Homer composed The Iliad. No one has ever doubted his authorship. Yet, to accept Shakespeare as the author of the most poetic masterpieces in the English language has caused endless, and many times furious and vindictive, debates. There are those who say that an uneducated man could no more write Hamlet than a Russian serf could have penned War and Peace. Yet, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, who didn't have university degrees, were monoliths of their time, as was the self-taught Abraham Lincoln.