Enter the question “Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays?” in the Google search engine, and you’ll learn that there are “about 29,600” pages on the internet that include those words. Type the words “Does the Loch Ness Monster Exist?”, and you’ll learn there are only 3,010 pages that include those words. At the bottom of the very first of the 29,600 pages, there is a link to a web page that contains only this sentence: “Anyone who thinks that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare’s plays is a pedophilic (sic) ax-murderer with sooty warts lining the inside of his colon.”

(Go ahead, try this at home if you don’t believe me.) As always, the numbers (and that little polemic) tell the tale. In the arcane world of unsolved mysteries, the real Mr. Shakespeare’s identity is the hottest of stuff, something that excites fierce passion. Anyone who has heard of Shakespeare is likely to know that some people don’t believe he wrote the works that appear over his name.

Most people who know that are likely to be able to remember the name of at least one of those considered most likely to be the real author. Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, the worthy mentioned above, is certainly one of them. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, is another, Christopher Marlowe is a third, and William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby, is a distant fourth.

But few people, I imagine, are likely to know that some 80 Elizabethan authors in total have been suggested as likely candidates, or that there is, among experts, some feeling that William Shakespeare himself is less likely than many of the 80 to be the real Bard of Avon. Why? The common arguments are those given by Charlton Ogburn, Jr, author of one of the most widely-read books on the mystery, “The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality” ( EPM Communications, Inc., 2nd Edition, 1992)

In all the time he lived, Shakespeare never once claimed to be the author. None of his relatives, friends or neighbours in Stratford ever referred to him as a playwright, poet, or literary figure of any sort. His parents and wife were illiterate, as were his children. No manuscripts of his plays or poems have been found in his handwriting. Nor have any early drafts, nor unfinished manuscripts, nor notebooks, notes, or letters of any sort been found in his handwriting.

In fact, the only things in his handwriting are six signatures, all on legal documents, three of them on his will. His will, which includes a meticulously detailed list of his property, makes no mention of any plays, or poems, or other literary works; nor does it mention any other books that he owned — something you would expect, given the level of detail of the other listed belongings.

None of the other English playwrights or poets of the day (some of whom must have known the true author personally) took any notice of the death of William Shakespeare, nor did they make any mention of it at the time. During the years in which the plays were being presented, no one in London made any mention of personally meeting with their author, William Shakespeare, or seeing him in the flesh, or corresponding with him in any way whatever.

Although he was a successful businessman, Shakespeare was uneducated. He did not go to college, and in fact there is no real evidence that he attended the Stratford Grammar School. The plays, however, were obviously written by a well-educated man, with an excellent knowledge, among other things, of classical literature and mythology. The plays show that their author was well acquainted with the activities and attitudes of the aristocrats, was sympathetic to those attitudes, and was well acquainted with court life and intrigues. This suggests that the author was himself an aristocrat. However, Shakespeare was a commoner, and had no direct knowledge of court life.

So what makes people believe in Stanley, Bacon, de Vere and Marlowe? Let’s take the weakest case first. The case for William Stanley rests on two 1599 documents that describe him as writing plays and “taking delight in the players”. Pretty thin stuff, if you ask me. Sir Francis Bacon, though, is much more likely. He was an outstanding Elizabethan citizen, a lawyer and Parliamentarian who rose to be Attorney-General and Lord Chancellor in the government of the day.

He wrote books on philosophy, the best-known being “The Advancement of Learning”; on literature, the best-known being his “Essays”; and on the law, the best-known, perhaps, being “Maxims of the Law”. He is suggested as a possible candidate because of his erudition. But he wrote little poetry — and what he did write was stilted and unlike that attributed to Shakespeare. Above all, it is hard to imagine how, in such a busy life, he managed to find time to write the body of work attributed to Shakespeare.

Edward de Vere was a poet and a playwright of considerable talent, apparently, although none of his plays has survived (at least none written under his own name). Technically, there are a great many resemblances between de Vere and Shakespeare — the six-line pentameter stanzas in Shakespeare’s poem Venus and Adonis, for example, are common in de Vere’s poetry, but occur nowhere else in Elizabethan verse. And there are a great many personal parallels — Hamlet, for example, is said to have been so similar to de Vere’s own life that it could be considered autobiographical. I’m not sure that is an encouraging thought, but many people do believe de Vere is the outstanding candidate.

For me, though, Marlowe’s the man. He is said to have died at the age of 29, but during that short life published a great deal of work of the same order as Shakespeare’s — “Tamburlaine”, for example, “Tragedy of Dr. Faustus”, “The Jew of Malta” (sound familiar?) and “Edward II”. He translated Ovid’s “Amores”, and, if the Marlowe/Shakespeare theory is correct, might have written much of the King James Edition of the Holy Bible, the flower of English literature.

The thing about the other three is that no one gives a convincing reason why they would have written under a pseudonym, especially taking the name of someone living. The thing with Marlowe is that he had a good reason to publish under a pseudonym, and to take the name of a living man — he was supposed to be dead at the time he was doing the writing.

It works like this: apart from being a handsome, dashing writer, Marlowe was a highly-ranked secret agent in the service of Queen Elizabeth II, sent by her on missions to stir up trouble and dig for information. He was an atheist, who was wanted by the Church for a little session in the torture chambers, and, on a day in 1593, they were hot on his heels.

Just before they could lay hands on him, though, he was killed in a brawl in a bar by being stabbed in the eye. But things weren’t what they seemed. The bar was really a rooming house. The rooming house was really a kind of safe house, owned by a woman with connections to the Queen. It was on a river, which was really the Elizabethan equivalent of having a house near the airport. I wish I had the space to tell you more. But you can guess the rest — he didn’t die, it was a set-up, really, and he was smuggled out of the country to France the next day.

He had to use a pseudonym to continue to write, and continue to write he did, for years, while William Shakespeare went unwittingly on, grubbing for money in Stratford. Isn’t that a fine story? If you must have a theory, this is the one to have.

Those who want to learn more might try to see a documentary, made very recently by the Australian film maker Michael Rubbo, called “Much Ado About Something”. Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times gave it a very good review when it was shown in New York earlier this year, in which he described Rubbo as “an old-fashioned rabble-rouser” who “knows a good story when he finds it”.

Or read the book that inspired the film, “The Murder of the Man Who Was Shakespeare” (Grosset & Dunlap, 1960), by Calvin Hoffman. I must warn you, though, the book is not in our National Library, and is hard to find in the US.

gshorto[AT]ibl.bm.