Why Did William Shakespeare Controversy?

Everything was quiet, too quiet. As the two opposing sides face one another in the battle field, you can hear the wind howling in agony. This war has gone on for centuries and nobody knows when it will end. For as long as the truth isn’t revealed, no one is willing to back out. This is the scene that comes into my mind as I try to personify the two opposing sides of the Shakespeare controversy. For years now, the Stratfordians and Anti-Stratfordians fought. And their reason of fighting, the identity of William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, also known as the “Bard of Avon” or the “Swan of Avon”, was one of the greatest writers the world has ever known. Scarcity of information about him makes it hard to talk about the early stages of his
If it wasn’t Shakespeare then who was it? Is he someone we know? If so, then what was the reason he hid his identity? And so, the crazy search for the ”real” Shakespeare began. In the process many names of plausible Shakespeare surfaced, names like Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley, and many more. During the early 19th century, one of the newest candidates caught the eye of many notable advocates, one of which was Sigmund Freud, his name was Edward de Vere (Wikipedia, “History of the Shakespeare…”). Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, had everything that anti-Stratfordians were looking for. Having been kept as a ward of Queen Elizabeth, de Vere would surely have had culminated a vast amount of knowledge in literature, language, sciences, and, of course, hobbies and norms inside the royal court. Having studied law at Gray’s Inn, he also had a vast knowledge of the governing laws during their period of time. All of these were needed if you were to write one of Shakespeare’s plays (“A short life of
Shakespeare 's friends in the acting company would have also agreed to lie on his behalf and publicize the plays as by Shakespeare. Persons who knew Shakespeare well, like Ben Jonson, would have also went along with the make believe, writing verses that praise Shakespeare after his death in 1613. Shakespeare 's colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell, who supervised the publication of all of Shakespeare’s plays in a Folio volume in 1616, would have went along with the lie. All of these people had to be either deceived by the presumed cover up or, in many cases, accessories to the biggest lie of the century (“Stratfordian