:
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And the Gospel of John was written just by some dude named John … not that John.
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Sure, we could say that, but any other potential contender could make the same claim, without any evidence that this was actually the case.
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Ah, yes, when the protaganists Francis and Joseph met first with Nancie Drieu.
The left knee of one person, the right elbow of another, brain of a widow and the heart of a plucky street urchin and they all come together like Voltron when it’s time to write a play?
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As long as we are being farfetched, why couldn’t Shakespeare literally be Voltron?
Although, I will be the first to admit, it’d be funnier if it was the Power Rangers.
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Timely.
Shakesperson could also bi-locate.
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So, Red Dwarf was right?
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Why are there rarely such conspiracy theories about George Peele or John Lyly? (There are some weird theories about Christopher Marlowe, at least. One of them is that he was secretly Shakespeare all along!)
One of my professors in graduate school used to say “Were the plays we attribute to Shakespeare written by him? No. They were written by a completely different author with the same name.”
Oooh, how about this? John Lyly really wrote the Battle of Alcazar, but Wm. Shakespeare really wrote Euphues, while Christopher Marlowe really wrote Hamlet, because George Peele was really none other then . . . William Shakespeare!
Nah. Extraordinary claims just require conspiracy theory wharrrr-garbling. Proof is for Demoncraps and libturds just like science and other un-Merkin Satanic Commienism
