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			{{Use dmy dates\|date=December 2019}}
	The ], the ongoing debate about whether the works attributed to ] of ] were actually written by another writer, or group of writers,<ref>{{cite book \|last=McMichael\|first=George\|authorlink= \|coauthors= Edgar M. Glenn\|title=Shakespeare and His Rivals, A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy \|year=1962 \|publisher=New York: Odyssey Press \|edition= \|location=pg 56 \|isbn=}}</ref> has attracted many notable '''authorship doubters''' since the subject was first introduced in the 18th century.
			The '''Declaration of Reasonable Doubt''' is an Internet signing petition which seeks to enlist broad public support for the ] to be accepted as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The petition was presented to William Leahy of ] by the actors ] and ] on 8 September 2007 in ], England, after the final matinee of the play ''I Am Shakespeare'' on the topic of the bard's identity, featuring Rylance in the title role. As of 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and the original self-imposed deadline, the document had been signed by 3,348 people, including 573 self-described current and former academics.<ref name=NewYorkTimes1/><ref name=BBC1/><ref name=Hackett2009/> As of December 2022, the count stood at 5,128 total signatures.<ref> Accessed 22 December 2022.</ref>

			The declaration has been met by scepticism from academic Shakespeareans and literary critics.<ref>{{Cite magazine \|last=Farouky \|first=Jumana \|date=13 September 2007 \|url=http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1661619,00.html \|title=The Mystery of Shakespeare's Identity \|magazine=] \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070916051027/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1661619,00.html \|url-status=dead \|archive-date=16 September 2007}}</ref> For the most part, they disparage the idea that Shakespeare is a pseudonym for one or more individuals who wrote the works attributed to him<ref>Kathman, David. "The Question of Authorship", in ] & Orlin, Lena C., ''Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide'', (2003) Oxford University Press, pp. 620–32: "in fact, antiStratfordism has remained a fringe belief system for its entire existence. Professional Shakespeare scholars mostly pay little attention to it, much as evolutionary biologists ignore creationists and astronomers dismiss UFO sightings" (621)</ref><ref>Alter, Alexandra (9 April 2010). , '']''. ]: "There's no documentary evidence linking their 50 or so candidates to the plays."</ref><ref>] (April 2010). "Full Circle; Cypher wheels and snobbery: the strange story of how Shakespeare became separated from his works". '']''. pp. 3–4. ], director of the ]: "To ask me about the authorship question ... is like asking a paleontologist to debate a creationist's account of the fossil record."</ref><ref>Nelson, Alan H. (2004). "Stratford Si! Essex No!". '']''. '''72''' (1): 149–171: "I do not know of a single professor of the 1,300-member ] who questions the identity of Shakespeare ... Among editors of Shakespeare in the major publishing houses, none that I know questions the authorship of the Shakespeare canon".</ref><ref>Carroll, D. Allen (2004). "Reading the 1592 Groatsworth attack on Shakespeare". ''Tennessee Law Review''. '''72''' (1): 277–294: 278–279: "I am an academic, a member of what is called the 'Shakespeare Establishment,' one of perhaps 20,000 in our land, professors mostly, who make their living, more or less, by teaching, reading, and writing about Shakespeare—and, some say, who participate in a dark conspiracy to suppress the truth about Shakespeare. ... I have never met anyone in an academic position like mine, in the Establishment, who entertained the slightest doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of the general body of plays attributed to him. Like others in my position, I know there is an anti-Stratfordian point of view and understand roughly the case it makes. Like St. Louis, it is out there, I know, somewhere, but it receives little of my attention" (278–299).</ref> and characterise the doubt as an exercise in the ] of '']'' (appeal to popularity or the appeal to numbers) and ].<ref>Siebert, Eve (5 January 2011). . .</ref>
	Those who question the traditional attribution believe that "William Shakespeare" was a pen name used by the true author (or authors) to keep the writer's identity secret.<ref>Charleton Ogburn,''The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality'', New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1984</ref> Of the more than 50 candidates that have been proposed,<ref>James, Oscar, and Ed Campbell.''The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare''. (1966): p. 115.</ref> several claimants have achieved major followings and notable supporters. Major nominees include ], (17th Earl of Oxford), who has attracted the most widespread support since first being proposed in the 1920s, statesman ], dramatist ], and ], who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories.<ref>{{cite book \|last=Gibson \|first=H.N. \|authorlink= \|coauthors= \|title=The Shakespeare Claimants: A Critical Survey of the Four Principal Theories Concerning the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays \|year=2005 \|publisher=Routledge\|edition= \|location= \|pages=48, 72, 124\|isbn = 0415352908}}; Kathman, David (2003). "The Question of Authorship". In''Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide''. Wells, Stanley (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 620, 625–626. ISBN 0199245223.<br />• Love, Harold (2002). ''Attributing Authorship: An Introduction''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194–209. ISBN 0521789486.<br />• Schoenbaum, ''Lives'', 430–40.<br />• {{cite book \|last=Holderness \|first=Graham \|authorlink=\|coauthors= \|title=The Shakespeare Myth \|year=1988 \|publisher=Manchester University Press \|edition= \|location=Manchester \|pages=137, 173\| isbn=0719026350 }}</ref>

			The declaration has been signed by prominent public figures, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices ] and ], in staged signing events followed by press releases in order to gain publicity for the goal of the petition.<ref> Accessed 6 November 2010.</ref>{{bsn\|date=July 2022}}
	A fundamental principle of those who question Shakespeare’s authorship is that most authors reveal themselves in their work, and that the personality of an author can generally be discerned from his or her writings.<ref>Schoenbaum, Sam, ''Shakespeare’s Lives'', 2nd ed(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991), 405, 411, 437; Looney, J. Thomas, ''"Shakespeare" Identified'' (NY: Frederick A. Stokes, 1920), 79-84.</ref> With this principle in mind, authorship doubters find parallels in the fictional characters or events in the Shakespearean works and in the life experiences of their preferred candidate. The disjunction between the biography of Shakespeare of Stratford and the content of Shakespeare's works has raised doubts about whether the author and the Stratford businessman are the same person.<ref>Derek Jacobi,"Introduction" in Mark Anderson, ''Shakespeare by Another Name'' Gotham Books, 2005, page xxiv</ref><ref>Twain, "Is Shakespeare Dead?"</ref><ref>Looney, ''Shakespeare Identified''</ref>
	== Declaration of reasonable doubt==
	On 8 September 2007, actors ] and ] unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt",<ref>http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/declaration</ref> on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, after the final matinee of "I Am Shakespeare" a play investigating the bard's identity, performed in ], England. The document was sponsored by the''Shakespeare Authorship Coalition'' and has been signed by over 1,600 people, including 295 academics, to encourage new research into the question. Jacobi, who endorsed a group theory led by the Earl of Oxford, and Rylance, who was featured in the authorship play, presented a copy of the Declaration to ], head of English at ].<ref>{{cite news\| url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E1DE143BF933A2575AC0A9619C8B63 \| work=The New York Times \| title=Arts Briefly \| date=10 September 2007 \| accessdate=23 May 2010 \| first=Lawrence \| last=Van Gelder}}</ref> The Declaration named twenty prominent doubters (past and present),<ref>http://doubtaboutwill.org/past_doubters</ref> including:

			== Doubters claimed in the declaration ==
	*]: "All the rest of vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures — an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts"<ref></ref>
			The declaration named twenty prominent figures from the 19th and 20th centuries who the coalition claim were doubters:<ref name=Declaration1/>
	*] (1902 – 2001, Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica.): ""Just a mere glance at pathetic efforts to sign his name (illiterate scrawls) should forever eliminate Shakspere from further consideration in this question — he could not write." "Academics err in failing to acknowledge the mystery surrounding 'Shake-speare's' identity … They would do both liberal education and the works of 'Shake-speare' a distinguished service by opening the question to the judgment of their students, and others outside the academic realm."
	*] (1867 – 1933, English novelist and playwright, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature. Best known for The Forsyte Saga and its sequels): Described Oxfordian J.T. Looney's "''Shakespeare Identified''" as "the best detective story" he had ever read.<ref>Quoted in Shakespeare's Lives, Schoenbaum (1970) 602, in a chapter on authorship doubters.</ref>
	*] (1904 – 1999, Noted intellectual, author, radio and television personality. Graduate of Columbia University, chief editor at Simon & Shuster): "Count me a convert… This powerful argument should persuade many rationale beings, who, well acquainted with the plays, have no vested interest in preserving a rickety tradition." <ref> The Mysterious William Shakespeare (Second Edition, 1992), Charlton Ogburn, front jacket.</ref>
	*] (1896 – 1979, Harvard government professor, counselor to six presidents, Rhodes Scholar and noted poet, he studied at Vanderbilt University, Oxford and the Sorbonne.): advocate of Earl of Oxford.
	*]: "I no longer believe that ... the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him"
	*] (Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1970 to 1994): "The Oxfordians have presented a very strong — almost fully convincing — case for their point of view. If I had to rule on the evidence presented, it would be in favor of the Oxfordians".<ref>Ogburn (1992 edition), p. vi.</ref>
	*]: "Other admirable men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast".<ref>Emerson's ''Representative Men'' (1850). In Works, 4:218</ref>
	*]: "Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism — only one of the 'wolfish earls' so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works".<ref>Whitman, Walt. "What lurks behind Shakespeare's historical plays?" In his ''November Boughs''. London: Alexander Gardner, 1889. p. 52.</ref>
	*] (1843 – 1916, author, literary critic, and major figure in trans-Atlantic literature. He wrote 22 novels, 112 tales, several plays and essays, and often contributed to The Nation, Atlantic Monthly,Harper's and Scribner's.): "I am 'sort of' haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."
	*] (1907 – 2004, High-ranking U.S. government official; co-founder of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Among his positions were Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Member of U.S. delegation to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Assistant Secretary of Defense for international affairs, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control.): "I believe the considerations favoring the hypothesis … are overwhelming"
	*] — Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston (1784 – 1865, British statesman, twice served as prime minister of the U. K.): ""Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he rejoiced to have lived to see three things—the re-integration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of the Shakespeare illusions." — Diary of the Right Hon. Mount-Stewart E. Grant <ref>Quoted in Shakespeare's Lives, Schoenbaum (1970) 553, in a chapter on authorship doubters.</ref>
	*]: "In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare.... Whoever wrote had an aristocratic attitude".
	*] (1907 – 1998, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987.): "I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. I know of no admissible evidence that he ever left England or was educated in the normal sense of the term. <ref>Letter to Charlton Ogburn, following a moot court trial of the authorship of Shakespeare's works at American University in Washington, D.C., in 1987. Powell's letter is quoted in the prefatory matter to Ogburn's The Mysterious William Shakespeare (Second Edition, 1992, vi).</ref>
	*] (The senior Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1975–present): "He never had any correspondence with his contemporaries, he never was shown to be present at any major event -- the coronation of James or any of that stuff. I think the evidence that he was not the author is beyond a reasonable doubt."<ref name="online.wsj.com">Bravin, Jess. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123998633934729551.html.</ref>
	*] (Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1986–present): "My wife, who is a much better expert in literature than I am, has berated me. She thinks we Oxfordians are motivated by the fact that we can't believe that a commoner could have done something like this, you know, it's an aristocratic tendency... It is probably more likely that the pro-Shakespearean people are affected by a democratic bias than the Oxfordians are affected by an aristocratic bias." "<ref name="online.wsj.com"/>

			*] (1835–1910): "All the rest of vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures – an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts"<ref name=MarkTwain/>
	==Skeptics through history==
			*] (1843–1913): "I am 'sort of' haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."<ref>Letter to Violet Hunt, ''Letters of Henry James'' (1920), Macmillan, vol. 1, p. 432. Per Google Books, retrieved 16 October 2010.</ref>
	===19th Century===
			*] (1819–1892): "Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—only one of the 'wolfish earls' so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works".<ref name=Whitman1889/>
	*] - author of "Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare's Plays?"
			*] (1850–1928), lawyer and first president of the ], an anti-Stratfordian organization.
	*] - Early proponent of the Group Theory, with Bacon as primary editor
			*Sir ] (1900–1971) – ] theatrical director and writer. First Artistic Director of the ].
	*] - 19th century doubter and early Bacon supporter
			*Sir ] (1889–1977): "In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. ... Whoever wrote had an aristocratic attitude".<ref name=Chaplin1964/>
	*] - founder of the Francis Bacon Society (1885)
			*Sir ] (1904–2000), actor, signatory to a petition requesting the ] to "engage actively in a comprehensive, objective and sustained investigation of the authorship of the Shakespeare Canon."
	*] - believed that Francis Bacon was the founding member of the Rosicrucians, a secret society of occult philosophers, and claimed that they secretly created art, literature and drama, including the entire Shakespeare canon, before adding the symbols of the rose and cross to their work.
			*] (1914–2003), historian: "The available evidence that the plays and poems were the work of William Shakespeare of Stratford is weak and unconvincing".
	*] - a British lawyer, politician, cricketer, animal welfare reformer and Shakespearean scholar
			*] (1842–1910), psychologist and philosopher: "The absolute extermination and obliteration of every record of Shakespeare save a few sordid material details, and the general suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness which ancient Stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which the spiritual quantity 'Shakespeare' has mingled into the soul of the world, was most uncanny, and I feel ready to believe in almost any mythical story of the authorship. In fact a visit to Stratford now seems to me the strongest appeal a Baconian can make."<ref>Attributed on the declaration website to a letter to ], 2 May 1902</ref>
	*] - US congressman, author of "The Great Cryptogram"
			*] (1856–1939): "I no longer believe that ... the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."<ref name=Freud1927/>
	*Dr. ] (January 1, 1854 – March 31, 1924) - an American physician, and exponent of the Baconian theory of Shakespearean authorship.
			*] (1904–1999), noted intellectual, author, radio and television personality. Graduate of Columbia University, chief editor at Simon & Schuster): "Count me a convert ... This powerful argument should persuade many rational beings, who, well acquainted with the plays, have no vested interest in preserving a rickety tradition."<ref name=Ogburn1992a/>
	*] (1848, Paris, New York – 1934) was an American educator and exponent of the Baconian theory of Shakespearian authorship.
			*] (1867–1933), English novelist and playwright, winner of the 1932 ]. Best known for ''The Forsyte Saga'' and its sequels. ] said that the late Galsworthy described Oxfordian ]'s ''Shakespeare Identified'' as "the best detective story" he had ever read. No such contemporary quotation by Galsworthy has been found.<ref name=Schoenbaum1970a/><ref>Posthumously attributed to Galsworthy in ] (1 May 1937). "Elizabethan Mystery Man". ''Saturday Review of Literature'', '''16''' (1): 11–15, p. 11.</ref>
	*] -
			*] (1902–2001), chairman of the board of editors of the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'': "Just a mere glance at pathetic efforts to sign his name (illiterate scrawls) should forever eliminate Shakspere from further consideration in this question – he could not write." "Academics err in failing to acknowledge the mystery surrounding 'Shake-speare's' identity ... They would do both liberal education and the works of 'Shake-speare' a distinguished service by opening the question to the judgment of their students, and others outside the academic realm."<ref>Attributed on the declaration website to a letter to Max Weismann, Director, Center for the Study of The Great Ideas, 7 November 1997</ref>
	*] - An english writer, he frequently clashed with Sir Sidney Lee and authorities at the British Museum over the Shakespeare authorship question.
			*] (1907–2004), High-ranking U.S. government official; co-founder of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Among his positions were ] for the State Department, Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Member of U.S. delegation to ], Assistant Secretary of Defense for international affairs, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control: "I believe the considerations favoring the Oxfordian hypothesis ... are overwhelming"<ref>Nitze, Paul, preface to Whalen, Richard, ''Shakespeare: Who Was He?: The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon'', Greenwood, 1994, p.ix.</ref>
	*] (1844-1900) - he gave credence to the Baconian theory in his writings
			*] (1784–1865), an ] nobleman who was a British statesman and who twice served as ]: "Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he rejoiced to have lived to see three things—the re-integration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of the Shakespeare illusions." – Diary of the Right Hon. Mount-Stewart E. Grant.<ref name=Schoenbaum1970b/>
	*] - German mathematician, he published two pamphlets supporting the Bacon theory in 1896 and 1897.
			*] (1896–1979), Harvard government professor, counselor to six presidents, Rhodes Scholar and noted poet, he studied at Vanderbilt University, Oxford and the Sorbonne; advocate of Earl of Oxford.
	*] (1878-1954) - American art collector. He established the Francis Bacon Foundation in California in 1937 and left it his collection of Baconiana.
			*] (1908–1999) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1970 to 1994: "The Oxfordians have presented a very strong – almost fully convincing – case for their point of view. If I had to rule on the evidence presented, it would be in favor of the Oxfordians".<ref name=Ogburn1992b/>
	*] - He was the first person to propose that the works of Shakespeare were by Marlowe, presenting a case for it in the preface to his 1895 novel, It was Marlowe: a story of the secret of three centuries
			*] (1907–1998), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987: "I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. I know of no admissible evidence that he ever left England or was educated in the normal sense of the term."<ref name=Ogburn1992c/>

	===~~20th~~ ~~Century~~===		=== Included with caveats ===
			*] (1803–1882) is included on the list along with an incomplete quotation that is interpreted as a statement of doubt: "Other admirable men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast".<ref name=Emerson1850/> However, Emerson did not doubt Shakespeare's authorship, nor did he ever make a statement to that effect.<ref>Churchill, 1959, pp. 68, 207</ref> In 2015, a caveat was added to his name on the list.
			*] (1915–1985) is included on the list on the basis of a comment taken from a collection of ] interviews: "I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away". In other interviews conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Welles expressed the orthodox opinion that Shakespeare wrote the plays: "He was a country boy, the son of a butcher, who'd made it into court. He spent years getting himself a coat of arms. He wrote mostly about kings."<ref>Bogdanovich, Peter. ''This is Orson Welles''. New York: Harpercollins, 1992, pp. 211–212.</ref> In the 1980s he said "The mystery surrounding Shakespeare is greatly exaggerated. We know a lot about his financial dealings, for example. He was brilliant in arranging his finances, you see. He died very rich from real-estate investments. The son of a bitch did everything! And finally he got what his father had always wanted—a coat of arms. His father was a butcher. And a mayor of Stratford."<ref>Biskind, Peter, ed. ''My Lunches with Orson'' (2013). Metropolitan Books, pp. 102–3. {{ISBN\|978-0805097252}}.</ref> His listing has since been amended to acknowledge that Welles was not an anti-Stratfordian for most of his life.

			==2015 changes==
	*] – researcher, author, art critic<ref> '' ''Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook.''</ref>
			In 2015, responding to criticism of the inclusion of some of the names on the list, the SAC removed two names, replaced them with two others, and revised the entries of two other names on the doubters list. The caveats were added to the entries on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Orson Welles. ] (1812–1870) was originally included on the list based upon an incomplete misquotation that was interpreted as a statement of doubt. Stage and film actor and director ] (1893–1943) was included on the basis of the lines he spoke as the lead character in the 1941 film, '']''. Both names have been removed from the list, but the entries remain online in the "past doubters" pages of the website with the heading "Removed from Past Doubters list".<ref></ref> These two names were replaced with ] and ].
	*] – British lawyer, Member of Parliament, Shakespeare scholar<ref></ref>
	*] - In 1923, he wrote "WAS MARLOWE THE MAN?"<ref>http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/webster.htm</ref>
	*] - author of ''The Murder of the Man who was Shakespeare'' (1955).
	*] - author of ''Shakespeare, Thy Name is Marlowe'' (1966).
	*] - author of ''Christopher Marlowe, the ghost writer of all the plays, poems and Sonnets of Shakespeare, from 1593 to 1613'' (1967).
	*] - author of ''The Shakespeare Epitaph Deciphered'' (1969) and ''The Life, Loves and Achievements of Christopher Marlowe, alias Shakespeare'' (1982).
	*Louis Ule, ''Christopher Marlowe (1564-1609): A Biography'' (1992).
	*] - author of ''The Story that the Sonnets Tell'' (1994) and ''Shakespeare: New Evidence'' (1996).
	*] - author of ''The Shakespeare Invention'' (1999).
	*] - ''Hamlet, by Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare'' - 2 vols. (2005) ()

			==Notes==
	*] – actor, director, writer, producer<ref>"I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don’t agree, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away." – Orson Welles, quoted in Beaton, Cecil and Kenneth Tynan, ''Persona Grata''. Putnam, 1954. p. 61.</ref>
			{{reflist\|refs=
	*] – British historian, biographer, novelist<ref>Bowen, Marjorie. Introduction to Percy Allen’s ''The Plays of Shakespeare and Chapman in Relation to French History.'' London: Archer, 1933.</ref>

			<ref name=BBC1>{{cite news\|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6985917.stm\|title=Actors question Bard's authorship\|work=]\|publisher=]\|date=9 September 2007}}</ref>
	*] – pioneer of psychoanalysis<ref>"I no longer believe that ... the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him. Since reading ''Shakespeare Identified'' by J. Thomas Looney , I am almost convinced that the assumed name conceals the personality of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford.... The man of Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has almost everything." – Sigmund Freud in 1937.</ref>
	*] – Shakespearean actor, president of the International Shakespeare Association 1974–2000<ref> Gielgud revealed himself "extremely sympathetic to the Oxfordian cause" (''Daily Mail''), and in 1996 signed a petition sponsored by the Shakespeare Oxford Society asking to have the claims for Edward de Vere given a full and fair hearing by the Shakespeare establishment.</ref>
	*] – historian, investigative journalist, researcher, author<ref>Ogburn, Charlton. EPM Publications, 1984.</ref>

			<ref name=Chaplin1964>{{harvnb\|Chaplin\|1964\|p=364}}</ref>
	===21st Century===

			<ref name=Declaration1>{{cite web\|url=http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/declaration\|title=Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare\|publisher=Shakespeare Authorship Coalition\|access-date=10 October 2010}}</ref>
	*] – journalist, researcher, author, astrophysicist<ref>Anderson, Mark.''''. Gotham, 2005 (revised paperback 2006).</ref>
	*] - Australian documentary film maker who, in 2001, made the TV film ''Much Ado About Something'' in which the Marlovian theory was explored.
	* - author of ''History Play'' (novel) (2005)
	*], Author of the Baconian work, ''The Shakespeare Code'' (2006)
	*] - author of ''The Marlowe-Shakespeare Connection: A New Study of the Authorship Question'' (2008)
	*] - author of ''Marlowe's Ghost: The Blacklisting of the Man Who Was Shakespeare'' (2008)
	*] -
	*] – U.S. Supreme Court Justice<ref name=wsj>Bravin, Jess. '']''. April 18, 2009.</ref>
	*] – author, critic, poet, artist<ref>Hope, Warren and Kim Holston. McFarland, 2009. p. 103.</ref>
	*] – academic, university English professor, Shakespearean scholar and author<ref> ''PlayShakespeare.com''. 29 October 2008.</ref>
	*] – film director, screenwriter, producer; producer and director of '']'' (2011)<ref>{{cite news\|url=http://screencrave.com/2009-10-09/roland-emmerich-on-his-shakespeare-film/ \|title=Roland Emmerich on his Shakespeare Film\|date=October 9, 2009\|publisher=''Screen Crave''\|accessdate=May 17, 2010}}</ref>
	*] – biographer, nonfiction researcher and author, essayist<ref>Farina, William. McFarland, 2005.</ref>
	*] – academic, university English professor, Shakespeare scholar, author<ref>Hope, Warren and Kim Holston. McFarland, 2009.</ref>
	*] – actor, director, producer<ref>In 1941, Howard produced, directed, and starred in '']'', in which he personally espouses Oxford's authorship of Shakespeare: .</ref>
	*] – British barrister, judge, author, Shakespeare scholar<ref> Humphreys, Christmas.''WhoWroteShakespeare.com''.</ref>
	*] – actor<ref name=slate>{{cite news\|url=http://www.slate.com/id/2252365/entry/2252874/ \|title=The Shakespeare Apocalypse\|last=Stevens \|first=Dana \|date=May 4, 2010 \|publisher='']''\|accessdate=May 18, 2010}}</ref>
	*] – actor<ref>Irons announced his Oxfordian convictions on the '']'' show.</ref>
	*] – Shakespearean actor, director<ref>Jacobi, Derek. </ref><ref>Thorpe, Vanessa. '']''. 9 September 2007.</ref>
	*] – British pedagogue, researcher, Shakespeare scholar, author<ref>Looney, J. Thomas. London: Cecil Palmer, 1920. </ref>
	*] – historian, author, biographer<ref>"The strange, difficult, contradictory man who emerges as the real Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is not just plausible but fascinating and wholly believable." McCullough's foreword to Charlton Ogburn's ''The Mysterious William Shakespeare''.</ref>
	*] – longterm high-ranking U.S. government official and Presidential advisor, ambassador<ref>Nitze wrote the foreword to Richard F. Whalen's (Praeger, 2008).</ref><ref>Nitze argued the Oxfordian case for the 1992 '']'' three-hour video dialogue, '''', chaired by ].</ref>
	*] – screenwriter<ref>{{cite news\|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/19/opinion/la-oew-orloff19-2010apr19 \|title=The Shakespeare Authorship Question Isn’t Settled\|last=Orloff\|first=John \|date=April 19, 2010 \|publisher='']''\|accessdate=May 18, 2010}}</ref>
	*] – actor<ref>Satchell, Michael. '']''. July 24, 2000.</ref>
	*] – Shakespearean actor and director, director of Shakespeare's ] 1995–2005<ref name=nyt>Niederkorn, William S. '']''. February 10, 2002.</ref>
	*] – U.S. Supreme Court Justice<ref name=wsj />
	*] – journalist, author, researcher, Shakespeare scholar<ref>Sobran, Joseph. Free Press, 1997.</ref>
	*] – U.S. Supreme Court Justice<ref name=wsj />
	*] – actor<ref name=nyt />

			<ref name=Emerson1850>Emerson's ''Representative Men'' (1850). In Works, 4:218</ref>
	==See also==

	*]
			<ref name=Freud1927>{{harvnb\|Freud\|1927\|p=130}}</ref>

			<ref name=Hackett2009>{{harvnb\|Hackett\|2009\|p=172}}</ref>

			<ref name=MarkTwain></ref>

			<ref name=NewYorkTimes1>{{cite news\|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E1DE143BF933A2575AC0A9619C8B63\|work=]\|title=Arts Briefly\|date=10 September 2007\|access-date=23 May 2010\|first=Lawrence\|last=Van Gelder}}</ref>

			<ref name=Ogburn1992a>{{harvnb\|Ogburn\|1992\|p=front jacket}}</ref>
			<ref name=Ogburn1992b>{{harvnb\|Ogburn\|1992\|p=vi}}</ref>
			<ref name=Ogburn1992c>Letter to Charlton Ogburn, following a moot court trial of the authorship of Shakespeare's works at American University in Washington, D.C., in 1987; quoted in {{harvnb\|Ogburn\|1992\|p=vi}}.</ref>

			<ref name=Schoenbaum1970a>{{harvnb\|Schoenbaum\|1970\|p=602}}</ref>
			<ref name=Schoenbaum1970b>{{harvnb\|Schoenbaum\|1970\|p=553}}</ref>

			<!-- Unused citation <ref name=BeatonTynan1954>{{harvnb\|Beaton\|Tynan\|1954\|p=98}}</ref> -->

			<ref name=Whitman1889>{{cite book\|last=Whitman\|first=Walt\|chapter=What lurks behind Shakespeare's historical plays?\|title=November Boughs\|location=London\|publisher=Alexander Gardner\|year=1889\|pages=52}}</ref>

			}}

	==References==		==References==
	<references/>

			* {{cite book\|title=Persona Grata\|first1=Cecil\|last1=Beaton\|first2=Kenneth\|last2=Tynan\|edition=2nd\|publisher=Putnam\|year=1954}}
	]
			* {{cite book\|title=My Autobiography\|url=https://archive.org/details/myautobiography00chaprich\|url-access=registration\|author-link=Charlie Chaplin\|first=Charlie\|last=Chaplin\|publisher=Simon and Schuster\|year=1964}}
	]
			* {{cite book\|chapter=Autobiographical Study\|author-link=Sigmund Freud\|first=Sigmund\|last=Freud\|year=1927\|others=J. Strachey translator\|editor=J. Strachey\|volume=21\|location=London\|publisher=Hogarth\|title=The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud}}
			* {{cite book\|title=Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths\|first=Helen\|last=Hackett\|publisher=Princeton University Press\|year=2009\|isbn=978-0-691-12806-1}}
			* {{cite book\|title=The Mysterious William Shakespeare\|edition=2nd\|year=1992\|first=Charlton\|last=Ogburn}}
			* {{cite book\|title=Shakespeare's Lives\|url=https://archive.org/details/shakespeareslive00scho\|url-access=registration\|first=Samuel\|last=Schoenbaum\|location=Oxford\|publisher=Clarendon Press\|year=1970}}

			== External links ==
			*, home of the .
			* {{cite news\|title=OSF's Nicholson signs 'Declaration of Reasonable Doubt'\|author=Bill Varble\|date=24 September 2010\|work=]\|url=http://dailytidings.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100924/NEWS02/9240306/-1/NEWSMAP}}

			{{Shakespeare authorship question}}

			{{Authority control}}

			{{DEFAULTSORT:Declaration of Reasonable Doubt}}
			]
			]
			]
			]

Latest revision as of 12:39, 6 January 2025

The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt is an Internet signing petition which seeks to enlist broad public support for the Shakespeare authorship question to be accepted as a legitimate field of academic inquiry. The petition was presented to William Leahy of Brunel University by the actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance on 8 September 2007 in Chichester, England, after the final matinee of the play I Am Shakespeare on the topic of the bard's identity, featuring Rylance in the title role. As of 23 April 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death and the original self-imposed deadline, the document had been signed by 3,348 people, including 573 self-described current and former academics. As of December 2022, the count stood at 5,128 total signatures.

The declaration has been met by scepticism from academic Shakespeareans and literary critics. For the most part, they disparage the idea that Shakespeare is a pseudonym for one or more individuals who wrote the works attributed to him and characterise the doubt as an exercise in the logical fallacies of argumentum ad populum (appeal to popularity or the appeal to numbers) and argument from false authority.

The declaration has been signed by prominent public figures, including U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, in staged signing events followed by press releases in order to gain publicity for the goal of the petition.

Doubters claimed in the declaration

The declaration named twenty prominent figures from the 19th and 20th centuries who the coalition claim were doubters:

Mark Twain (1835–1910): "All the rest of vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures – an Eiffel Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin foundation of inconsequential facts"
Henry James (1843–1913): "I am 'sort of' haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practiced on a patient world."
Walt Whitman (1819–1892): "Conceived out of the fullest heat and pulse of European feudalism—only one of the 'wolfish earls' so plenteous in the plays themselves, or some born descendant and knower, might seem to be the true author of those amazing works".
George Greenwood (1850–1928), lawyer and first president of the Shakespeare Fellowship, an anti-Stratfordian organization.
Sir Tyrone Guthrie (1900–1971) – Anglo-Irish theatrical director and writer. First Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival of Canada.
Sir Charles Chaplin (1889–1977): "In the work of the greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. ... Whoever wrote had an aristocratic attitude".
Sir John Gielgud (1904–2000), actor, signatory to a petition requesting the Shakespeare Society of America to "engage actively in a comprehensive, objective and sustained investigation of the authorship of the Shakespeare Canon."
Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914–2003), historian: "The available evidence that the plays and poems were the work of William Shakespeare of Stratford is weak and unconvincing".
William James (1842–1910), psychologist and philosopher: "The absolute extermination and obliteration of every record of Shakespeare save a few sordid material details, and the general suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness which ancient Stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which the spiritual quantity 'Shakespeare' has mingled into the soul of the world, was most uncanny, and I feel ready to believe in almost any mythical story of the authorship. In fact a visit to Stratford now seems to me the strongest appeal a Baconian can make."
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939): "I no longer believe that ... the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."
Clifton Fadiman (1904–1999), noted intellectual, author, radio and television personality. Graduate of Columbia University, chief editor at Simon & Schuster): "Count me a convert ... This powerful argument should persuade many rational beings, who, well acquainted with the plays, have no vested interest in preserving a rickety tradition."
John Galsworthy (1867–1933), English novelist and playwright, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature. Best known for The Forsyte Saga and its sequels. Charles Wisner Barrell said that the late Galsworthy described Oxfordian J. Thomas Looney's Shakespeare Identified as "the best detective story" he had ever read. No such contemporary quotation by Galsworthy has been found.
Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001), chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopædia Britannica: "Just a mere glance at pathetic efforts to sign his name (illiterate scrawls) should forever eliminate Shakspere from further consideration in this question – he could not write." "Academics err in failing to acknowledge the mystery surrounding 'Shake-speare's' identity ... They would do both liberal education and the works of 'Shake-speare' a distinguished service by opening the question to the judgment of their students, and others outside the academic realm."
Paul Nitze (1907–2004), High-ranking U.S. government official; co-founder of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Among his positions were Director of Policy Planning for the State Department, Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Member of U.S. delegation to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, Assistant Secretary of Defense for international affairs, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control: "I believe the considerations favoring the Oxfordian hypothesis ... are overwhelming"
Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), an Anglo-Irish nobleman who was a British statesman and who twice served as Prime Minister: "Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he rejoiced to have lived to see three things—the re-integration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of the Shakespeare illusions." – Diary of the Right Hon. Mount-Stewart E. Grant.
William Yandell Elliott (1896–1979), Harvard government professor, counselor to six presidents, Rhodes Scholar and noted poet, he studied at Vanderbilt University, Oxford and the Sorbonne; advocate of Earl of Oxford.
Harry Blackmun (1908–1999) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1970 to 1994: "The Oxfordians have presented a very strong – almost fully convincing – case for their point of view. If I had to rule on the evidence presented, it would be in favor of the Oxfordians".
Lewis F. Powell Jr. (1907–1998), Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987: "I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. I know of no admissible evidence that he ever left England or was educated in the normal sense of the term."

Included with caveats

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) is included on the list along with an incomplete quotation that is interpreted as a statement of doubt: "Other admirable men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast". However, Emerson did not doubt Shakespeare's authorship, nor did he ever make a statement to that effect. In 2015, a caveat was added to his name on the list.
Orson Welles (1915–1985) is included on the list on the basis of a comment taken from a collection of Kenneth Tynan interviews: "I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree, there are some awfully funny coincidences to explain away". In other interviews conducted in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Welles expressed the orthodox opinion that Shakespeare wrote the plays: "He was a country boy, the son of a butcher, who'd made it into court. He spent years getting himself a coat of arms. He wrote mostly about kings." In the 1980s he said "The mystery surrounding Shakespeare is greatly exaggerated. We know a lot about his financial dealings, for example. He was brilliant in arranging his finances, you see. He died very rich from real-estate investments. The son of a bitch did everything! And finally he got what his father had always wanted—a coat of arms. His father was a butcher. And a mayor of Stratford." His listing has since been amended to acknowledge that Welles was not an anti-Stratfordian for most of his life.

2015 changes

In 2015, responding to criticism of the inclusion of some of the names on the list, the SAC removed two names, replaced them with two others, and revised the entries of two other names on the doubters list. The caveats were added to the entries on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Orson Welles. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was originally included on the list based upon an incomplete misquotation that was interpreted as a statement of doubt. Stage and film actor and director Leslie Howard (1893–1943) was included on the basis of the lines he spoke as the lead character in the 1941 film, "Pimpernel" Smith. Both names have been removed from the list, but the entries remain online in the "past doubters" pages of the website with the heading "Removed from Past Doubters list". These two names were replaced with Hugh Trevor Roper and George Greenwood.

Notes

Van Gelder, Lawrence (10 September 2007). "Arts Briefly". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 May 2010.
"Actors question Bard's authorship". BBC News. BBC. 9 September 2007.
Hackett 2009, p. 172
"Home Page" Accessed 22 December 2022.
Farouky, Jumana (13 September 2007). "The Mystery of Shakespeare's Identity". Time. Archived from the original on 16 September 2007.
Kathman, David. "The Question of Authorship", in Wells, Stanley & Orlin, Lena C., Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, (2003) Oxford University Press, pp. 620–32: "in fact, antiStratfordism has remained a fringe belief system for its entire existence. Professional Shakespeare scholars mostly pay little attention to it, much as evolutionary biologists ignore creationists and astronomers dismiss UFO sightings" (621)
Alter, Alexandra (9 April 2010). "The Shakespeare Whodunit", The Wall Street Journal. James S. Shapiro: "There's no documentary evidence linking their 50 or so candidates to the plays."
Nicholl, Charles (April 2010). "Full Circle; Cypher wheels and snobbery: the strange story of how Shakespeare became separated from his works". The Times Literary Supplement. pp. 3–4. Gail Kern Paster, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library: "To ask me about the authorship question ... is like asking a paleontologist to debate a creationist's account of the fossil record."
Nelson, Alan H. (2004). "Stratford Si! Essex No!". Tennessee Law Review. 72 (1): 149–171: "I do not know of a single professor of the 1,300-member Shakespeare Association of America who questions the identity of Shakespeare ... Among editors of Shakespeare in the major publishing houses, none that I know questions the authorship of the Shakespeare canon".
Carroll, D. Allen (2004). "Reading the 1592 Groatsworth attack on Shakespeare". Tennessee Law Review. 72 (1): 277–294: 278–279: "I am an academic, a member of what is called the 'Shakespeare Establishment,' one of perhaps 20,000 in our land, professors mostly, who make their living, more or less, by teaching, reading, and writing about Shakespeare—and, some say, who participate in a dark conspiracy to suppress the truth about Shakespeare. ... I have never met anyone in an academic position like mine, in the Establishment, who entertained the slightest doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship of the general body of plays attributed to him. Like others in my position, I know there is an anti-Stratfordian point of view and understand roughly the case it makes. Like St. Louis, it is out there, I know, somewhere, but it receives little of my attention" (278–299).
Siebert, Eve (5 January 2011). "'Little English and No Sense': The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy". Skeptical Humanities.
"News from and about SAC" Accessed 6 November 2010.
"Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare". Shakespeare Authorship Coalition. Retrieved 10 October 2010.
Mark Twain Quotes
Letter to Violet Hunt, Letters of Henry James (1920), Macmillan, vol. 1, p. 432. Per Google Books, retrieved 16 October 2010.
Whitman, Walt (1889). "What lurks behind Shakespeare's historical plays?". November Boughs. London: Alexander Gardner. p. 52.
Chaplin 1964, p. 364
Attributed on the declaration website to a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 2 May 1902
Freud 1927, p. 130
Ogburn 1992, p. front jacket
Schoenbaum 1970, p. 602
Posthumously attributed to Galsworthy in Charles Wisner Barrell (1 May 1937). "Elizabethan Mystery Man". Saturday Review of Literature, 16 (1): 11–15, p. 11.
Attributed on the declaration website to a letter to Max Weismann, Director, Center for the Study of The Great Ideas, 7 November 1997
Nitze, Paul, preface to Whalen, Richard, Shakespeare: Who Was He?: The Oxford Challenge to the Bard of Avon, Greenwood, 1994, p.ix.
Schoenbaum 1970, p. 553
Ogburn 1992, p. vi
Letter to Charlton Ogburn, following a moot court trial of the authorship of Shakespeare's works at American University in Washington, D.C., in 1987; quoted in Ogburn 1992, p. vi.
Emerson's Representative Men (1850). In Works, 4:218
Churchill, 1959, pp. 68, 207
Bogdanovich, Peter. This is Orson Welles. New York: Harpercollins, 1992, pp. 211–212.
Biskind, Peter, ed. My Lunches with Orson (2013). Metropolitan Books, pp. 102–3. ISBN 978-0805097252.
Past Doubters: Removed from the List

References

Beaton, Cecil; Tynan, Kenneth (1954). Persona Grata (2nd ed.). Putnam.
Chaplin, Charlie (1964). My Autobiography. Simon and Schuster.
Freud, Sigmund (1927). "Autobiographical Study". In J. Strachey (ed.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 21. J. Strachey translator. London: Hogarth.
Hackett, Helen (2009). Shakespeare and Elizabeth: The Meeting of Two Myths. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12806-1.
Ogburn, Charlton (1992). The Mysterious William Shakespeare (2nd ed.).
Schoenbaum, Samuel (1970). Shakespeare's Lives. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

External links

Shakespeare Authorship Coalition, home of the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare.
Bill Varble (24 September 2010). "OSF's Nicholson signs 'Declaration of Reasonable Doubt'". Ashland Daily Tidings.

v t e Shakespeare authorship question
A series on alternative authorship theories for the works of William Shakespeare
Overview	History of the Shakespeare authorship question Shakespeare attribution studies Is Shakespeare Dead? Declaration of Reasonable Doubt
Theories	Baconian Crollalanza Derbyite Florio Lanier Marlovian Nevillean Oxfordian Prince Tudor Shaykh Zubayr
Candidates	List of Shakespeare authorship candidates Francis Bacon Emilia Lanier Christopher Marlowe Henry Neville William Stanley Edward de Vere
Proponents	Joseph Adler Mark Anderson Babette Babich Delia Bacon Ros Barber Charles Wisner Barrell Charles Beauclerk Alden Brooks Charles Champlin Jeffery Donaldson Ignatius L. Donnelly Bert Fields George Greenwood Joseph C. Hart Calvin Hoffman Derek Jacobi Richard Kennedy Abel Lefranc J. Thomas Looney Sandra Day O'Connor Charlton Ogburn Charlton Greenwood Ogburn John Orloff Orville Ward Owen John Denham Parsons Prince Philip Michael Rubbo William Rubinstein Mark Rylance Henry Seymour Joseph Sobran John Paul Stevens Roger Stritmatter Mark Twain Bernard Mordaunt Ward Alexander Waugh Walt Whitman James Wilde Robin Williams (writer)

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