The Sudden Flurry of Conspiracy Theories

When I published my novel, The Shakespeare Conspiracy, there were hardly any comments flying around about other conspiracies.

Today?  Not true.  The last six months have filled the air with them.  And MANY of them are about Shakespeare.  (Come on.  Does anyone still believe that unknown actor from Stratford wrote the stuff?)

The candidates for who really wrote those plays and poems is growing and growing.

I think my novel has enough factual information to prove it was Christopher Marlowe.

But, a myriad of other names flood the field:

            Francis Bacon

            Edward DeVerre, the 17the Earl of Oxford  (Note: he’s choice de jour of the movie coming out October 8, called Anonymous.)

            Sir Walter Raleigh

            Queen Elizabeth I

            Last week I read about some living writer added to the list. (Oh, how?)

            And on and on…

If you go to this site, you can watch more than dozen videos all proclaiming that Shakespeare didn’t write those plays.  The site also includes my video about that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkz_PgESqOk&

But Shakespeare conspiracies are only part of the new flurry. 

The latest one concerns Prince William and Prince Harry being related to almost every celebrity in the last four-hundred years – including the great Bard of Stratford.

There’s a web site entitled Famous Conspiracies.  Here are their 2011 top ten most popular conspiracies – in rank order:

            UFOs are real.

            The Destruction of the World Trade was plotted by the U.S. government.

            Elvis is still alive. (Well, we all know that.)

            Bin Ladin is not really dead.

            The moon landing was faked and filmed in New Mexico

            Paul McCartney is really dead. (I had never heard that one.)

            President Obama was born in Kenya. (When will they ever get off of that?)

            Shakespeare didn’t really write those plays. (Well, big news, huh?)

            The Mafia and J. Edgar Hoover had President Kennedy killed.

            There is a Zion plot to take over the world. (Has anyone ever heard that one before?)

And depending on which of the above theories you consider, some can appear quite stupid (Elvis) while others could really be true. 

But many believer in some of these conspiracy theories are not nuts or flakey people.  Some really big, big, smart names are among them.

Hey, that sounds like a good topic for the next blog.  Why not?