Well...yes, but not "know" in the Biblical sense, of course.
Ok, I'll be good...
Personally, I think some of Shakespeare's plays were group efforts.
Personally, I think some of Shakespeare’s plays were group efforts.
You may be right some say he stold a lot of other peoples works.
“Personally, I think some of Shakespeare’s plays were group efforts.”
Quite possible. But the primary author was very likely Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.
For some reason Professors of English tend to cling tenaciously to the idea that William Shagsper, the Stratford grain merchant and actor was the author of the plays. I can believe that a man could rise from humble origins to write great literature, but not that such a man could leave illiterate children behind him.
Shakespeare was definitely not an atheist. Else how could he possibly write:
“To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?”
De Vere had Catholic sympathies, but was above all loyal to his cousin the Protestant Queen.
interesting point about the “group efforts” — one can never really know, but logically your opinion makes sense. The actors would improvise and Shakespeare would probably take advice from friends (as do many authors and playwrights today). I think pretty definitely the final “editing” was Willy’s and of course the level of pure “go it alone” would vary from play to play