Shakespeare was an Alien!

It’s the only possible conclusion, given what “scholars” tell you.

Historians know better. But literature “scholars” continue to be taken in by the most blatant and long-lasting fraud in human history. “Why” needs an answer. But “How we know”, can be covered in a couple of minutes.

Photo by Taha on Unsplash

That fact of the matter is that it is quite easy to be 100% certain that an uneducated townsman from Stratford had nothing whatever to do with the authorship of the greatest plays and poems in the English language. Even grade school students can get it — a fact that makes Shakespeare “scholars” all the more laughable.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate truth is that the world needs a good dose of science and real facts, these days. So the derision that such “scholars” bring to the academic community is all the more lamentable.

You don’t have to take my word on my word on the matter, either. A few thousand books have been written on this subject — many of them quite good. A dozen or more of them are favorites of mine. But in this article, I’m going to confine my references to two definitive books and a website. Taken together, they are sufficient to puncture forever the myth that a businessman from Stratford was the real author.

Note: This article contains Amazon affiliate links.

Shakespeare… Not!

Let’s talk a minute about “Shakespeare”, as literature scholars know him. In particular, let’s talk about the non-existent paper trail that historians have amassed for every other author of the time, including minor writers you never heard of:

• He was born to illiterate parents. (A story to admire, if it were true.)
• He married an illiterate woman. (Okay, it was forced. But still.)
• He never educated his daughter. (Huh?)
• In a lengthy will that enumerated everything he owned, he left no books, no library, no manuscripts, and no rights to published works — all of which would have been extremely valuable. And this from a man who sued a neighbor for a couple of shillings.
• There is no record that he ever traveled, or that he ever attended any local school or institution of higher learning.
• In his lifetime, no one in his hometown ever remarked on the fact that he came from there, or referred to him as a writer. (Highly unusual.)
• He wrote no letters to anyone, and no one wrote any letters to him.
• In the mass of letters saved from that time, no one ever wrote a letter saying anything about him, either— except for one invitation-to-visit that read “the man Shakespeare is here”. (Rather suspect phrasing, no? Why “the man Shakespeare”? Why not just, “Shakespeare?”)
• When a play he wrote was used to foment an insurrection (after being modified for that very purpose), no one named “Shakespeare” was ever brought to the Star Chamber, despite the fact that anyone and everyone even remotely associated with it found themselves before that tribunal, answering hard questions and fighting for their lives.

Learn more: Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem, by Diana Price

Was he an Alien?

Now, those are things we can document for every other author of the period, but not Shakespeare. But that’s just the paper trail. It gets worse. Given Stratford’s biography, it’s pretty clear that if that version of Shakespeare existed at all, he must have been an alien:

• He wrote completed manuscripts, with nothing crossed-out and no handwritten revisions.
• He left no partial manuscripts or works in progress
• He left no notes of any kind — not even a grocery list, or a to-do list.
• He had a vocabulary that was more the twice the size of his next closest rival (John Milton). An average vocabulary is 3,000 words. John Milton’s was a bit over 10,000. The next closest to him was 7,000. “Shakespeare’s” vocabulary was more than 20,000 words. Yet he didn’t possess a dictionary, and he never set foot in a university! (Here is the rudimentary analysis I did of his vocabulary, with word lists you can review yourself. Much more sophisticated studies have been done. They all reach the same conclusion.)
• He had in-depth knowledge of the customs of the royal court, and the foibles of the nobility. And he wrote about them — despite the fact that poking fun at the nobility was a sure route to the gallows (a fact that had been repeatedly demonstrated, by that time).
• He had complete mastery of some twenty or more highly specialized skills, including military strategy, naval technique, botany, biology, astronomy, the law, and the nobles-only sport of flying trained hawks. (Much of the extensive vocabulary comes from the use of terminology that is highly specific to those fields, used only by people who regularly practice those specialties.)
• He was able to include a multitude of specific details in his works about locations on the European Continent that he never visited.
• He was well-versed in Latin, Greece, French, and Spanish, and was somehow able to re-create stories from those languages that had not yet been translated, word-for-word, and plot-point by plot-point. (With variations, of course. But the original story was easily discerned.)
• He did all this from conversations he heard in pubs, while making a living as an actor in London, and at the same time suing people for pennies in Stratford.

Learn more: Is Shakespeare Dead? by Mark Twain

Conclusion

The only possible conclusion is that the Shakespeare literature researchers describe is an alien! Let’s examine the facts. Let’s talk about how he wrote, how he learned what he wrote, and when he wrote.

HOW He Wrote

• Mark Twain’s handwritten manuscripts are filled with crossed-out words and insertions. And as a writer, I can tell you that behind every published word of mine there are dozens of revisions.
• I can also tell you that the sequence of ideas I present always gets revised. (These days, it happens on the computer and you never see it. But earlier in my life, such changes consisted of circles and arrows and notes in the margins.)
• And for every published work of mine, there are many other notes & ideas, partial manuscripts, and works-in-progress that have never seen the light of day.
• The same can be said of every published writer, philosopher, and thinker throughout human history.
• But “Shakespeare”, alone among human beings, never did any of that. He wrote every story perfectly, from start to finish, without ever making a mistake. (Riiight… By the way, I’ve got some land in Florida to sell you. And it’s only slightly damp!)

How He LEARNED What He Wrote

• Shakespeare is said to have learned “everything he needed to know” from stories he heard in the tavern.
• After working all day and drinking in the pub all evening, he absorbed and retained every single detail of everything he ever heard.
• Somehow, he managed to make friends with and hear stories from the high nobility — someone he could only have met in the taverns he frequented, on the rare occasions that those nobles could be found there.
• He got them to talk about their travels, and the intricate, arcane details of life at court and their special skills — including activities that only the “noble born” were allowed to undertake.
• He also got them to talk about tiny details of the places they visited that few would even notice, much less remember.
• While he was at it, he got them to teach him half a dozen languages, and describe stories in those languages that had yet to be translated — in exhaustive detail, no less.
• Oh yeah. And they taught him how to write — how to make letters on paper, how to craft a play, and how to write poetry. (He’s said to have learned some of that at a local elementary school —although, again, there is no record that he ever attended.)

WHEN He Wrote

• Between work and the pub, presumably, he purchased the copious amounts of paper, ink, and quill pens he would need to author his prodigious body of work. (Given their expense, he probably didn’t to eat — yet another indication that he was almost certainly an alien.)
• Then, sometime in the middle of the night (the only time that was left) he wrote his manuscripts — dozens of them, all very long — and his poems.
• And wrote them from start to finish, with no corrections. And then he simply turned over finished masterpieces — arguably the greatest works in the English language— while inventing more words and adding more phrases to the language than anyone else in history.

“Shakespeare”. Really?

In short, Shakespeare never slept, he never forgot anything, he wrote without ever making an error, and he managed to acquire intricate details of places he never visited, books he never read, and activities he never participated in. How could he not be an alien?

Or maybe that all seems just a little far-fetched to you. Yes? It has seemed that way to many famous people in the past, you know. The list includes Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespearean actors, famous writers, supreme court justices, and other highly intelligent, highly respected people.

There is even a website (Doubt About Will) that highlights the most prominent of the thousands who have reached the same conclusion.

At that site, you can register a simple vote to say, yes, there is reasonable doubt that the man we generally think of is actually “Shakespeare”.

Because if writing were crime, we would never have convicted that man on the evidence we have.

(For a deeper look, check out my series of Shakespeare Authorship articles.)

About Eric

Eric is consumed with the great mysteries of life: How does the universe work? How do you connect with the unending energy that pervades the universe? How the heck do you swing a golf club? And like that. He is also fascinated by the mystery of who Shakespeare really was. Was he in fact a ringleader, and head writer? Why did he have to hide his identify? And why has the fiction persisted for so many centuries?

Learn more: The Many Facets of Eric