There are two types of problems in attributing works to authors, consistent over time, but especially acute in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. First, we do not often have much information about people, making it hard for us to reconstruct what they were like and so to decide whether they actually wrote what has been attributed to them. All too often decisions are made based on the assumption that a particular work could or could not have been written by someone because it bears no resemblance to the purported author of that work. Second, looking at the problem from the other way round, attributions are not always precise, safe or even made at all, so we often do not know whether we can assume that a work was really written by the author we think is responsible. And this is before we deal with more philosophical problems of authorship and the attribution of an author to such common sentences as ‘I love you’; ‘Hear your good father, lady’; or, ‘I have forgotten my umbrella.’ In theorizing Shakespeare's authorship we need to consider both sides of the question, before drawing to a conclusion. The evidence will demonstrate, I think, that what we do not know is often much more significant than what we do know and any case that we make about authorship has to consider ignorance as well as knowledge.

It is often argued that the gaps in our understanding of Shakespeare's life are particularly unusual. In an online blog discussion about the authorship question, William Rubinstein asked what looks like a series of pointed questions to his opponents:

Anyone wishing to suggest alternative nominees for the authorship of Shakespeare's works needs to disprove everything that goes to show that they were written – sometimes in collaboration with other writers – by the William Shakespeare who was baptized on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon and was buried there on 25 April, 1616. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate that there is an abundance of such evidence and to set out some of the more significant items.

What is usually taken to be the first printed reference to Shakespeare comes in a book named Greene's Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance of 1592, written ostensibly by the popular playwright, poet and prose writer Robert Greene, but possibly in part or in whole by Henry Chettle. In it Greene on his deathbed portrays himself, or is portrayed by Chettle, as attacking an ‘upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes fac-totum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.’ There are two strong reasons to identify the object of attack with Shakespeare. One is that the words ‘Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide’ parody a line from Shakespeare's play Richard Duke of York (Henry VI Part Three) in which the Duke of York inveighs against Queen Margaret in the words ‘O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!’ (1.4.138). Another reason is the apparent parody of the name Shakespeare in ‘Shake-scene’. Moreover, soon after the book appeared Chettle published Kind Heart's Dream with a preface in which he offered an apology for not having (presumably in his capacity as publisher or printer) toned down the criticism made in the earlier book. He says that two men had been offended by the attack. He cares nothing for what one of them (usually supposed to be Christopher Marlowe) thinks, but regrets having offended the other, ‘because myself have seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes. Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious [skilful] grace in writing that approves [demonstrates] his art.’

Christopher Marlowe has been one of the more popular candidates put forward by ‘anti-Stratfordians’ as the true author of works attributed to William Shakespeare. He has one great advantage over other contenders in that he is a major poet and dramatist in his own right. Against this he has one pressing disadvantage, which is that he was killed in the year 1593, and was therefore dead when most of Shakespeare's plays were written. His proponents (‘Marlovians’) have continously addressed these two aspects of his claim, seeking on the one hand to emphasize his poetic fitness for the role, and on the other to disprove, or anyway to challenge, the historical record of his inconveniently early death. Their default theory is that the apparent death of Marlowe was an elaborate hoax enabling him to disappear to the continent, thereby escaping charges of heresy then being levelled at him. They also note an apparent chronological neatness: the first publication bearing Shakespeare's name – the narrative poem Venus and Adonis – went on sale just a few weeks after Marlowe's death or disappearance.

The Marlovian claim has not been rewarded with any general acceptance, but its propagandists did score a notable victory when they persuaded the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey to permit the inclusion of a question mark by Marlowe's death-date on a commemorative stained-glass window installed at Poets’ Corner in 2002.

The ‘Declaration of Reasonable Doubt’ is a petition whose signatories assert that there is reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare was the true author of the plays attributed to him. First launched in 2007 and principally authored by John M. Shahan, the Declaration has two principal aims: to petition for the authorship question to be treated as a serious academic topic and taught as such in schools and universities; and to present anti-Shakespearians as reasonable people. Since its launch, the Declaration has attracted over 2,000 signatories, among them university professors, Supreme Court judges and well-known actors. The Declaration is primarily an online document, although hard copies have been produced for highly publicized signing events in Los Angeles, Portland and, in the UK, Chichester. However, it is much more than just a document. The website, doubtaboutwill.org, is also a focus for anti-Shakespearian sentiment, and the organization behind both, the Shakespeare Authorship Coalition (SAC), has emerged as the organized voice of anti-Shakespearians, who may not agree on who did write the plays, but can agree on who didn't.

In his book Contested Will, James Shapiro praises the Declaration for its inspired title and ‘skilfully drafted’ text. Shapiro does not critique the Declaration, and instead sets out his case for Shakespeare in the following chapter. The SAC's response, published on the Declaration website, thanks Shapiro for his generosity, and then attacks him for not engaging with the Declaration's arguments. This chapter will similarly disappoint SAC readers looking for a thorough, point-by-point rebuttal. My purpose here is to consider the Declaration and its aims, to evaluate its success and to look more closely at the people who have signed it, particularly academics.