Who Are You, William Shakespeare? By Alain English

William Shakespeare, poet and the writer

The wonder of our stage, and an icon of the theatre

Will you help me, William Shakespeare?

I'm a little bit confused here

For all that I've heard said about you

I still feel I don't know you

I'm mystified and curious

In need of explanations

I hope that you can ease my mind

By answering my questions

To begin with:

 

Can you tell me why all the documents

You left behind about your life,

None of them mentions your writing career?

Can you tell me why your name is never spelt

'Shakespeare' on any of these documents?

 

Can you tell me why both your daughters grew up illiterate?

 

Can you tell me why we have no play-scripts, poems or even a letter

Written in your own hand?

 

Can you tell me why your will contains no mention of theatre,

plays, books or writing equipment of any kind?

 

Your fellows left behind proof that they were writers -

Why not you?

 

Why is there so little proof that you were you?

 

Can you tell me why none of the people who knew you

in Stratford connect you with being a writer?

 

Why did you never even stage a play in Stratford?

 

Why did none of your fellow writers offer personal tributes to you

while you were still alive?

 

Why, for a man of such exceptional talent, were you never buried in Poet's Corner?

 

Why did no-one say anything about you whatsoever when you died?

 

Why did we have to wait seven years after your death for the First Folio?

 

Why did the monument erected to you in Stratford not originally show you as a writer?

 

This baffling lack of evidence cannot be a coincidence

 

It seems clear to me

That you are not the person you've been built up to be

 

So it really comes back to: who are you William Shakespeare?

 

What was your story?

 

Why did you write these plays?

 

Why have you hidden for all these years behind someone else's name?

 

Why is it, according to the sonnets, you did not want to be remembered?

 

Were you one person, or were you many?

 

Now I wonder as I write this

If it's worth it, William Shakespeare?

 

Should the story stay unchanged

And is the truth better left undisturbed?

 

Now I am just one of a movement of doubters

Made up of writers, actors and scholars

 

Along with many other people

With an interest in the theatre

In the origins of the poems and the plays of William Shakespeare