10 Reasons Why Historians Believe Shakespeare Had a Ghostwriter… and 10 Clues That Suggest He Probably Didn’t

Not a single page of any Shakespeare play was written in his own hand, which is unusual for an author of his stature and prolific output. The complete absence of drafts, correspondence regarding the plays, or annotated copies has always been difficult for defenders of the traditional attribution to explain.

Shakespeare attended a grammar school in Stratford but did not pursue university studies; yet his plays draw on French, Italian, and classical Greek sources that would have required either extensive self-study or access to someone who possessed that knowledge. The depth of his knowledge of law, courtly manners, and diplomacy has led some scholars to believe that it exceeded what a grammar school student from a provincial town could reasonably have acquired.

When Shakespeare died in 1616, his will was detailed enough to mention his second-best bed, but made no mention of books, manuscripts, or any other literary possessions. For a man who is said to have written thirty-seven plays and more than one hundred fifty sonnets, the absence of any reference to a written legacy has always seemed strange.

For someone who was supposed to be London’s most famous playwright, Shakespeare left surprisingly few traces in the personal writings of his contemporaries. The kind of correspondence—letters of admiration or literary gossip—that surrounded other writers of the time is largely absent from the archives concerning him.

The monument erected in Shakespeare’s honor at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford appears to have been altered after his death, and early drawings show a figure holding a bag rather than a quill. Some scholars suggest that this literary image may have been added later to what was originally a more modest memorial.

Francis Bacon was a lawyer, philosopher, and statesman who possessed precisely the kind of education, connections at court, and breadth of knowledge that these plays seem to require. Since the nineteenth century, his admirers have argued that the legal precision of the plays and the in-depth knowledge of aristocratic life they reveal point instead to someone with Bacon’s background rather than Shakespeare’s.

Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, traveled extensively in Italy, studied law, moved in court circles, and had personal experiences that correspond, with suspicious precision, to several plays. The Oxfordian theory has garnered serious support from scholars, although it has never become the prevailing view among Shakespeare scholars.

The court life, protocols, and peculiarities of high society depicted in the plays are rendered with a familiarity that is difficult to explain in someone who has never moved in those circles. Skeptics believe that this level of detail is more consistent with someone who has lived that reality than with someone who has immersed themselves in it through research.

Collaborative writing and ghostwriting were common practices in Elizabethan theater, and publishing a work under someone else’s name was not particularly frowned upon. An aristocrat who wished to write plays but could not put his name on them for class-related reasons thus had a well-established mechanism for bringing them to the attention of the general public.

Shakespeare’s two daughters could neither read nor write, which is not impossible for a man of literary genius, but it does give one pause. This suggests a household not particularly focused on books or scholarship, which contrasts somewhat with the image of the most learned mind in the English language.

And here are 10 reasons why the man from Stratford probably did write them, after all.

Ben Jonson, who knew Shakespeare personally and had no particular reason to cover for an impostor, wrote admiringly about him, mentioning him by name after his death and identifying him as the author of the plays. Jonson was quick-witted and competitive enough that a posthumous revelation would have suited him, but he did not do so.

Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe Theatre and an active member of the King’s Men troupe; the accounting records that have survived clearly place him at the heart of the professional milieu from which these plays emerged. The attribution of these works was not an abstract literary claim, but an institutional assertion made by people who worked alongside him.

The argument that a resident of Stratford could not have written these plays is based in part on a common misconception linked to social class—namely, that genius requires a proper education and social background—a notion that history has repeatedly disproved. Marlowe came from a family of shoemakers, and no one seriously questions his authorship of these works.

The 1623 “First Folio,” compiled by colleagues who had worked with Shakespeare for years, unequivocally identifies him as the author. If there had been a secret to protect, those best positioned to know it were precisely the people who produced this work.

It is difficult to view these sonnets as the work of a ghostwriter tasked with composing texts intended to serve as an emotional biography of another person, especially since several of them contain details that align with what we know about Shakespeare’s actual life. Ghostwriters, in fact, tend not to include such specific details.

Every proposed alternative author faces a chronological problem: either he died before the plays written after his time, or his biography does not fit as perfectly as the theory requires. Oxford died in 1604, which means he could not have written The Tempest, generally dated to 1610 or 1611.

Scholars now believe that Shakespeare collaborated on the writing of several plays, and that the Elizabethan theater was a truly collaborative environment, where multiple authors worked on the same subject. The evidence of this collaboration suggests an ordinary playwright working in an ordinary work environment, rather than a solitary, unrecognized genius.

The Stratford archives reveal a prosperous Shakespeare—a landowner and respected figure in his region—a man who had been successful enough in London to enjoy a comfortable retirement. These are not the traces of a person whose professional life was nothing but fiction.

In two hundred years of organized skepticism, skeptics have never rallied behind a single alternative candidate. Bacon, Oxford, and Marlowe have all had ardent supporters, and none of these theories has settled the debate.

The missing manuscripts, the sparse correspondence, the will that makes no reference to any work: most of these gaps can be explained more by the fragility of the historical sources from this period than by any conspiracy. Demanding that Shakespeare meet archival standards that most of his contemporaries could not satisfy is not quite the argument it appears to be.