Dissenting Voices

  Not only is there much more activity lately on the subject of who really wrote the works of Shakespeare, but those who believe in the conspiracy theory (someone other than the Bard of Avon did the writing) have some pretty impressive credentials.

    Mark Rylance is presently starring on Broadway in the hit play Jerusalem.  It opened recently and got raves from all the major reviewers.

    Mr. Rylance was the artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London for ten years.  (It's hard to get more "Shakespearean" than that.)  He is one who (surprisingly) believes that Actor Shakespeare did not write the works.  (Just a side note.  Mr. Rylance sent me a very thoughtful note recently stating his appreciation for receiving a copy of my novel The Shakespeare Conspiracy.)

    The easiest way to see the growing list of "truthers" is to go the web site for the book: www.TheShakespeareConspiracy.com.  There is a section there containing the list of non-believers (though they don't all agree on who actually did write the works.   They only agree that the actor named Shakespeare did not.)

Here are a few of the more famous "truthers."  To see the full list, check the web site.

Sir Derek Jacobi – Shakespearian actor, who is starring in the upcoming (September 30 release) movie Anonymous, which deals with the theory that Edward DeVerre, the 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the works of Shakespeare.

Jeremy Irons – American actor, presently starring in the Showtime TV series The Borgias.

Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) Samuel Langhorne Clemens, the famous American writer, humorist, satirist, lecturer, best known for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Orson Welles, (1915 – 1985) actor, writer, director and producer best known for the landmark movie Citizen Kane and the panic-causing radio program War of the Worlds.

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) — Viennese psychotherapist, commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis."

Charles "Charlie" Chaplin (1889 – 1977) — silent film actor. “The Little Tramp.”

Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) — Foremost novelist of the Victorian era, and widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language.

Sir John Gielgud (1904 – 2000) — English theatre and film actor, who starred and directed in many Royal Shakespeare Company productions at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) — American Romantic poet, essayist, journalist and humanist, famous for his Leaves of Grass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) — American essayist, poet, and original formulator of the philosophy of Transcendentalism.

(Sir William) Tyrone Guthrie (1900 – 1971) — Tony Award-winning British theatre director who established the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Henry James (1843 – 1916) — American-born author, literary critic, who wrote 22 novels, 112 tales, several plays and essays,

Leslie Howard (1893 – 1943) — English stage and film actor and Academy Award nominee, best known as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and Professor Higgins in Pygmalion.

Harry A. Blackmun (1908 – 1999) — Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994

Clifton Fadiman (1904 – 1999) — Noted intellectual, author, radio and television personality, oft-quoted wit.

Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907 – 1998) — Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1972 to 1987.

Cecil Beaton – Famous Broadway costume and scenic designer whose works include My Fair Lady on Broadway and movie.

Sandra Day O’Connor – U.S. Supreme Court Justice

John Paul Stevens – U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Mortimer J. Adler -- University of Chicago Editor of “The Great Books of the Western World.”

Michael York – Actor and author of A Shakespearean Actor Prepares

William Y. Elliott (1896 – 1979) — Harvard government professor, counselor to six presidents; a Roosevelt braintruster; a Rhodes Scholar and noted poet.

John Galsworthy (1867 – 1933) — English novelist and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1932. He is best known for The Forsyte Saga.