Sir Derek Jacobi is a giant of stage and screen. That is no reason for giving credence to the baseless conspiracy theory, which he and Margo Anderson advance in their letter, that William Shakespeare did not write the works that bear his name (The Merry Wives of Windsor offers strong evidence that Shakespeare was not its author, 13 June). The proposition that the true author was Edward de Vere, an aristocratic wastrel and minor poet, is intrinsically absurd.
Why, after all, would a concealed author not just leave their name off the title page rather than adopt an allonym, with all the risks of exposure? In the 175-year history of this bogus controversy, no one has yet offered even a plausible theory for this notion, let alone a shred of documentary evidence to associate De Vere or any other putative authorship candidate with Shakespeare’s works.
