Shakespeare was a fraud

There’s an interesting story about Shakespeare in the book Magic Words by Jonah Berger.

Shakespeare is considered the greatest writer in the English language but…

It turns out he didn’t write his plays by himself.

Is this why he never published a list of his works?

The main reason Shakespeare didn’t publish a list of his works is that he was afraid people would steal his works.

There was no copyright protection at the time so people would plagiarize your work.

But there’s more to the story…

Lewis Theobald was an avid collector of manuscripts and published extensively.

Theobald claimed Shakespeare wrote Double Falsehood while others said Theobald wrote it.

To add to the mystery, a similar play was attributed to Shakespeare and a co-author named John Fletcher.

Who wrote Double Falsehood?

Shakespeare, Theobald, or Fletcher?

Or was it written by all three over a period of time?

To settle the mystery, Jonah Berger used AI to analyze the writing.

BTW, Magic Words is the book of the month in our Mastermind Book Club which we will be discussing on March 23rd.