This essay argues that overlapping rare and esoteric source material shared between Hamlet and other Shakespeare plays indicates a high probability that the author of the so-called Ur-Hamlet was the same man who wrote Much Ado About Nothing, Richard II, Henry V.1 And conversely, that it is improbable that some other writer – not Shakespeare – used the same rare source material to construct Ur-Hamlet randomly, independent of these other iconic Shakespeare plays.

The History of the Ur-Hamlet

In an essay published in 1778, the Irish barrister Edmond Malone compiled what is still a widely accepted chronology of the Shakespeare plays.2 He recognized that “some play on the story of Hamlet had been exhibited before the year 1589” – 1589 being the year that he believed the actor/playwright Shakespeare had produced his first play. To reconcile this apparent anomaly, Malone wrote that he was “inclined to think that it was not Shakespeare’s drama, but an elder performance, on which, with the aid of the old prose History of Hamlet, his tragedy was formed.”3

Malone speculated that “[P]erhaps the original Hamlet was written by Thomas Kyd.” His evidence regarding Kyd was threefold: (1) Kyd wrote at least one other play anonymously; (2) Kyd had used a source translated from French for another play; and (3) in Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, Kyd presented a play “within a play.”4 Nearly 250 years later, Malone’s speculation on an Ur-Hamlet, with possible attribution to Thomas Kyd as its author, remains the pervasive view.5

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Here are a few web sites to learn more (all emphases are mine); (substitute the word “authorship” for “crime”):

In the “Instructions to the Jury” on the Thomson Reuters Westlaw web site, it states:

The evidence that has been presented to you may be either direct or circumstantial. The term “direct evidence” refers to evidence that is given by a witness who has directly perceived something at issue in this case. The term “circumstantial evidence” refers to evidence from which, based on your common sense and experience, you may reasonably infer something that is at issue in this case. The law does not distinguish between direct and circumstantial evidence in terms of their weight or value in finding the facts. One is not necessarily more or less valuable than the other.

The web site of the Wilson PC Personal Injury Attorneys state:

Circumstantial evidence, in legal parlance, refers to a type of evidence that relies on inference to connect it to a conclusion of fact. Unlike direct evidence, which directly links a person to a crime [authorship], circumstantial evidence indirectly links them through a series of facts or circumstances surrounding the case.

Despite being indirect, circumstantial evidence plays a pivotal role in legal cases. It can often provide a more comprehensive picture of the events leading up to a crime [authorship], supplementing or even replacing direct evidence in some cases. . . . It can often be the deciding factor in a case, tipping the scales of justice in one direction or another.

While circumstantial evidence may seem less powerful than direct evidence, it can often be more reliable. Direct evidence, such as eyewitness testimony, can be subject to human error or bias, while circumstantial evidence is often more objective and verifiable.

The Eisner Gorin State and Federal Criminal Defense site has an article titled, “Description and Examples of Circumstantial Evidence.” It states:

Without evidence, there is no criminal case and no conviction. There are many types of evidence that all seek to prove different things in cases. One commonly used form of evidence in criminal and other cases is circumstantial evidence. In fact, most of the evidence used in criminal cases is circumstantial.

Circumstantial evidence is proof of a fact or even a set of facts from which someone could infer the facts in question. Both direct and circumstantial evidence is legitimate proof that someone committed a crime [authorship]. In fact, they are common in all state and federal criminal courts.

It is a fact that somebody could be convicted of a crime [authorship] based only on circumstantial proof. Further, with the relatively common occurrence of false testimony and mistaken identification, circumstantial proof can be more reliable than direct evidence.

I launched OxfraudFraud.com because one corner of the Shakespeare authorship debate has become so toxic, so casually abusive, and so intellectually dishonest that it cries out for a response. That corner is Oxfraud.com, which has made a minor specialty of ridiculing people rather than engaging with their arguments. My site, which relies heavily on the work of Mark Alexander, exists to turn the spotlight around—onto the methods, tone, and rhetoric of the self-appointed “debunkers.”

At first glance, Oxfraud.com looks like a tough-minded skeptical enterprise: a band of rationalists using evidence to knock down what they see as fringe theories. But when you read what they write, and especially how they write it, another picture emerges. It’s one of persistent sneering, petty name-calling and a refusal to engage fairly with opposing evidence. These are not incidental features. They are the house style: ad hominem attacks and straw men masquerading as critical thinking.

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Alexander Pope also had something to say about the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, as Peter Dawkins reported.[fn 2] Put together, one passage reinforces the other. They also provide grist for the theory that both Jonson and Pope were “in the know” about the existence of “two Shakespeares” because both were Freemasons.

First, here is “On Poet-Ape” by Ben Jonson:

Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,

Whose works are e’en the frippery of wit,

From brokage [meaning “brokerage”] is become so bold a thief,

As we, the robb’d, leave rage, and pity it.

At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,

Buy the reversion of old plays; now grown

To a little wealth, and credit in the scene,

He takes up all, makes each man’s wit his own:

And, told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes

The sluggish gaping auditor devours;

He marks not whose ‘twas first: and after-times

May judge it to be his, as well as ours.

Fool! as if half eyes will not know a fleece

From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece?

“Poet-ape” is a play broker?

Read more

SAT Annual Members Gathering
Sunday • April 26 • 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (UK time)
Free to paid Subscribers/Members • Online with Zoom

We are pleased to share details of our upcoming online gathering free for our members a.k.a. paying subscribers. (There’s still time to become a paying subscriber.)

• Welcome and Introduction: Dr. William Leahy, SAT Chairman, including updates on The SAT Essay Prize.

• Shakespeare’s Dante - A new research line in the SAQ: Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti, Theodora Sorti authors of 13 books translated in 26 languages. They will expand on their recent research connecting Dante to the Shakespearean works.

• “Writers’ Rooms”: Sir Mark Rylance and Frank Spotnitz, lead writer of the room that created The X Files in conversation about the nature of writers’ rooms and creative collaboration.

• Bacon and “The Good Pens”: Sir Mark Rylance will present on the idea that Bacon had a writers room and what it would have been like.

• General Q&A: Facilitated by Dr. William Leahy

Our subscribers/members come from 57 countries. To convert the event time to your local time, click here.

The ZOOM link will be available to paying subscribers/members in April on this site and via email.

There’s still time to become a paying subscriber/member and enjoy this online event. We hope you will join us!

As you will see, the premise of the evening was founded on the vexed question of whether the plays attributed to Shakespeare are still funny or not. The event as described was highly contrived of course – with a faux legal set up providing a verdict – but it was aimed at schools and was performed for charity so one cannot view it too cynically. We were unable to attend and one can only hope that it went well and that decent sums were raised in aid of the Coram Shakespeare Schools Foundation.

The central question of whether the plays are still funny or not is an interesting one and particularly so with regard to youngsters coming to them for the first time. As we know, the plays can be very difficult for young people nowadays who often struggle with the language and cannot see the relevance in studying them, never mind finding any humour. Indeed, this applies not only to young people. I think the Observer article addresses this point when it raises the matter of performance. For I would agree with most young (all?) people that the plays are very rarely funny on the page and that most of the humour is to be found in performance.

We will all have examples of plays we have been to see that we found very funny and for me Mark Rylance’s portrayal of the Countess Olivia in Twelfth Night (2012) at the Globe Theatre makes a clear case that these plays can still be very funny indeed. Interestingly, Mark also made his portrayal of Richard the Third (2012) equally funny, though the humour was dark; in fact, it was pitch black. On the page however I am not so sure.

The Observer article is interesting in two further aspects for us involved in the authorship question. Firstly, we have the suggestion of a new co-author in the actor Robert Armin. Actor and comedian (and it would seem researcher) Tim FitzHigham believes that Armin contributed comic passages to the plays he was involved in. The research that has led him to this conclusion he has been undertaking for the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Yes, you read that correctly. Research coming out of Stratford-upon-Avon is arguing that another author contributed to plays traditionally attributed to Shakespeare. And this is reported in a mainstream, quality newspaper without any reticence or need to query. FitzHigham makes some rather overblown claims in the article: “We could not have had Fawlty Towers or Blackadder without … [Armin]”; and he “believes Armin … is the true font of all British wit”; but his proposal that Armin contributed to the plays would not seem to be one of them. Perhaps I am being oversensitive due to past experience but to read an article in a mainstream UK newspaper that deals, albeit secondarily with the Shakespeare Authorship Question without a resort to ridicule or some kind of put down is surely a sign of great progress in the normalisation of the authorship issue.

What do you think regarding the plays? Funny, not funny? Do you have a quote/line that you find particularly funny on the page? What of a favourite funny performance? Or do you think the humour has gone, is too dated?

In case you were unaware, we have a YouTube channel. When we video events, conferences, and gatherings, we eventually upload those videos to YouTube. The videos range the gamut and - true to the SAT mission - demonstrate our wide perspective on the Q.

Seasoned YouTube viewers will know that you can rank your favorites and change which are displayed in the top five category by popularity.

We are delighted to reshare this 12 minute video about the lack of a paper trail supporting the notion that the man from Stratford was a writer.

Inspired Unorthodoxy

When Laura Matthias and Lisa Wilson, SAT Trustee, documented Diana Price and her landmark publication, “Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography”, we became so inspired by her “Literary Paper Trails” investigation that we dedicated an entire sequence to it in the film “Last Will. & Testament”. “The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” featured it, too, making Price’s comparative chart of Elizabethan/Jacobean writers one of the most compelling arguments in Shakespearean authorship studies. Long may Diana’s work encourage balanced, unbiased enquiry.

Enjoy.

Lisa Wilson, SAT Trustee
Laura Wilson Matthias
1604 Productions
First Folio Pictures

Dr. Marie Jansen will present on her novel Dark as Night, co-authored with Lars Holger Holm, about Shakespeare, Marlowe, the Vatican, and the School of Night. Based on archival resources, the co-authors have used fiction to discuss the authorship question.

The story takes place during ten days in May 1982 and is based on research work carried out in the Vatican manuscript section. There is an un-catalogued and to this day unknown version of De Gestis Romanorum, penned by monks on vellum, and dated to the 11th century. This work is not a translation but a never published original manuscript in Latin that contains the blueprint for a number of Shakespearean plays set in Italy, such as The Merchant of Venice; The Two Gentlemen of Verona; and Much Ado about Nothing.

The blurb for the novel:

Dive into a world of intrigue, espionage, and forbidden knowledge, where the truth about England’s greatest writers lies hidden beneath layers of deception. From the Vatican manuscript room to the secret libraries of Padua, through the canals of Venice, the dangerous ports of Flushing, and finally to the shadowed alleys of Deptford and Canterbury—this is a literary thriller steeped in real historical research and dangerous secrets.

We are delighted to welcome Dr. Jansen to our event!

Marylebone Theatre, London

16^th November 2025

Cost: Pre-lunch conference £20, post-lunch performance £15 - must be booked separately.

The Morning Conference 10:00am -1:30pm (update to the update!)

Title: “to write and read comes by nature”: Imagining an alternative Shakespeare

10:00 – Introduction by Sir Mark Rylance

10:15 - 10:45 -Waiting for Hamnet: Where we are in the Authorship Question: A personal view - Professor William Leahy

10.45 - 11.45 - “By Any Other Name”: interview with Jodi Picoult (pre-recorded).

11.45 - 12.15 - Coffee break (coffee and tea provided)

12.15 -12.30 - SAT Essay Competition Launch

12.30 - 1.30 - Dark as Night - Dr. Marie Jansen (NEW)

1.30 - End

The Afternoon Performance 2.45pm - 5.15pm

Title: The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber (including Q&A) starring Jamie Martin (Directed by Nicola Haydn; Music by James Fiddes Smith)

We look forward to seeing you!

O’Farrell’s original novel is a beautifully written story of a woman out of kilter with people around her and who finds herself overwhelmed by grief at the untimely death of her son. It is not really a story about Shakespeare (or Hamnet for that matter) and nor is it a story about the authorship of his plays to any extent; other than the proposed relationship between Hamnet’s death and the writing of the play, Hamlet. Essentially, it is the (or a) story about Agnes Shakespeare – aka Anne Hathaway. This focus on Shakespeare’s wife is laudable and personally I found the novel’s characters highly believable – immersed as they are in so much excellent research of the period – and the portrayal of Agnes/Anne particularly is both sympathetic and engaging; while also perhaps a little too “new-ageist.” However, there is one aspect of the story – perhaps its central driving force – that does not convince me at all: the link between the son’s death and the writing of Hamlet.

No doubt this is the aspect of the novel which provokes the ire of most of us involved with the Shakespeare Authorship Question. We know that a play entitled Hamlet was in performance in London years before Hamnet passed away. We know too that the story is based on a Danish source, Saxo’s Amleth accessible to Shakespeare only if he could read the French version in Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques. In this work, many of the details that appear in Hamlet, and which could, one supposes be somehow shown to reflect something of the author’s feelings towards the death of his son are already there, composed by previous authors. And there is of course no evidence that Shakespeare could read French.

So far, so questionable. And Maggie O’Farrell does not flag up these “inconsistencies.” She does note that the book “is a work of fiction” and that “it is not known why Hamnet Shakespeare died: his burial is listed but not the cause of death” (pp 369-70)*. But she says nothing about the play pre-existing Hamnet’s death nor that it is based on a source text. Indeed, the “Historical Note” which appears in the preliminary matter of the novel states simply this: “The boy Hamnet, died in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the father wrote a play called Hamlet.” Thus, she makes the link between the two things explicit.

But I do not want to make too much of this – it is a novel after all and, well anything goes, I guess. However, I do await the film Hamnet with some trepidation even though it is fictional. I say this as once it is released we doubters are likely to find ourselves despairing at the misinformation and inaccuracies that are bound to be part of the publicity campaign, and we are bound to see talking heads and newspaper articles declaring all sorts of nonsense with regard to Shakespeare’s biography, his genius and the authorship of Hamlet. We will no doubt see “Shakespeareans” welling up in interview on chat shows in the UK such as This Morning and the One Show when talking about what Shakespeare must have been going through emotionally when writing Hamlet. Simply put, we are likely to see the man from Stratford mythologised all over again.

Putting all that aside, let me return to my major issue with the idea that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet in some kind of delayed response to the death of his son. To be blunt, I have always simply been unable to see, or at least to believe the relationship between the experience and the text. Whatever the cause of Hamnet’s death – plague in the book and (I assume) the film; suicide in the film All is True, written by Ben Elton and directed by Kenneth Branagh – I simply cannot relate the experience of the death of one’s innocent 11-year-old child to the decadent and sordid goings on in Hamlet. It just does not ring true as how a father would mourn his child’s death in art. Why portray a character mourning the murder of his father as some kind of negotiation of one’s own mourning of one’s son?

Or am I being too literal? Please comment – or come and speak to me at our conference, 16^th November, Marylebone Theatre London. Tickets here.

*Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet. Tinder Press, London 2020.

The morning conference will include a presentation from Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti on Shakespeare’s Dante. The authors have been researching the connection between Dante and the Shakespearean canon and exploring the ramifications of the recent discovery of of Dante’s Divine Comedy owned by John Florio in the British Library. See their previous guest post here. They are also the co-authors of a series of fictional works whose titles translate to “Even when a secret is printed, the truth is always a mystery. . . “ How appropriate for the day! Here’s a bit of a teaser from Monaldi and Sorti to pique your interest.

We will first introduce the idea behind the trilogy: narrating Dante through Shakespeare’s theatre, alternating and merging prose narration with stage scenes. The choice of Shakespeare was all but casual: thinking about a form and style that could bring Dante to life in a worthy and effective way, Shakespeare was the only possible name that came to mind, for he is still the only modern author that equalled Dante in universality.

However, our creative journey of adapting Shakespeare to Dante’s life and work unexpectedly uncovered a closeness of the two authors that went beyond remote inspiration. Shakespeare’s works perfectly fitted Dantean themes, characters, situations and even verses. The Bard’s knowledge of Dante is so deep, that the sole contribution of Stratford Shakespeare to the Dantean elements in the plays becomes rather implausible. Specific examples of this will be shown from throughout the trilogy to illustrate how Shakespeare often perfectly lends itself to narrating Dante.

Many of such parallels recognised from our creative perspective had been previously identified by Vivienne Robertson, whose work we had never heard of until the completion of the trilogy. From her study emerge the same conclusions that we reached by following the path of narrative creativity rather than that of academic analysis.

An example of how the hand(s) that brought Dante into the Bard’s works may have worked with the source, are the markings found in a 1564 edition of the Divine Comedy, recently identified at the British Library as belonging to John Florio, one of Shakespeare’s collaborators. (See Marianna Iannaccone’s post on this here and on her substack.) Numerous underlinings and signs highlight the owner’s careful reading of specific verses, entire tercets and even paragraphs from the commentary. Several of those passages are absent from the Italian-English dictionaries compiled by Florio, and are instead part of the many examples of Dantean influence in Shakespeare observed by us, Robertson and other unheard voices before her. This confirms that the mentioned markings were intended for Shakespeare’s works, not the dictionaries.

This discovery opens up a new line of research that starts from the Divine Comedy editions owned by other authorship candidates like Marlowe, De Vere, and Bacon. Shakespeare-Dante parallels not represented by the markings in the BL copy could be instead found to be of other hands.

What ultimately started this new Dantean research was the creative fictional work: finding in Shakespeare the only voice that would be able to narrate Dante has brought to light not only that Stratford Will’s hand cannot be the only one, but also evidence that there was, in fact, at least another hand that used Dante in the Bard’s works.

The set of examples of Shakespeare-Dante parallels will focus on the relationship between Dante and his friend and fellow poet Guido Cavalacanti, a fil rouge central to the trilogy and very much represented both in Robertson’s study and in the markings of the British Library.

Join us on the day for more

The Morning Conference

Click here to purchase tickets.

Conference: 10:00 am - 1:30 pm

Cost: £20

Title: “to write and read comes by nature”: Imagining an alternative Shakespeare

The Afternoon Performance

Click here to purchase tickets.

Performance: 2.45pm - 5.15pm

Cost: £15

Title: The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

Jodi Picoult is a multi-million-bestselling author with a huge following (half a million followers on Facebook for starters). So when we heard that her new book was based on the Emilia Lanier Bassano theory of Shakespeare authorship, we were excited. Clearly so were others, since on its release, By Any Other Name became an instant New York Times Number 1 bestseller.

The Emilia Bassano theory, first promoted by John Hudson’s Shakespeare’s Dark Lady and the subject of Elizabeth Winkler’s award-winning Atlantic essay, gives the authorship of at least some plays in the Shakespeare canon to an Italian Jewish woman with strong court connections: not least that she was the (highly educated) mistress of the Lord Chamberlain, Henry Carey (Baron Hunsdon). Hunsdon was, from 1594, the patron of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the acting company that essentially “owned” the Shakespeare canon. The theory was addressed on the Globe stage in 2019 in the hit play Emilia. More recently, Bassano’s co-authorship of the Shakespeare plays has been the subject of a book by Mark Bradbeer, published by the academic publisher Routledge.

As with all candidate theories, what the Emilia Bassano theory does is open up interesting questions: it gives new perspectives on the body of work which other theories (including the orthodox position) need to address. In the case of the Bassano theory, it isn’t simply based on the canon’s strong, remarkably independent and outspoken female characters, which underpins the case for other female candidates such as Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Every decent candidate theory has some unique qualities which supporters of other candidates should pay attention to, and Emilia Bassano’s are particularly intriguing.

Here are the key points:

Knowledge of Hebrew and Judaism is evident in several plays. This is at a time when Jews were officially banned in England, and only “conversos” — those who said they were Christian converts — were accepted.

The Bassano Fresco is described in detail in Othello. This Fresco, which survived for centuries on the front of building in the main square in the Northern Italian town of Bassano del Grappa, was first described by Roger Prior in his 2008 essay “Shakespeare’s Visit to Italy”. Prior, as a Stratfordian, concluded that Will must have visited Italy, but there is no evidence to support this. Other details from Bassano del Grappa — including the name Otello associated with an apothecary — are found in the play. Emilia’s family originated in this town. Read Prior’s essay (linked above) for the low-down!

References to Emilia’s family litter the Shakespeare canon. There are ‘in jokes’ to do with bagpipes and noses (the Bassanos played the bagpipes). The names A/Emilia and Bassano are used several times, as are the names of her relatives. In the early play The Taming of A Shrew, for example, the father is named Alfonso (the name of the cousin Emilia would go on to marry) and one of the daughters is Emelia. Shakespeare’s The Taming of THE Shrew, renames Alfonso “Baptista” (Emilia’s father’s name; the daughter Emelia is excised).

In By Any Other Name, Jodi Picoult makes use of all the available evidence to spin a genuinely compelling story set in two time frames: one, with Emilia Bassano in the 16th century, and the other with her 21st-century relative, a female playwright struggling to overcome the structural sexism of the theatre industry who becomes fascinated by the theory, researching it, turning it into a play, and expounding it in conversation with others. Picoult clearly favours a group theory, featuring, for example, the Henry VI plays as a product of the Earl of Oxford’s “scriptorium”, and does not completely rule out Will himself as an originator of early versions of texts (such as Titus Andronicus).

For the Shakespearean Authorship Trust’s annual conference in London on Sunday, November 16th, I’ll be interviewing Jodi Picoult about the Bassano theory and the process she underwent in researching and writing her book.

I’m speaking to her early next week, and I would love to know if you have any questions for her. If you do, please drop your question in the comments.

And remember to book your tickets as soon as you can. The morning and afternoon programmes, including a performance of my play The Marlowe Papers, can be booked separately here.

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This essay proposes an alternative origin story: that ‘Shakespeare’s World’ began decades earlier, in the dynamic collaboration between Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, between 1567 and 1583.

According to the mainstream view, the record begins in 1592 when Robert Greene alluded to a ‘Shake-scene’. Six years later, Meres’ list was published. In this telling, the canon grew explosively in the 1590s: comedies such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (AMND), histories like Richard III, and tragedies like Romeo & Juliet. In addition to the 12 plays named by Meres, at least 6 other plays were performed in the 1590s: the Henry VI trilogy, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Merry Wives of Windsor. Thus, Shakespeare supposedly produced 18 masterworks in roughly a decade – while also publishing Venus & Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, and writing sonnets.

But the productivity implied here strains belief. Could any playwright, regardless of education or class, have written so much so quickly?

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The Day

When: Sunday, November 16, 2025

Time: 10:00 -1:30 and 2:45-5:15

Where: The Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London, NW1 6XT

The Morning Conference

Click here to purchase tickets.

Conference: 10:00 am - 1:30 pm

Cost: £20

Title: “to write and read comes by nature”: Imagining an alternative Shakespeare

The Afternoon Performance

Click here to purchase tickets.

Performance: 2.45pm - 5.15pm

Cost: £15

Title: The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

You’re the author of the greatest plays of all time. But nobody knows. And if it gets out, you’re dead.

It’s 1593, and Kit Marlowe, the most successful playwright in Elizabethan England, is stabbed through the eye at the age of 29. Except he isn’t. Because Marlowe is also a secret agent. His secret service colleagues have faked his death because protecting the Queen from Catholic assassination plots has led to his arrest for atheism, a capital crime.

Join Kit on his journey into exile and anonymity as he recounts the story of beer-drinking, duels and spying that led to his losing lovers, friends and his very identity... and wrestles with the unique torture of all his new work being credited to his front, one William Shakespeare.

• The morning will include papers, interviews, and an exciting announcement about a new SAT initiative supporting new research.

• The afternoon will include a performance followed by Q&A of The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber.

Fiction has always played an important role in our culture’s imaginings of Shakespeare (Shakespeare in Love; All is True; Nothing Like the Sun; Hamnet) and has worked generally to confirm the traditional historical narrative of his life and genius. Fiction has played an equally important role in our culture’s imaginings of an alternative author of the works, one which paints an entirely different picture to those more orthodox portrayals and which opens the historical narrative to much wider possibilities. This year’s conference will discuss and examine some of the most significant of these “alternative fictions” with the writers themselves introducing us to their stories. Additionally, the SAT will announce the launch of its new and exciting essay competition.

The Day

When: Sunday, November 16, 2025

Time: 10:00 -1:30 and 2:45-5:15

Where: The Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London, NW1 6XT

Cost: Pre-lunch conference £20, post-lunch performance £15 (must be booked separately )

Tickets will be directly from the SAT via Eventbrite. Links available soon.

The Morning Conference

Conference: 10:00 am - 1:30 pm

Cost: £20

Title: “to write and read comes by nature”: Imagining an alternative Shakespeare

10:00 - Introduction

10:15 - 11:00 -Waiting for Hamnet: Where we are in the Authorship Question: A personal view - Professor William Leahy

11am - 11.45 - “By Any Other Name”: interview with Jodi Picoult (pre-recorded).

11.45 - 12.15 - Coffee break (coffee and tea provided)

12.15 -12.30 - SAT Essay Competition Launch

12.30 - 1.30 - Shakespeare’s Dante - Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti, Theodora Sorti

1.30 - End

The Afternoon Performance

Performance: 2.45pm - 5.15pm

Cost: £15

Title: The Marlowe Papers by Ros Barber

Time: 2.45 - 5.15 including Q&A

End: 5.15

Lewes Lewkenor was born in Selsey circa 1560. He went up to Cambridge and then entered the Middle Temple but his ardent Catholicism led to ‘the confiscation of my property and whole means,’ and he was forced into exile, ‘I now have to my whole nation become manifestly notorious’. Serving as a captain under Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Lewkenor fought in some of the most intense siege-warfare of the times but his military career came to an abrupt end: ‘besides several grievous injuries I have received lingering illnesses and the crippling of my right arm and hand’.

In 1590 he returned to London and reported to Lord Burghley on the condition of English mercenaries serving in the Spanish army. His information was published as The Estate of English Fugitives in 1595, detailing the treachery of a group of English soldiers who had surrendered their strongholds and gone over to the Spanish side. Many of these soldiers have been noticed by scholars as inspiration for Shakespeare.

Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece are dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Lewes would serve as his MP in 1597.

Lewes escorted ambassadors to the premiere performances of plays at court; Sir John Oldcastle – Ambassador Verieken; Twelfth Night – The Duke of Orsino; Othello – Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud. Lewkenor was present at the meeting between the Barbary ambassador and the queen and the character of Othello may have been inspired by this visit.

‘Mr. Lewkner was interpreter for the Spanish tongue; but here they departed, the Interpreter of the Embassy spoke in Italian, and desired to deliver something in private, which her Majesty granted. On which Mr. Lewkner and the Lords removed further off’.

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“The play’s the thing,” Hamlet declares, when he sets out to catch the conscience of the king. The phrase is apt for my own enquiry, where I raise the authorship question in my play A Rose by Any Other Name?.

It is difficult to convince people to take the Shakespeare Authorship question seriously. Challenges have existed for centuries, yet the topic is still not widely discussed. The academic profession largely sneers at the debate, and even one’s friends’ eyes glaze over when the topic is raised.

When I first heard the question over ten years ago, I too quickly dismissed it as yet another fringe theory. I mentioned it to a niece when we were attending a Shakespeare play together, and she simply shrugged her shoulders and said the authorship question was taught in a matter-of-fact way in her Australian school. Taken aback, I started looking at the question more seriously.

That casual comment marked the beginning of a long journey. More than eight years later, it led to my play exploring the evidence surrounding the authorship question and concluding with a debate asking whether the issue should be added to school curricula. Audiences are then asked to vote. Over 80% of the 300 or so people who have seen the play agree that the authorship question should indeed be taught in schools.

My goal is to take people through the same journey I went on. The protagonist, a young literary journalist who fancies herself as a bit of a detective, is prodded by a friend to look at the evidence. My own background is as a researcher, so geek that I am, I looked through the academic literature, searched archival databases, and read the many books and journal articles available on the subject. I was convinced that I was simply looking in the wrong place and that soon I would find the definitive evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays.

But that certainty never came. What did emerge was a recognition that the question itself — the legitimacy of asking whether the Stratford man was the true author — deserved far more attention. Surely this topic should be subject to the same rules of critical thinking as other areas of scholarly interest.

In science, history, and law, knowledge advances when old assumptions are re-examined. A month hardly goes by that some medical theory or other is revised based on better research. The scientific fields are more likely to have the courage to challenge existing paradigms. In literature, too, long-settled judgments have been revised: disputed Homeric authorship, changing attributions in medieval texts, or the recent recognition of female authors whose works were previously ignored or misattributed. In all these cases, what was once seen as heresy to question was later understood as progress.

Response to my play suggests that when people are presented with the known evidence, they warm to the idea that the question is legitimate. The key is not to ask them whether they believe Shakespeare wrote the plays — an unreasonable expectation after viewing a seventy-minute play — but instead whether the authorship question is a legitimate subject for discussion and teaching. Framing the issue this way enables audiences to coalesce around a principle rather than the discussion that comes from defending your chosen candidate.

On several occasions, a post-show Q&A session is held. The questions are almost always about the evidence itself — about the lack of financial records, the lack of acclaim after Shakespeare’s death, or the poignancy of having illiterate children. Once the legitimacy of the question is granted, curiosity naturally follows.

If the goal is to open the debate to a broader audience, the challenge is to find the right vehicles. Elizabeth Winkler’s article in The Atlantic, Jodi Picoult’s novel By Any Other Name, and films such as Anonymous all generated interest, but such moments tend to fade quickly. Mark Rylance’s satirical play I Am Shakespeare, which playfully stages the authorship debate through an online chatroom, is another example of how the question can be brought to life in imaginative form.

One promising avenue might be to focus on younger generations. In A Rose by Any Other Name?, this path of encouraging critical enquiry in schools and universities is viewed as the most important way forward. While I expect significant resistance from education authorities, the idea of reaching young people directly has real appeal. Students are often less invested in entrenched orthodoxies and more willing to look at evidence with fresh eyes. If a prominent figure in youth culture were willing to engage in a social media campaign, this would add genuine impetus to the question.

History shows that paradigms can and do shift. Ideas that once seemed outrageous later become orthodoxy. That shift never happens by dismissing questions as unworthy; it happens by allowing inquiry, testing evidence, and being open to revision. What matters, then, is keeping the Shakespeare authorship question alive, ensuring it remains part of the cultural conversation, and disseminating concerns to as broad an audience as possible.

A play such as A Rose by Any Other Name? is one small example. Others will be needed — books, films, plays, articles, podcasts, and digital projects that invite audiences to consider the evidence for themselves. When people are given even a brief window into the debate, they are willing to entertain its legitimacy. The challenge is to multiply those windows and to keep opening them for new generations.

The legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question is not about conspiracy or eccentricity. It is about intellectual honesty, about subjecting literature to the same critical scrutiny we apply elsewhere. And if ‘the play’s the thing’, in its own small way, my play attempts to keep that spirit of inquiry alive, arguing that it is important to challenge even the most settled truths.

Lou Beckett’s play ‘A Rose by Any Other Name?’ toured six locations in Southwest England in 2023-2024. It will be at the London fringe theatre, the White Bear in Kennington, on 8-11 October. Time Out has called the White Bear the ‘best fringe theatre in London’.

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Image from cover of Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal, From Italy to Shakespeare,
by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter

Recent manuscript discoveries have provided compelling evidence that Sir Thomas North (1535–1604?), the well-travelled translator of Plutarch's Lives (1580), wrote plays for the Earl of Leicester’s Men—works that Shakespeare later adapted for the public stage. These findings have been published widely, including on the front page of The New York Times, and received attention from renowned Shakespearean scholars, such as Michael Dobson and David Bevington.

June Schlueter, Charles A. Dana Professor Emerita of Lafayette College and former editor of the Shakespeare Bulletin, has joined me as a research partner, and we have published:

• Evidence that North wrote the source-play for Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare Survey)

• Discovery of a handwritten, signed manuscript on rebellions, kept at the North family library and used for eleven Shakespearean plays (British Library)

• Thomas North’s handwritten travel diary, which includes scenes reproduced in Henry VIII and The Winter’s Tale (Fairleigh Dickinson), and informed the original Hamlet (The Times Literary Supplement)

Michael Blanding, investigative journalist and New York Times best-selling author, has written a book on North and published an article about his transformation from skeptic to collaborator. He has since found North’s personal marginal notes in his own Dial of Princes (1557), which North had used as a workbook for The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth. Blanding also found another North-family history book—Fabyan’s Chronicle—containing North’s handwritten outline of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.

North’s Writings in the Canon

Forensic linguistics is a science that holds up in courts of law and has positively identified anonymous authors—including Ted Kaczynski as the Unabomber. North’s verbal DNA, splattered across virtually every play in the canon, is significant in the field. Shakespeare’s plays recycle thousands of unique and distinctive lines and passages from North’s writings—including unpublished personal papers.

Below are examples of unique lines that first appeared in one of North’s translations and are later repeated by the playwright, often in the same context. North’s lines are hyperlinked to a Google search confirming these were not commonplaces. No one else has used this language except North or Shakespeare (or works quoting them). Early English Books Online, EEBO, further establishes the shared language.

• North’s Dial of Princes: sir . . . I never uttered . . . Word that might be to the prejudice of any (714)

• Henry VIII: sir . . . ever I . . . spake . . . word that might / Be to the prejudice of her (2.4.141–152

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The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men, is often referred to as “Shakespeare's company.” This designation rests on the evidence that William Shakespeare appears as a shareholder in the troupe from 1594 onwards. The Lord Chamberlain was Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, who served Queen Elizabeth in that capacity. As the son of Mary Boleyn Carey, Hunsdon was a member of the Queen’s family and officially her cousin. Some historians believe he was the Queen’s half-brother. As Chamberlain, Carey was responsible for organizing the court, literally the chambers, of the monarch. This included providing entertainment. When Henry Carey died, his son George Carey inherited his title, offices, and the acting company. When James came to the throne, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men became The King’s Men.

When defenders of the traditional Shakespeare authorship cite “documentary evidence,” they frequently point to The Lord Chamberlain's Accounts—official financial records from the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts. These documents, they argue, provide irrefutable proof that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the playwright we know today

What these records do—and do not—say

The Lord Chamberlain's Accounts, maintained by the Treasurer of the Chamber from 1558–1642 (as published by The Malone Society) list one payment explicitly naming Shakespeare.* Any other use of these records to establish Shakespeare’s engagement with the company or with any writing or creative activities is by inference and some magical thinking. Here it is:

• On March 15, 1595: Payment to William Kempe, William Shakespeare, and Richard Burbage for two Christmas court performances.

Remarkably, this one record is then used to establish a “pattern,” despite no other explicit examples being listed in this source. Patterns usually require—well, a pattern. This means there needs to be sufficient data points and instances to analyze. A single data point is not a pattern—it’s an anomaly. Three similar instances might suggest a trend. Five or more similar instances across different sources/time periods suggest a pattern. Yet, the following two entries are used to infer Shakespeare’s continued engagement with the company.

• August 1604: Payment to “Augustine Phillippes and John Hemynges” for twelve King’s Men who attended the Spanish Ambassador for 18 days at Somerset House.

• August 1597: The Rye Chamberlain’s Accounts show a 20-shilling payment to “my Lord Chamberlen’s Players” during a provincial tour.

The leap is that Shakespeare of Stratford must have been one of the twelve King’s Men who attended something as important as the 1604 Spanish Ambassador’s visit to Somerset House, a royal property under the keepership of the Carey family. He was important. The event was important. Shakespeare must have been there. That’s invented evidence.

The August 1597 entry is so general, naming the company but no individuals, that it is hard to give it any credence in the search for credible evidence. The payment to the trio Kempe, Shakespeare, and Burbage was unique to that year. Subsequent payments were made to John Heminges, and sometimes one other company member.

These entries are authentic and historically significant. They establish that performance fees were paid to acting companies, court attendance for a few named individuals, municipal rewards for touring performances, and administrative expenses for theatrical services. However, they contain absolutely no reference to Shakespeare as a writer, playwright, or author of any dramatic works. They do not establish a pattern. Any connection of these records to authorship is pure magical thinking.

For traditional attribution defenders, there's an uncomfortable gap here. The same man who supposedly wrote the greatest works in English literature left behind financial documentation of his theatrical career, yet none of this documentation connects him to the creative process of writing—certainly not in these accounts.

Fact and Fiction

The documentary evidence reveals what appears to be one documented figure—Shakespeare the businessman; and one fictional figure—Shakespeare the writer. The latter is invisible in this contemporary paper trail, appearing only through posthumous attributions and later scholarly assertions.

For those investigating the authorship question, The Lord Chamberlain’s Accounts reveal no evidence of literary activity by someone supposedly writing two to three plays per year for the same company.

The counterargument might be that there was a deliberate separation between the commercial “front” and the actual author. Why? Those doubting the official authorship narrative posit that there was a need for the true author to remain anonymous for political or social reasons. Today, we are fond of the phrase “the personal is political.” In the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, this was more than a phrase; it was the law of existence.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Accounts provide fascinating insights into Elizabethan theatrical economics. But they also reveal a troubling gap in the traditional authorship narrative. The very thoroughness of these business records—and their complete silence on literary matters—should give pause to anyone claiming they “prove” Shakespeare wrote the plays.

*The key source is William Streitberger's edition “Dramatic Records in the Declared Accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber 1558–1642,” Malone Society Collections, vi (1977).

[All rights reside with the original authors.]

Note: It is the position of the SAT to remain open-minded regarding authorship candidates and to go where excellent research takes us (Widening our Perspectives). Also, it is our duty to pass on information that will be of interest to our subscribers and which suggests new possibilities. This is one such article in an occasional series. We bring this to you in the spirit of collegiality and possibility, but we do not, as with all candidates, endorse any particular case. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author (Iannaccone Marianna) alone.

Every time someone asks me how I came to know John Florio, I smile at the memory. It was about a decade ago, just after I’d completed my degree in foreign languages and literature. That spring, I treated myself to a solo trip to France. One breezy afternoon in Bordeaux, I was sipping espresso in a tucked-away café when a folded newspaper caught my eye. There, on the front page, unmistakable and absurd, was the face of Shakespeare from the First Folio: the famous Jack-of-Hearts profile and that awkward Elizabethan corset. There was nothing surprising about yet another tribute to the Bard. But what arrested my attention was something buried mid-article, a name mentioned so briefly it almost passed unnoticed: John Florio. It stopped me in my tracks. How had I, fresh from years immersed in European literature, never encountered this name?

Curiosity became obsession. I started researching. One book led to another, one clue to the next. My surprise turned into disbelief. Who was this man, and why had no one told me about him? Far from being a historical footnote, John Florio emerged as a literary titan: translator, lexicographer, cultural broker. A man of five languages, born to Protestant refugees who moved between England, Switzerland, and Germany, embodying hybridity. He was too European to fit into a nationalist narrative, too essential to be truly forgotten, and yet, forgotten he was. Or worse, deliberately erased.

The more I delved into Florio’s world, the more evident it became: this was not a benign case of neglect. This was a literary crime. At the center stood the sanctified myth of Shakespeare: the provincial genius sprung from Stratford’s mud, unaided, untouched by foreign hands. In that myth, there was no room for a Florio whispering in his ear. But listen closely, and you hear Florio’s voice.

In First Fruits (1578) and Second Fruits (1591), Florio published witty, lively dialogues and proverbs not for children, but for aristocrats: filled with philosophical debate, romance, and theatricality. It wasn’t just a language manual; it was more: a compendium about Commedia dell’arte and Renaissance humanism. Remarkably, First Fruits includes poems by members of Leicester’s Men: Richard Tarlton and others, thanking Florio for introducing Italian storytelling to English theatre.

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Note 2: Given the success of Jodi Picoult’s latest novel, By Any Other Name, which features Amelia Bassano as a major character and casts her as an author, the SAT thought readers might be interested in more information about her possible candidacy. See Ms. Picoult’s posts on this Substack here and here.

Aemilia Bassano Lanyer

1569–1645

Background: Aemilia’s father was Baptiste Bassano, a Venetian musician in the Royal Court in London. Baptiste’s father, Jeronimo, was of Spanish origin. Baptiste died in 1576; the child, Aemilia, was taken into the care of the young, newly widowed Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent. In her care, Aemilia appears to have gained her extraordinary education.

At some stage, the aged Lord Hunsdon, Henry Carey, took her, in her teenage years, as his paramour. He was three times her age. Hunsdon could do what he liked, as he was the Queen’s cousin, the Lord Chamberlain with a purview inclusive of the Court musicians, and Governor of the Army. In 1594, he also became the patron of the Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s theatre company.

In 1592, Aemilia became pregnant by Hunsdon, and she was married off to Alphonse Lanyer, a court musician over whom Hunsdon also had charge. The marriage was described as being “for colour,” in some hope, apparently, of disguising his Lordship’s adultery and paternity. The marriage was not a happy one, despite Alphonse being made an army captain and given a forty-pound annuity.

Around 1604, Aemilia was close to Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and Aemilia was a reader/tutor to her daughter, Anne. Anne became Countess of Dorset, herself a bibliophile and a writer. In 1617–19, Aemilia also ran a school for gentlemen’s children.

Famous For

With the book, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611), “written by Mistris Aemilia Lanyer, wife to Captain Alfonso Lanyer,” Aemilia became the first known English woman to publish a book of her own poetry. It begins with poems addressing various noblewomen. There is also a short prose passage decrying misogyny. These are followed by two much longer poems. The 210-line “Description of Cookeham” is credited as being the first country house poem. In this, she also seems to refer to herself as Philomel. The 1,840-line poem, also called “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum,” demonstrates her extensive knowledge and skill, with a kernel of sexual politics added. This kernel is the section called “Eve’s Apology in Defence of Women.” This, together with the Philomel reference and her attack on misogynists, no doubt related to the abuse received from Lord Hunsdon. She was “the outspoken feminist of the age” (Rowse, Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 1984).

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