But whatShakespeare tells us of himself in his plays and sonnets, of his background, interest andcharacter is completely different from Shakespeare as he appears on the record.There are questions surrounding Shakespeare’s last will and testament. Shakespeare left a very detailed will down to listing pieces of furniture. Some ask whythere is no mention of leaving his plays to anyone. From my observation it was commonfor an acting company to own the dramas that it produced. Shakespeare like otherplaywrights of his time, had no plays to leave to his heirs. There is not convincing evidence that the Stratford man did not write the plays,but if he didn’t the most convincing substitute would have to be Ogburn’s choice.Despite 200 years of scholarly attempts to establish the Stratford man’scredentials, doubts of the author’s identity will not go away. The very abundance ofcandidates proposed in substitution for William Shakespeare of Stratford defines thedifficulties a growing number of people find in accepting his authorship.The question of the Shakespeare authorship came before a court of law for thefirst and only time in 1964 in England . Mr. Justice Wilberforce, the presiding Judge,found that the evidence in favor of the Stratford man “is quantitatively slight” and that“there is a number of difficulties in the way of the traditional ascription”.Towards the end of this research I had to ask myself does it matter who WilliamShakespeare was? The world should be grateful that his works carried on. Whatdifference could it possibly make to find out the man who wrote Romeo and Juliet wasnot named William Shakespeare. It obviously matters a great deal to those who considerhis works to be man’s highest achievement in literature. After all, academic careers havebeen built on the premise that the Stratford man wrote these plays. It seems to be amatter of elementary justice that th...
