And other plays refer back to event in the 13th (King John) or 12th or 11th (MacBeth) Century -- and some refer back to events around 50 BC (Julius Caesar) or maybe even 5th? century Greece (Timon of Athens).
I'm actually not going to get into a debate with you on this. I view anti-Shakespeareanism as a combination of crankery and snobbery. Shakespeare's authorship is far better attested than than of almost any other playwright/poet of his day, with the possible! exception of Ben Jonson. I wouldn't believe in the authorship of the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or any of the other candidates if they found the manuscripts in their effects.
--- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> Actually, they aren't all later -- orthodox scholars
> date several as
> 1604 or earlier (and some aren't printed until the
> First Folio, well
> after William Shaksper of Stratford is dead).
>
> The important point is is that dating of the plays
> is largely
> conjectural. Since there are no autographs, at best
> we have a date of
> first printing. Scholars who believe the Stratford
> man (1564-1616)
> wrote them fit them into his biography (it's
> difficult) as well as they
> can, and then draw conclusions from the resulting
> chronology. (E.g.,
> the Ur-Hamlet cannot have been his, because he was
> too young; I think
> Oxford -- 14 years older -- did write it, as he
> wrote later versions --
> the first and second quartos -- through his life. It
> was his most
> personal and autobiographical play; that's why
> Hamlet's age seems to
> waver throughout.)
>
> In Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World (2004) he
> notes, without
> drawing the obvious conclusion, that several plays
> seem to refer to
> events a decade or more before their assigned dates
> of composition...
>
>
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > The Earl of Oxford died in 1604. Who wrote Hamlet,
> > MacBeth, Lear, Othello, Anthony & Cleopatra,
> Winter's
> > Tale, Measure for Measure, All's Well, 12th Night,
> and
> > The Tempest, all of which are later?
> >
> > --- "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford
> >> born April 12, 1550, Castle Hedingham, Essex,
> Eng.
> >> died June 24, 1604, Newington, Middlesex
> >> ...
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