Was Shakespeare a Fraud?

     A recent CBS news article is captioned to stir up a hornet's nest. Anyone who suggests that Shakespeare was a fraud and didn't write all those exceptional plays and sonnets is criticising The Bard. Bard-bashers abound, however.
     Hollywood Director Roland Emmerich wants to destroy 400 years of pious literary teaching with his new movie "Anonymous."
     "The more and more I read, the more I think that William Shakespeare has not written these works, and actually had nothing to do with it," claims Emmerich. He suggests that the real author was the 17th Earl of Oxford.
     Columbia University Professor James Shapiro, who wrote "Contested Will," suggests that the film does not present any evidence. "We're an America that loves conspiracy theory," Shapiro explains. "We love to think there's a mystery, when the facts as we have them are far more extraordinary."
     When it comes to evidence, the argument is tilted on the side of the doubters and naysayers.
     Writers like Mark Twain--who argued that there was no evidence that Shakespeare had the education, especially the legal education, to write the famous plays--suggested firmly that he was not the author. Twain opined, admitting no proof, that Francis Bacon was the author. Other critics claimed that Christopher Marlowe was the author.
     While there may be controversy over authorship, there can be little argument over the beauty and majesty of English language, allegory and metaphor, in the works attributed to Shakespeare.
     Listen at YouTube to lines taken from Hamlet, adapted and applied to the musical Hair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTBKjtfd2w