The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy in the Twenty-First Century: An Example of His Sonnets

Abstract

The controversy over the authorship of Shakespeare continues as vital as ever in the twenty-first century, with more people interested in the question. In 2007 it reaches the pinnacle of popular as well as academic achievements: the establishment of the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, and the new MA programme Shakespeare Authorship Studies, the first of its kind in the world, at Brunel University. This trend is towards the declaration that the identity of Shakespeare should be accepted as a legitimate topic for instruction and research in academia. This paper is takes an orthodox approach to the authorship question. Therefore it intends not to give an account of who are the various alternative candidates that have been put forward over the years, but of when and how the authorship debate was necessitated by the needs of a specific critical and theoretical circumstance. The discussion is composed of five chapters. The first and the second give a survey of how people began to question whether or not Shakespeare wrote the works of Shakespeare, establishing their own theories as authorship doubters. The third is focused on the development of the authorship debate in the first decade of the twenty-first century: it has been influenced by the Shakespearean criticism of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century; it has reached its zenith in 2009, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the 400th anniversary of the King’s Men’s occupation of their Blackfriars Playhouse, and the 300th anniversary of the publication of the first formal biography of Shakespeare. The fourth exemplifies Hank Whittemore’s The Monument as an example of deciphering the codes implanted in the text through archival research. The fifth concludes the paradox is that the Shakespeare authorship question proves his greatness: Shakespeare is subject to scrutiny and speculation, because he is the best of the writers for all time.