Who Wrote Shakespeare

Against Bean-Counters and Sun-Slappers

As usual, I’m late to the party.

A few months ago, people on Substack were arguing about whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. There’s a whole conspiracy, it turns out.

I don’t know anything about these people or their theories. I don’t really care to find out, to be honest. It’s like someone telling you that Einstein’s iconic hair was actually a wig, and you’re too lazy to look into the evidence they so carefully put together.

First of all, no. Second, who cares?

This is not really about refuting critics who, by the way, are decidedly not Shakespeare.

But it did all get me thinking about what sort of person who would hope genius like that didn’t exist: It must have been written by this or that fellow from Oxford — Shakespeare, low class as he was, didn’t have access to the proper resources.

See, personally in my life, I see genius pour out of morons, and I also see people with gigantic educations babble on and on, signifying nothing but sound and fury. Genius is a spirit that humiliates us before it can channel through us to create something glorious. If it will even do that.

People who spend their lives scrutinizing the works of genius, learning how to dot I’s…