Neville theory of Shakespeare authorship
The Neville theory of Shakespeare authorship contends that the English parliamentarian and diplomat Henry Neville (1564–1615) wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. First proposed in 2005, the theory relies upon perceived correspondences between aspects of Neville's life and the circumstances surrounding and contents of Shakespeare's works, interpretative readings of manuscripts purportedly connected with Neville, cryptographic ciphers and codes in the dedication to Shakespeare's Sonnets, and other perceived links between Neville and Shakespeare's works. In addition, a conspiracy is posited in which Ben Jonson attributed the First Folio to William Shakespeare to hide Neville's authorship. For authorial attribution of unknown authors, academics rely on title pages, testimony by contemporary poets and historians, and official records.
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