![]() ![]() Henry James wrote to a friend in 1903 that he was "haunted by the conviction that the divine William is the biggest and most successful fraud ever practised on a patient world." Other doubters have included Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles and Sir John Gielgud.Īt heart, the Shakespeare debate is about more than missing records. ![]() Is it any wonder that controversy swirls around the authorship of the 154 sonnets and some 37 plays credited to him? Skeptics have long belittled the notion of a barely educated small-town boy who moves to London to work as an actor and is suddenly writing masterpieces of unrivaled beauty and sophistication. In fact, there's no hard evidence that Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon (1564-1616), revered as the greatest author in the English language, could even write a complete sentence. Not so much as a couplet written in Shakespeare's own hand has been proven to exist. Even if you're a regular visitor to London, it's probably never occurred to you to stop in to see William Shakespeare's original manuscripts at the British Museum or Library. ![]()
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