[John Whitworth]

Quick, before it goes. There is another gathering of the coven led by the grandson of Evelyn Waugh and some Hungarian over on The Spectator online. This one will just run and run.

The Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, they are all there. Myself, I think the plays were all written by Oscar Wilde when he was in Reading Jail.

[Ann Drysdale]

I have no doubt in my mind that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. That is a fact.

The snarling dogfight over "who" Shakespeare "was" is a different matter entirely.

It's a bit like the visits of minority religious groups who come knocking and persuading and insisting that their version of the truth is truer than anyone else's. Sometimes I engage them on the doorstep with textual references and encourage them to explore logical extensions to their thinking. At other times I can't be arsed.

I am too busy following my conviction that the augury uttered by the weird sisters in the Scottish Play is based on folk memory, that the battle of Mons Graupius did, indeed take place - at Dunsinane - in the time of Agricola, and, moreover, that the first Tay Bridge disaster occurred as part of the subsequent withdrawal of the occupying troops.

Let me show you the relevant pages of William Stewart's metrical version of Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia ...

[Michael Juster]

I'm with you. The anti-Shakespeare crew tends to have a dollop of class snobbery, and doesn't understand that a graduate of a quality "grammar school" in the late 16th century had a far more thorough schooling in the classics than today's undergraduate classics major. The alternate theories generally have to go through contortions to explain why their favorites wrote plays when they were dead or 12.

I do think, too, that he was raised in a Catholic household, although I am not persuaded he was a believer in any faith.

[John Whitworth]

The book to read on Shakespeare's education is 'The Elements of Eloquence' by Mark Forsyth, which I wholeheartedly recommend. Ann and Michael, you would both love it.

[Shaun J. Russell]

I think the whole idea of Shakespeare not being Shakespeare is ridiculous, and can be filed alongside other claims such as how the moon landing was faked, or how Princess Di was assassinated by Arabs. It's pure, unfounded sensationalism.

I'd be curious, though, to see how the Shakespeare naysayers address the myriad "Will" puns throughout the Sonnets.

[Roger Slater]

The problem is, the plays are too good for anyone to have written. Hence the skepticism that it could have been Shakespeare, and hence our own skepticism that it could have been someone else.