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The Shakespeare Authorship Question, the ongoing debate about whether the works attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon were actually written by another writer, or group of writers, attracted many notable authorship doubters since the subject was first introduced in the 18th century.

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. Of the more than 50 candidates that have been proposed, several claimants have achieved major followings and notable supporters. Major nominees include Edward de Vere, (17th Earl of Oxford), who has attracted the most widespread support since first being proposed in the 1920s, statesman Francis Bacon, dramatist Christopher Marlowe, and William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby), who—along with Oxford and Bacon—is often associated with various "group" theories.

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. 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.

On 8 September 2007, actors Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance unveiled a "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt", on the authorship of Shakespeare's work, after the final matinee of "I Am Shakespeare" a play investigating the bard's identity, performed in Chichester, England. The document was sponsored by theShakespeare 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 William Leahy, head of English at Brunel University. The Declaration named twenty prominent doubters (past and present), including:

• Mark Twain: "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"

• Sigmund Freud: "I no longer believe that ... the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him"

• Charlie Chaplin: "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".

• Harry A. Blackmun (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".

• Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Other admirable men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man in wide contrast".

• Walt Whitman: "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".

• John Paul Stevens (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."

• Antonin Gregory Scalia (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." "

References

1. McMichael, George (1962). Shakespeare and His Rivals, A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy. pg 56: New York: Odyssey Press. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
2. Charleton Ogburn,The Mysterious William Shakespeare: the Myth and the Reality, New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1984
3. James, Oscar, and Ed Campbell.The Reader's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare. (1966): p. 115.
4. Gibson, H.N. (2005). The Shakespeare Claimants: A Critical Survey of the Four Principal Theories Concerning the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays. Routledge. pp. 48, 72, 124. ISBN 0415352908. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Kathman, David (2003). "The Question of Authorship". InShakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Wells, Stanley (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 620, 625–626. ISBN 0199245223.
   • Love, Harold (2002). Attributing Authorship: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 194–209. ISBN 0521789486.
   • Schoenbaum, Lives, 430–40.
   • Holderness, Graham (1988). The Shakespeare Myth. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 137, 173. ISBN 0719026350. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
5. 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.
6. Derek Jacobi,"Introduction" in Mark Anderson, Shakespeare by Another Name Gotham Books, 2005, page xxiv
7. Twain, "Is Shakespeare Dead?"
8. Looney, Shakespeare Identified
9. http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/declaration
10. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C05E1DE143BF933A2575AC0A9619C8B63
11. Mark Twain Quotes
12. Ogburn (1992 edition), p. vi.
13. Emerson's Representative Men (1850). In Works, 4:218
14. Whitman, Walt. "What lurks behind Shakespeare's historical plays?" In his November Boughs. London: Alexander Gardner, 1889. p. 52.
15. ^ Bravin, Jess. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123998633934729551.html.