William Shakespeare Research Paper

Within his lifetime of 52 years, William Shakespeare composed 37 plays 154 sonnets, a rather large number for works so critically acclaimed. Because of this, some people have become skeptical, and they don’t believe that Shakespeare is credible for all of his works. They have come to the conclusion that someone else wrote a portion of those works because there is little proof that he actually wrote them. However, although many conspiracy theories have surfaced about whether or not William Shakespeare wrote his own plays and sonnets, it should be believed that he did, in fact, write all of them because of his extensive interest in grammar and literature, his work had his name and only his name on them, and no one had a doubt that Shakespeare

He did not attend university, however he loved to read books, and many of his stories were inspired by the plots of others that he read. Many skeptics believe that a fairly poor person such as Shakespeare couldn’t be capable of writing such complicated and genius works. However, many other famous authors grew up poor and without an extensive education such as Ben Johnson, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe. Patrick Cheney, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, explains that, “The case for the Earl of Oxford is about the belief of class-conscious gentlemen that only an aristocrat could produce great works of literature” (Stevenson). Even though Shakespeare didn’t receive an extensive education, he studied grammar and read many books to become almost self-taught. He even invented 3,000 words in the English language because the current words didn’t express the exact emotions that he wanted to implement in his works

Before that, no one questioned the topic, and Shakespeare was undoubtedly the greatest writer of all time. James Shapiro, author of Contested Will, explains that, “No one before 1840 or 1850 could have thought that Shakespeare hadn’t written the plays long attributed to him” (Hechinger). Shapiro looked at a manuscript by a man named James Wilmot dating back to 1785 which supposedly suggested that somebody came up with the theory that Shakespeare was not the true author. He looked at it for a bit and came to the conclusion that it was a forgery, only made to gain attention and make up a new theory. The reason that skeptics have made these theories is to bring major attention to the topic and attract many people. They know that by introducing something new to the public, it will gain popularity and spread quickly. It’s the modernity of today