Scholars and literary critics began to float names like Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere and Francis Bacon -- men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation¹, or inspiration -- as the true authors of the plays. Much of this stemmed from the sketchy²（写生的） details of Shakespeare's life and the dearth³ of contemporary primary sources. Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford government record the existence of a William Shakespeare, but none of these attest⁴ to him being an actor or playwright⁵.

 

Skeptics also questioned how anyone of such modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness⁶（洞察力） and poetic⁷ power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works. Over the centuries, several groups have emerged that question the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.

 

The most serious and intense skepticism began in the 19th century when adoration⁸ for Shakespeare was at its highest. The detractors（批评者） believed that the only hard evidence surrounding William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate. Members of the Shakespeare Oxford⁹ Society (founded in 1957) put forth¹⁰ arguments that English aristocrat¹¹ Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the poems and plays of "William Shakespeare." The Oxfordians cite de Vere's extensive knowledge of aristocratic society, his education, and the structural¹² similarities between his poetry and that found in the works attributed to Shakespeare. They contend that William Shakespeare had neither the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent¹³（雄辩的） prose and create such rich characters.

 

However, the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars contend that William Shakespeare wrote all his own plays. They point out that other playwrights¹⁴ of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds. They contend that Stratford's New Grammar School curriculum of Latin and the classics could have provided a good foundation for literary writers. Supporters of Shakespeare's authorship argue that the lack of evidence about Shakespeare's life doesn't mean his life didn't exist. They point to evidence that displays his name on the title pages of published poems and plays. Examples exist of authors and critics of the time acknowledging William Shakespeare as author of plays such as The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors and King John. Royal records from 1601 show that William Shakespeare was recognized as a member of the King's Men theater company (formally known as the Chamberlain's Men) and a Groom¹⁶ of the Chamber¹⁵ by the court of King James I, where the company performed seven of Shakespeare's plays. There is also strong circumstantial evidence of personal relationships by contemporaries who interacted with Shakespeare as an actor and a playwright.

 

What seems to be true is that William Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century. Beginning with the Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim¹⁷ and reverence¹⁸ for William Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his works.

 

Today, his plays are highly popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts that transcend¹⁹（超越） their origins in Elizabethan England.

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