out-there-on-the-maroon:

gehayi:

ribstongrowback:

an-android-in-a-tutu:

halleregina:

William Shakespeare was a bisexual kid from a town a hundred miles outside London with the equivalent of a high school education who knocked up a 26-year-old out of wedlock when he was 18 and he wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets that changed the English language and the nature of Western drama and theater and if that isn’t an argument against elitism and a culture of constant perfectionism I don’t know what is

probably why people spend so much time trying to prove he didnt write his own plays

Spoilers: it really is thoguh.

He had a public education, and the UK is an elitist snobbbish shitshow with 0 social ladders.

So they’re all like

“Kit Marlowe, of course!”

Actually, the first person who openly questioned Shakespeare’s authorship in writing was Joseph C. Hart in 1848… and he was an AMERICAN writer. Also, he believed that Ben Jonson, not Kit Marlowe, wrote most of Shakespeare.

Delia Bacon

(February 2, 1811 – September 2, 1859) was another American who was an Anti-Stratfordian. She thought that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a collection of social reformers, including Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.

Mark Twain was an ardent fan of the Francis Bacon theory.

Anti-Stratfordianism is not and never has been a solely British phenomenon. 

However, you’re also right about it being tied to perceptions about wealth and social class. J. Thomas Looney (his name is pronounced “Lone-y”; to quote Kyle Kallgren, “I’m disappointed, too”), the guy who originated the theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare, had some weird political ideas wrapped up in feudalism and cultural elites.

Don’t get me started on this garbage but yeah, currently the popular theory is that frequently bankrupt, “that servant ran into my knife,” rake Edward de Vere totally wrote Shakespeare’s plays because Noble Blood, which Shakespeare (a middle class rando) didn’t have. And that’s the most important thing to some people: Noble Blood.

I’ve done the research. I wrote a paper on it to graduate. Every single “argument” and piece of “proof” the anti-Stratfordians hold up is rooted in classism, misunderstanding of historical facts, and outright lies. It’s disgusting and annoying. Do not pay them any attention, they are not worth it.

Shakespeare in his day was considered pop entertainment for the masses, not highbrow elitist “art” as his work is sometimes revered today. His plays are full of blood and dick jokes, I love his work but let’s be real here, we revere him now but back in the day he was making summer blockbusters and teen sex comedies. In the plays, Shakespeare makes mistakes about land masses in continental Europe which a “highly educated” man like de Vere would never have made. His uses of (sparing, often grammatically inaccurate) French in his plays is hardly surprising for a man who lived in the fucking French Quarter of London for years and does not “prove” he was a noble man who was fluent in French at all. I could go on.