Conspiracies in the time of neck ruffs:

Just in time for his 459th birthday, new research suggests that people were doubting whether or not William Shakespeare actually wrote, you know, Shakespeare. 

Above: the grave in the Church of the Holy Trinity in which
Shakespeare's headless corpse rotates every time someone publishes
a new paper about how Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare.

The Internet: giving everyone a platform,
no matter how ill-informed, since 1983!

So just to be upfront, I am not an expert and only have a few lazy internet searches and a handful of books on the subject aimed at equally lazy laymen such as myself to go on, but I mean, seriously? This again? The paper, which was published but is evidently not yet available online--which is fine, because I'm pretty sure I won't be able to follow it--was written by Roger Strittmatter from Coppin State University in Maryland, and in it he uses a book by a contemporary of Shakespeare who thought that the Earl of Oxford was the actual playwright. 

According to The Guardian, the book--written by a guy called Frances Meres doesn't come out and say Shakespeare was secretly Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Instead, Strittmatter thinks Meres left an elaborate "logic puzzle" for scholars to untangle and discover that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford was writing under the name "Shakespeare."

If that sounds like some convoluted da Vinci Code nonsense,
that's the just because it's some convoluted da Vinci Code nonsense.

Pictured: the requisite amount of salt.

Which I mean, look, the internet is full of people chiming in on things they're not actually experts in, and I am 100% that guy right now. Yesterday, I was weighing in on Ninja Turtles. Take my opinion with the requisite amount of salt. Also, I have no personal stake in this whatsoever. Like, if someone digs up a confession in Shakespeare's own hand proving that he was actually the Earl, or Queen Elizabeth, or a couple kids stacked up in a coat, I will move on with my day. It doesn't change the plays or the influence Shakespeare has had in the world.

Pictured: the classic scene where the
cartoon lion cries out for vengeance.

But I feel like it's usually best to err on the side of the simplest solution. In this case that the person that's been credited for four hundred years as the writer of The Lion King, West Side Story, and Ten Things I Hate About You (what? It's Shrew. I don't make the rules) is indeed probably Shakespeare. Computer analysis has shown that he collaborated with other writers, and he may have even straight up stolen from some, but the simplest, least batty solution is that Shakespeare existed Roger Strittmatter is overthinking Frances Meres book a little.

But what do I know? It's not impossible, and I don't think people should stop asking the question of who wrote Shakespeare. I just think maybe people shouldn't get their hopes, thinking there's some elaborate, centuries-old puzzle just waiting for the right college professor to unravel the code.

But who knows? Maybe the entire Elizabethan Theatrical community
got together and cooked up a vast conspiracy designed to fool everybody
about the authorship for hundreds of years. For some reason.