Who was Shakespeare?....

Ever since I opened Mr. Books about six or so years ago every so often an old fellow pops his head in the door of the shop and starts talking to me about Shakespeare and how it's his belief that the man history credits with writing the timeless great plays wasn't actually the real author. He goes on and on (and on) about how it was probably one of about three or four diffferent men, all of them of noble birth. My customer, Michael, expresses that his favoured candidate is one William Drayton who happens to be his distant direct ancestor. He does rant on a bit, well okay then alot, but I've always suspected that he wasn't just slightly crazy and hoped that he did actually know what he was going on a about. Certainly, from what little I knew on the subject, I understood that there was at least a grain of truth in his argument. It wasn't the first time the subject had been debated. Now they've only gone and brought a film out about the subject haven't they. Anonymous, which premiered yesterday, postulates that the man William Shakespeare was just an actor, and an illiterate one at that, the real playwright actually having been Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford. So maybe my slightly barking mad customer Michael Drayton isn't so far off the mark. Trouble is, whilst there's no concrete proof that Shakespeare was Shakespeare of Stratford Upon Avon, or for that matter Shakspere or Shakes- peare, equally there's no hard evidence that it was De Vere or Drayton, Christopher Marlowe or someone else. The debate will go on probably forever but the film is, by all accounts, well worth watching....