The Shakespeare Fellowship Responds to Shakespeare Beyond Doubt

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust recently released Shakespeare Beyond Doubt to prove William Shakspere of Stratford wrote the works attributed to William Shakespeare. But, while over 70 documents exist about Shakspere from his lifetime . .

1. none identifies him as a writer of any kind, by anyone during his life or immediately after his death
2. none shows he was ever paid for writing
3. no manuscript of a poem or play in his hand survives
4. no letter in his hand survives
5. no evidence indicates he ever owned a book

The First Folio, published seven years after his death, was the first document that appears to connect 'William Shakespeare' with Shakspere.

The monument to Shaksper in the Trinity Church in Stratford now shows a writer with a quill pen in his hand--but it's not the one erected in the early 1600s. A sketch of the original shows a man with a drooping moustache holding a wool or grain sack--but no pen, no paper, no writing surface.

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