What could be more exciting than solving a mystery? What happened to the crew of the Marie Celeste? Is there a Bermuda triangle? What really happened in the Kennedy assassination? Who wrote Shakespeare's plays? Such detective work appeals to even writers, lawyers, and businesspeople who like to pursue Shakespeare as a hobby.

Despite several hundred years of scholarship, doubts still remain among some that the Stratford man wrote “The Collected Works of William Shakespeare.” Among the nonbelievers are Walt Whitman, Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Malcolm X, and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it simply: “I cannot marry the life to the work.”