Was Shakespeare a fraud? This question has ringed in the hearts of scholars for nearly 200 years. It was first introduced in the satirical The Errors of Modern Infidelity, written in 1848 by Samuel M. Schmucker. The question, obviously, wasn’t meant to be taken so seriously, but 169 years later, here I am writing this paper about the conspiracy equivalent of a European JFK assassination. The current beliefs go as following, Shakespeare had another author who was another current literary genius, the author that wrote Shakespeare’s claimed works didn’t want to be known, or Shakespeare was his own author. One of the most suggested suspected authors was philosopher Sir Francis Bacon. Eight years after Schmucker’s original manifesto, a girl named Delia Bacon made the claim, “Shakespeare's plays were written, in large part at least, by her namesake Francis Bacon.” However, “After an abortive attempt to dig up Shakespeare's grave, she suffered a complete breakdown; she was committed to a mental hospital and died in 1859.” His popularity dropped for a decent while until “By the mid-19th century he was attracting massive support. But, by the turn of the 20th century, though, Bacon's star as an …show more content…
The evidence for Shakespeare’s authorship is very small but is far greater than what any other theories have. As I have stated before, there is literally no evidence saying that anyone else was the author, but there is still a small amount people who believe that Shakespeare didn’t write his own works. “In the April 22, 2007 "Education Life" supplement to The New York Times, the results of a survey of 265 college and university teachers of Shakespeare indicated that 61% considered "the Shakespeare authorship question" "A theory without convincing evidence" and another 32% thought it "A waste of time and classroom distraction."' Given the prevalence of eccentricity among this population, one might argue that a combined