What is the Shakespeare authorship problem?

The Shakespeare authorship problem is that any people do not believe that William Shakespeare actually wrote the Shakespearian plays, the support their views with substance evidence for all sides, so it is still uncertain who the real author of the plays is.

What literary, cultural, and political figures doubt that Shakespeare was the sole author of the work?

Samuel Clemens, (Mark Twain)

Charlie Chaplin

Malcolm X

Charles Dickens

Make a chronological history of the doubts that surround the authorship of the Shakespearean canon.

1769 -
Publication of The Life and Adventures of Common Sense, an anonymous allegory which describes a profligate Shakespeare casting "his Eye upon a common place Book, in which was contained, an Infinite Variety of Modes and Forms, to express all the different Sentiments of the human Mind, together with Rules for their Combinations and Connections upon every Subject or Occasion that might Occur in Dramatic Writing..."

1786 -
The Story of the Learned Pig , an anonymous allegory by an "Officer of the Royal Navy," in which The Pig describes himself as having variously been a greyhound, deer, bear and a human being (after taking possession of a body) who worked as horseholder at a playhouse where he met the "Immortal Shakespeare" who's he reports didn't "run his country for deer-stealing" and didn't father the various plays, Hamlet, Othello, As You Like It, The Tempest , and Midsummer's Night Dream. Instead the Pig confesses to be author.

1848 -
In The Romance of Yachting by Joseph C. Hart, a former American consul at Santa Cruz, provides Considerable anti-Stratfordian opinion. Favors Jonson as probable author of Shakespeare's plays.

1856 -
Bacon is proposed as author of Shakespeare's plays in Putnam's Monthly (January issue) which contained "Shakespeare and His Plays: An Inquiry Concerning Them" by Delia Bacon, an American bearing no family relationship to Francis Bacon.

1892 -
Our English Homer listed several writers as a group who were responsible for writing Shakespeare's works: Marlowe, Greene, Peele, Nashe, Lodge, Bacon and others.

1903 -
Henry James in a letter to Miss Violet Hunt says "I am 'a sort of' haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."

1915 -
The Derbyite theory, suggesting that William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby was the true author behind the Shakespeare name, was revived by Robert Fraser in The Silent Shakespeare.

1930 -
Canon Gerald Rendall, Gladstone professor of Greek at Liverpool's University College, publishes Shakespeare Sonnets and Edward de Vere --another book that influenced Sigmund Freud.

1955 -
Calvin Hoffman in his book, The Murder of the Man Who Was "Shakespeare", reawakened interest in the theory that Christopher Marlowe was author of Shakespeare's plays.

1987
The Moot Court Debate in Washington DC presided over by three sitting Justices of the US Supreme Court. Two of the three justices (Blackmun and Stevens), while voting for Shaksper of Stratford on narrow legal grounds, express their great interest in the issue and later express opinions that Edward de Vere may very well be the true Shakespeare.

Now do the same for the doubts surrounding the Stratfordian attribution.

-There is no reference during the lifetime of Shakespeare of Stratford (1564-1616) which either speaks of the author of the Shakespearean works as having come from Stratford or speaks of the Stratford man as being an author. (The first indication that the author of Shakespeare's plays came from Stratford appears, ambiguously, in the prefatory materials of the 1623 First Folio.)

-There is no mention in the documents of the time of a Shakespeare's, or a Shakespeare's, intimate acquaintance with the inner court circles as has been implied by such contemporaries as Ben Jonson, later seventeenth-century commentators such as John Ward, the author's dedications to the Earl of Southampton of two poems, and internal evidence from Shakespeare's works. In the Stratford man's will, noteworthy for its detailed disposition of household furniture, there is no mention of books, library, manuscripts, or of any literary interest. Indeed, the only theatrical connection there appears as an interlined bequest to three actors.

-In the Stratford man's will, noteworthy for its detailed disposition of household furniture, there is no mention of books, library, manuscripts, or of any literary interest. Indeed, the only theatrical connection there appears as an interlined bequest to three actors.

-There is no evidence that William Shakespeare had left Stratford for London before 1585 (with the birth of his twins). This 1585 date is providing a great difficulty as more commentators find earlier dates for the composition of certain plays and poems.

Consider the logic/illogic of each position and evaluate the effectiveness of each argument.

This brief non-technical guide organized informal fallacies into three categories: fallacies of ambiguity, presumption, and relevance.  The word “fallacy” may derive from that Latin word fallere, meaning “to deceive, to trip, to lead into error, to trick.”  The word may also derive from the Greek phelos, meaning “deceitful.”

Make a list of the six contenders for the authorship question. Then add to each as much significant evidence that is presented.

Christopher Marlowe-

Son of a village cobbler, Marlowe created a stir with his literary output while attending Cambridge as a scholarship student. The young writer, whose translations of Ovid were ordered publicly burned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, was the first to translate Ovid's Amores into English. He made the Ovidian cursus, which turns from amatory poetry to tragedy and epic, literally his own. His translation and adaptation into blank verse of Lucan's Pharsalia is one of the earliest English verses written in unrhymed iambic pentameter and has influenced poets from Milton to Wordsworth. While still a university student, Marlowe's play DoctorFaustus was produced in London, and shortly after he earned his M.A. and left Cambridge his play Tamburlaine the Great appeared on the London stage for an unprecedented 200 performances. 

Sir Francis Bacon-

"A man so rare in knowledge, of so many several kinds, endowed with the facility of expressing it all in so elegant, significant, so abundant and yet so choice and ravishing a way of words, of metaphors, of allusion, as perhaps the world has not seen since it was a world." So wrote Sir Tobie Matthew of Sir Francis Bacon. Bacon graduated with a degree in law from Cambridge and became, like his father before him, Lord Chancellor of England. Of the many works of this philosopher, essayist, translator and scholar, the best known are The Advancement of Learning and The New Atlantis. Bacon's essays on morals remained widely read well beyond his time.

Edward de Vere-

De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was patron of a number of writers, among them Gabriel Harvey who, in a 1578 address, declared: "...vidi tua plura Latina, Anglica plura exstant (I have seen your Latin things, and more English are extant) ... Francasque, Italasque Camænas et mores hominum multorum artesque forenses Plenius hausisti (of French and Italian muses, the manners of many peoples, their arts and laws you have drunk deeply)...." In 1589 George Puttenham, praising the nobles who wrote plays and masques for the court, wrote in The Arte of English Poesy: "...for tragedy, Lord Buckhurst and Master Edward Ferrys do deserve the highest, the Earl of Oxford and Master Edwards of Her Majesty's chapel for comedy and interlude." De Vere died in 1604.

William Stanley-

The 6th Earl of Derby, possessed the university education, extensive European travel, knowledge of foreign languages, involvement with the theatre and literature, and familiarity with life in court necessary for authorship of the canon. Two letters from the Jesuit spy George Fenner, both dated June 1599, stated that Derby was "busyed only in penning comedies for the commoun players". His elder brother, Ferdinando, formed an acting troupe which evolved into the renowned company The King's Men, known for its Shakespearean productions. According to many scholars, A Midsummer Nights Dream was written to be performed on the occasion of Derby's wedding, which took place in the palace in the presence of the Queen. Derby died in 1642.

Ben Johnson-
The same expressions and similar phrases can be found in the works of Ben Johnson. The list of contemporaries is extensive, and while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, there were no copyright laws during Elizabethan times to protect writers against “flattery.” Ben Jonson, after Shakespeare the most eminent writer for the Elizabethan stage, was born in 1573, and died in 1635. He was the founder of the so-called "Comedy of Humours," and throughout the reign of James I was the dominating personality in English letters. A large number of the younger writers were proud to confess themselves his "sons." Besides dramas of a variety of kinds, Jonson wrote much lyrical poetry, some of it of the most exquisite quality. His chief prose work appears in his posthumously published "Explorata, Timber or Discoveries, made upon men and matter", a kind of commonplace book, in which he seems to have entered quotations and translations from his reading, as well as original observations of a miscellaneous character on men and books. The volume has little or no structure or arrangement, but is impressed everywhere with the stamp of his vigorous personality. The following passage on Bacon is notable as a personal estimate of this giant by the man who, perhaps, approached him in the field of intellect more closely than any other contemporary.
Thomas Middleton-
English dramatist, son of William Middleton, was born about 1570, probably in London. There is no proof that he studied at either university, but he may be safely identified with one of the Thomas Middletons entered at Grays Inn in 1593 and 1596 respectively. , He began to write for the stage with The Old Law, in the original draft of which, if it dates from 1599 as is generally supposed, he was certainly not associated with William Rowley and Philip Massinger, although their names appear on the title-page of 1656. By 1602 he had become one of Philip Henslowes established playwrights. The pages of Henslowes Diary contain notes of plays in which he had a hand, and in the year 1607-1608 he produced no less than six comedies of London life, which he knew as accurately as Dekker and was content to paint in more realistic colors. In 1613 he devised the pageant for the installation of the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Middleton, and in the same year wrote an entertainment for the opening of the New River in honor of another Middleton. From these facts it may be reasonably inferred that he had influential connections. He was frequently employed to celebrate civic occasions, and in 1620 he was made city chronologer, performing the duties of his position with exactness tifi his death. The Witch, first printed in 1778 from a unique MS., now in the Bodleian, has aroused much controversy as to whether Shakespeare borrowed from Middleton or vice versa.