Contents

Why This Site Was Created

The SAQ is a genuine historical mystery, but unsupportable arguments have damaged the legitimate case.

• This is a valid topic for academiaWhy the Shakespeare Authorship Question is a legitimate historical problem, and why the way it is currently argued makes that hard to see.
• ◆
  Advocates, please read thisA direct address. Before this site launched, I asked Marlovians, Baconians, and Oxfordians for feedback. Every one of them did the same thing. This page is about why that matters, and what a different approach would look like.
• ◆
  Stop Giving Free Ammunition to the EnemyAn in-house call for discipline. You are judged on your worst argument, not your best, so the six weak arguments every serious doubter should retire, why each one backfires, and the five things to do instead.

The Question

What the problem is, and why it is legitimate to ask.

• For the UnconvincedIf you think this is conspiracy territory, start here.
• The Documentary ProblemSeventy documents record Shakspere’s life; none records a literary career. Why that absence is anomalous, and what follows from it.
• ◆
  Is This Site Anti-Oxfordian?The charge that the site is anti-Oxford, met head-on by a site that ranks de Vere the strongest alternative candidate, corrects his marks in both directions, and holds him to the same evidence as everyone else.
• The Linking DocumentsThe company records name a Shakespeare; the Stratford records name a businessman. The five documents that join them, link by link.
• How Shakspere Got Connected to the WorksThe monument, Rowe’s biography, Garrick’s Jubilee, the Victorian birthplace: how the attribution was assembled before the evidence was systematically examined.
• ◆
  Did Heminges and Condell Edit Shakespeare?How the First Folio was actually made: what Heminges and Condell would have had to do, why calling them “editors” overstates it, and where the manuscripts, the rights, and the authority really lay.
• What Does Wikipedia Say?The most-read biography of Shakespeare, quoted fairly, and where each piece of its evidence for the author actually reaches: the name or the man, in his lifetime or after his death.
• What This Site ClaimsAnd what it does not. The site’s position, stated plainly, with its limits.
• ◆
  The Question in ContextOther attribution questions history has reopened and settled: the company this enquiry keeps.
• ◆
  A History of the QuestionWhere doubt came from, including the parts that embarrass it, told by the site rather than its critics.

Method & Standards

The evidence standard and the rules of reasoning before any candidate is examined.

• Logic & Evidentiary StandardsPrimary sources only; the symbols ✓ ◑ ~ defined; the reasoning errors this site polices on both sides.
• The Two FrameworksThe literary paper trail and the convergence analysis: what each measures and how candidates qualify for assessment. This is the site’s full methodological statement.
• ◆
  Three Kinds of AnalysisScientific, historical, and literary analysis: which one the question requires, and where each of the others falls short.
• The Literary Paper TrailTen categories of literary paper trail, every candidate scored.
• Convergence AnalysisIndependent evidence lines: convergence across methods, not accumulation within one.
• Convergence Lines Considered and Set AsideEvidence lines assessed for inclusion in the convergence framework and not adopted, and why.
• Why J.T. Looney’s Author Profile doesn’t settle the questionA criterion-by-criterion audit of the eighteen characteristics: sound, weak, spurious, or circular, and the assumptions Looney read into the works rather than out of them.
• Why no Author Profile will settle the questionThe profile argument examined across five candidates, and why the argument form is structurally incapable of settling the question, regardless of how many candidates it is applied to.
• ◆
  Why Not StylometricsWhy computational style-matching cannot settle this question, however confident its claims.
• ◆
  Cipher Arguments: A Quantitative TestPage-number digit ciphers and letter-sequence patterns tested against themselves: seven arguments from the “17 Solution” to the Sonnets dedication and positional-placement ciphers, with a 2×2 matrix that shows the method cannot distinguish candidates or texts.
• CorrespondencesWhat parallels between a life and the works can and cannot prove.
• The Denominator ProblemWhy probability requires a denominator: the four components of denominator blindness in correspondence arguments, and why ten thousand matches cannot accumulate into a probability.
• The Mirror ProblemThree structural errors that recur across all alternative candidacies, regardless of candidate, and why recognising them matters more than adjudicating between advocates one at a time.
• ◆
  Weak ArgumentsArguments this site declines to use, from any side, and why.
• On KnowingOutside the fields where the world checks us quickly, knowing is largely a feeling. The discipline that keeps a certainty tied to something that could correct it, with this question as the test case.
• The Self-CheckSeven questions for anyone already certain who wrote the works, whichever candidate that is, including Shakspere of Stratford.
• Reading Without a Reference PointThe companion to the Self-Check, for the reader with no specialist background: structural tests for judging a case you cannot fact-check yourself, whichever conclusion it reaches.
• One Text, Four LivesHow the Sonnets are read: the same lines taken as the autobiography of four different authors, de Vere, Marlowe, Bacon and Shakspere, so the reading settles nothing.
• One Play, Many LivesThe same reading turned on two famous plays, Hamlet and King Lear, showing the parallels shared between rival candidates, or dissolved by an ordinary source.
• Reading a Verdict into the PlaysAre the plays jingoistic, elitist, woman-hating? Why a moral verdict on the works is built by selection, the same error as a weak authorship case, and why it bears on neither the plays nor their author.
• The Case Against This Site40 objections, Stratfordian, sceptical, and advocate alike, stated in their strongest form and answered directly.
• Compare ToolAny two candidates, or the Sonnets’ requirements, side by side across all frameworks.

The Candidates

Fourteen assessed against the same evidence, listed alphabetically. No order of preference.

• All CandidatesThe field at a glance, and how candidates are selected.
• BaconThe original alternative candidate, reassessed on documents.
• BassanoEmilia Bassano Lanier: published poet, Dark Lady candidate, authorship candidate.
• BurghleyThe Polonius problem viewed from the other direction.
• Edward de VereThe leading alternative.
• ◆
  The Audley End AnnotationsOxford's hand in the Roman play source texts: Stritmatter's forensic attribution, what it proves, and what it doesn't.
• Elizabeth IThe royal candidacy, assessed rather than dismissed.
• FlorioTranslator of Montaigne, documented in the Southampton household.
• MarloweOfficially dead in 1593: the candidacy that depends on that word.
• Nashe & KydThe professional writers nearest the early canon.
• NevilleDiplomat and MP; the Tower years; the Northumberland manuscript.
• NorthTranslator of Plutarch, source of the Roman plays, as author rather than source.
• RutlandRoger Manners, the youngest candidate; the Danish connection.
• ShakspereThe man from Stratford, held to the same standard as everyone else.
• ◆
  Hand D and the Sir Thomas More ManuscriptThe one manuscript that would give Shakspere a literary paper trail, and why the handwriting case cannot be made. Diana Price’s forensic analysis.
• The Case for ShakspereThe orthodox attribution stated at its strongest: the connected chain, as its best advocates present it, with pointers to where this site engages each link.
• Mary Sidney HerbertThe Wilton House circle and one of the best-documented literary careers of the period.
• StanleyWilliam Stanley, Earl of Derby: initials W.S., a playwriting earl.

The Canon

What the works themselves put in evidence.

• The World of the CanonThe knowledge the plays display: law, music, courts, navigation, languages.
• ◆
  The SonnetsThe four structural puzzles: the dedication, the Fair Youth, the Will puns, the name-suppression sequence.
• ◆
  The Sonnets: Autobiography or Art?The prior question that governs all biographical readings: are the Sonnets a personal record or a literary exercise? Why getting this right matters for the authorship question.
• ◆
  The Narrative PoemsThe only works where the author addresses a named patron in the first person and signs as William Shakespeare. The Southampton dedications, Richard Field, and the Ovidian sources.
• ◆
  Dating the PlaysThe chronological framework of the canon: the Meres fixed point (1598), the Stationers’ Register, court performance records, and the late plays problem for any candidate who died before 1610.
• ◆
  The Ever-Living PoetEleven words from 1609 and what period usage says about whether the author was still alive.
• ◆
  The Ur-Hamlet QuestionThe Hamlet that existed before Hamlet was supposed to exist.
• English Influence in the CanonWhat the plays know of England, and which England they know.
• Italian Influence in the CanonThe topographical accuracy of the Italian plays (Roe), and who could have acquired it.
• French Influence in the CanonFrench sources, settings, and language in the plays.
• Greek Influence in the CanonGreek dramatic structures the canon echoes, available in print to almost no one.
• ◆
  Collaborative AuthorshipWhat shared hands in the plays do, and don't, imply for authorship.

Assessment

What the frameworks return: findings, not scores.

• What the Criteria-Based Evidence ReturnsThe null result, the Shakspere anomaly, the denominator argument, the Folio chain honestly stated, and where the evidence most strongly points.
• What Would Settle ItThe discoveries that would close this question, in either direction.
• ◆
  Of Course It Was Him/HerWhy every candidate’s case feels obvious to its advocates.

Reference

• LifespansWho was alive when: the chronological constraints in one view.
• For Advocates: A ProposalA standing offer to every candidate's advocates: bring a primary source, and the scores change.
• ErrataCorrections, scoring revisions, and updates to the site record.
• GlossaryThe site’s terms, including the Shakspere/Shakespeare distinction that governs every page.
• ◆
  BibliographyKey books on the authorship question, organised by candidate. Up to six per candidate; articles where books do not exist.
• ◆
  SourcesPrimary sources and scholarship cited on the site.
• On AIHow the site was built with an AI collaborator under human direction, how the work is disciplined, and why it can be checked rather than trusted.
• Using AI to Check AIWhy an AI asked to review this site tends to hand back the consensus it was trained on, and the one instruction that corrects for it.
• AboutWhy this site exists.