I am, unfortunately, a dedicated conspiracy theorist. No, not the braying, unintelligent kind like Alex Jones who has an unhinged and hidden agenda. More the Indiana Jones kind, seeking the truth no matter where it leads, but always relying on research, science, and creative methods of re-framing the facts in order to reveal truths that other people don’t see even when the answers are right in front of them.
An example of this is my firm belief that everything we think we know about the man known as William Shakespeare is based on an ages-old deception and is basically an unrevealed lie.
Of course, I am not the only literature-obsessed kook who has ever taken up this notion of someone else having written the great works of Shakespeare. I share the opinion with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Walt Whitman, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, Actor Derek Jacobi, and the great Mark Twain (also not the writer’s real name) .
It is very possible the standard details of the life of William Shakespeare have been fudged just a bit… or maybe quite a lot.
The biggest question that I can see when looking at the man we pretend is the actual author of the plays, is why doesn’t this man look like an author? As brought out in the video, the only example we have of the author’s own handwriting are six signatures from legal documents, three of which come from his last will and testament. And if the name is really William Shakespeare, then the Stratford man misspelled his own name. He wrote it as Shakspere or Shaksper. And the handwriting is atrocious, nothing like the carefully practice signature I sometimes put on my own handwritten work. How does that happen? I have seen signatures by many other authors, both famous and obscure, and nowhere do I see such careless script as what is allegedly the signature of the greatest and most acclaimed writer who ever lived.
The accepted life story of Shaksper doesn’t bear up under scrutiny either. In spite of being a wealthy businessman and mayor, his father can be seen to be provably illiterate, relying on associates and underlings to write the paperwork involved in his business and mayoral rule. There is no proof in the form of enrollment lists or written record of Shaksper having ever enrolled at or attended the school that supposedly taught Stratfordian youths to read and write. His wife and children and grandchildren were also provably illiterate. What other writer has such a lack of effect on his own family?
And Shaksper’s will details everything he owned and left to others at his death. Nowhere is there a mention of plays, manuscripts, poetry, or even books. The greatest author who ever lived owned no books at all? He was provably wealthy enough to buy books, and public libraries did not exist back then. How then did he demonstrate such knowledge of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, as well as the functioning of royal courts both in England and abroad? How did he get so many details right about places in Italy and Europe which he had never visited or seen with his own eyes? Something is definitely missing.
It is true that everything mentioned is merely circumstantial evidence. And yet, if all circumstantial evidence leans in only one direction, then isn’t the conclusion probably sound?
Do you not see the lines of the mask in this portrait?
But if Shaksper, the Stratford man, did not write the masterful literary works he has been given credit for, then who did? And why did he let the credit go to someone else?
Ah, I am betting you are beginning to smell a multi-part essay brewing. I mean to tell you who I think is under the mask, who it was I believe actually wrote under the pen name of William Shakespeare.
During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi. I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious clay-mation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.
Catch a Falling Star 
I Love to Laugh
“Mickey, why can’t you be more serious the way smart people are?”
“Well, now, my dear, I think I take humor very seriously.”
“How can you say that? You never seem to be serious for more than a few seconds in a row.”
“I can say it in a high, squeaky, falsetto voice so I sound like Mickey Mouse.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“I can also burp it… well, maybe not so much since I was in junior high.”
“I distinctly remember getting in trouble in Mrs. Mennenga’s third grade class in school for pantomiming pulling my beating heart out of my chest and accidentally dropping it on the floor. She lectured me about being more studious. But I made Alicia sitting in the row beside me laugh. It was all worth it. And the teacher was right. I don’t remember anything from the lesson on adding fractions we were supposed to be doing. But I remember that laugh. It is one precious piece of the golden treasure I put in the treasure chest of memories I keep stored in my heart.”
“I always listened to the words Groucho Marx was saying, even though he said them awfully fast and sneaky-like. I listened to the words. Other characters didn’t seem to listen to him. He didn’t seem to listen to them. Yet, how could he respond like he did if he really wasn’t listening? In his answers were always golden bits of wisdom. Other people laughed at his jokes when the laugh track told them to. I laughed when I understood the wisdom.”
“Laughing is a way of showing understanding. Laughing is a way of making yourself feel good. Laughing is good for your brain and your heart and your soul. So, I want to laugh more. I need to laugh more. I love to laugh.”
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Filed under autobiography, comedians, commentary, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wisdom
Tagged as Ed Wynn, Groucho Marx, Moe Howard