To Be or Not To Be the Bard

The Shop
Nov 5, 2017
2 min read

A brilliant linguist, poet and author, often referred to as the Bard - the man who gave us "all that glitters is not gold" and "what's in a name" has been celebrated for his literary accolades for centuries.

William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom in 1564 is widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language and though he left behind dozens of plays and over 150 sonnets - to this day very little is known about this famous figure that shaped the English language as we know it.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Before we get started, on the mystery surrounding the Bard, here are a few facts you may not have known:

1. There are more than 80 recorded spelling variations for Shakespeare's name, from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.

2. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Shakespeare wrote about one-tenth of the most quotable quotations ever written or spoken in English

3. In 1608, Shakespeare's company The King's Men opened the Blackfriar's Theatre, the template on which all later indoor theaters are based.

4.Almost nothing is known about when William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets were written, to whom they were addressed, or whether they are assembled in the correct order.

5. Shakespeare's works contain first-ever recordings of 2,035 English words, including critical, frugal, excellent and barefaced.

"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."

There is truly so little known about who the real Shakespeare actually was that many conspiracy theories have emerged over the years. Most of these theories surrounding the authorship of his plays.

The first conspiracy came out in 1848 when the author J C Hart claimed that these works were in fact written by more than one person, a claim that was later supported by Delia Bacon in 1856 who published an article that suggested a group of writers, supervised by Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh were responsible for these literary masterpieces.

Eventually several names were put forward as " the real Shakespeare" these include:

Roger Manners