Is William Shakespeare's name really Shakespeare?

Answer 1

The arguments for a position that William Shakespeare the playwright and William Shakespeare from Stratford were not the same people fall into two categories. First is the argument that the kind of person we know Shakespeare from Stratford to have been could not have known or understood what the playwright seems to have known or understood. He was not university educated, so how could he have understood classical references? He was not a nobleman, so how could he have known about the court? He was not a woman, so how could he have understood women so well? What is going on here is that people admire Shakespeare because of his writing and then find themselves disappointed with the kind of person the Stratford Man was, and so make up the kind of person they wish he was. But in fact there are two words which completely explain how Shakespeare knew about all of these things: research and imagination.

The second group of anti-Stratfordian arguments are directed at weakening the arguments why Shakespeare really was the man from Stratford. They follow the logical fallacy that demonstration that we are not 100% sure of the truth of something is proof of its falsity. For example, if there is the remotest possibility that Queen Elizabeth is a reptilian alien in disguise, then that is proof positive that she is such an alien. Such arguments are the staple food of conspiracy theories, are obviously false, and become only more ridiculous as they pile unlikelihood on unlikelihood.

How do we know that Shakespeare the writer was from Stratford? There are a series of documents and other physical evidence which connects Shakespeare the actor, Shakespeare the writer and Shakespeare the man from Stratford. The Stratford man left money to the actor's friends. A coat of arms was given to the actor which appears on the Stratford monument. After the actor joined a theatre company, from then on that was the only company to perform the writer's plays. When the actor's company performed before the king, the writer's name is the same as the player's name. When the writer's plays are published, he is described as being from Stratford. The monument erected to the Stratford Man describes him as a writer.

All of the documentary evidence we have is consistent with this conclusion. There is no evidence whatsoever that Shakespeare the writer was anyone other than the man from Stratford.

Answer 2

Antistratfordians claim that this William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was not the author of the plays and poems that bear his name, but actually the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship is abundant and wide-ranging for the era in which he lived, much more abundant than the comparable evidence for most other contemporary playwrights. This evidence falls into several different categories, all mutually reinforcing. A strong, tight web of evidence shows that a real person named William Shakespeare wrote the poems and plays attributed to him; that a real person named William Shakespeare was an actor in the company that produced the plays attributed to him; that the actor was the same William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon; that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was part-owner of the Globe Theater, where his acting company produced the plays attributed to him; and that those who knew the writer of the plays and poems knew that he was William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. It's true that no one single document states categorically that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote Hamlet and King Lear, but then no such document exists for any other playwright of the time either. The evidence is cumulative and interconnected, and taken as a whole it leaves no doubt that a single man was actor, author, and Stratford property owner.

In 1593, the narrative poem Venus and Adonis was published by Stratford native Richard Field, with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton signed "William Shakespeare." This dedication refers to the author's "unpolisht lines" and contains the typically fawning language of a commoner addressing a nobleman for patronage. It is manifestly not the work of one nobleman addressing another, as Oxfordians believe. The following year, The Rape of Lucrece was published, also with a dedication to Southampton signed by William Shakespeare. Both poems went through many editions over the next half century, all with the same dedications signed by William Shakespeare.

Some time before 1623, a monument was erected to William Shakespeare in Stratford, depicting him as a writer. Antistratfordians desperately try to discredit this evidence by any means possible, but their efforts are misguided and futile. From the 1620s on, the monument was consistently seen as representing William Shakespeare, the famous poet.

In the First Folio, John Heminges and Henry Condell said they published the Folio "onely to keepe the memory of so worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive, as was our Shakespeare, by humble offer of his playes." Heminges and Condell had been fellow actors with William Shakespeare in the King's Men for many years, and had been remembered in his will.

Answer 3

Because William's handwriting was so bad his name could be:

Shakespeare

Shapeare

Shackspeare

Shaxpeare