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The most dramatic fact may be that 'William Shakespeare' didn't write William Shakespeare's plays!

1. William Shakespeare's father could not read or write, nor could Shakespeare's children.

2. The few signature's of Shakespeare's that remain show a very poor scrawl. Due to the arbritrary nature of phonetic spelling back then his name is spelt as Shakspere , Shaxpur, Shakpr, and Shagspere (as seen in the Marriage Bond of 1582) Shakspere's father is entered on the register of Stratford, on September 4th, 1568, being elected High Bailiff as "Mr. John Shakysper."

3. William Shakespeare was known in Stratford as a businessman, not a writer.

4.There are no manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays in the man's own handwriting--there are lots from other writers of the time.

5. He left no manuscripts in his will and no copies of his plays are mentioned as being in his house.

6. A monument put in Stratford church 15 years after he died show his hands resting on a sack (a sign of a tradesman) not a pen.

7. There is no evidence, apart from the name, to link the Stratford actor/businessman with the playwright.

8. The majority of the plays were published as quarto pamphlets, and in the first instance anonymously. Some, after the first or second edtions, bore the name "William Shakespeare,"-- and on by far the larger number, down to the last edition, that name is printed with a hyphen--"William Shake-speare," which could only have been pronounced at that time, as to suggest the shaking or brandishing of a spear. The name "Shake-speare" did convey the idea of Wisdom attacking Ignorance, and that it was not necessarily the name of any living person.
Ben Jonson's verses prefixed in the 1623 First Folio of the plays:

" In each of which he seems to shake a lance
As brandished at the eye of ignorance."

9. By the year 1623, seven years after the Stratford man's death , many of the plays were revised and some new plays came into existence for the first time.

Since 1850, people have doubted that the Shakespeare plays were written by William Shaxper of Stratford upon Avon. Many books were written through the 19th century, most of which pointed to Francis Bacon as the true author. Academicians, however, refused to yield over the years, and the Birthplace Trust at Stratford has failed to address the considerable evidence which continues to accumulate in Bacon's favor. Objective history demands credit where it is due.

"He is an ill discoverer who thinks there is no land when he can see nothing but sea." -- Francis Bacon

See : 99 Questions about William Shakespeare