Give the lad his due.

So, 400 years since the death of Shakespeare and much is being written about him. And of course, the question of the authorship of his works comes to the fore again. So let's get this straight - during his life, and for many, many years after his death, there was absolutely no suggestion that he did not write the plays and poetry published under his name.  It was not in fact until the mid 1800s - a couple of centuries after his death - that people began to question how it could be that a person of such humble birth and upbringing could have written such magnificent works.  And that's it really - this was (and continues to be) class snobbishness, pure and simple. It's no coincidence that those put forward as the "true" authors of Shakespeare's works are (with the possible exception of Marlowe) all members of the aristocracy.  The idea that a lowborn lad from a no-account Midland village could produce such works of genius was anathema to a London-centric Victorian society with its rigid ideas on class and "knowing your place". Just keep in mind that his contemporaries had no doubt he was the author - and we shouldn't either.