SOURCE: "Such a Deadly Life," in The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984, pp. 23-37.

In this essay, Ogburn reviews the public documents connected with "Shakspere of Stratford, " suggesting that among the baptismal records, marriage licenses, legal proceedings and wills, there is a lack of evidence demonstrating that the man from Stratford was the literary genius behind the works attributed to Shakespeare.

Orthodox writers assert that much is known about the man they conceive to be Shakespeare, more, indeed, than about all but one of his fellow playwrights. In two centuries, legions of scholar-sleuths (one of whom alone combed a collection of three million uncatalogued documents) have in fact, in a literary dragnet of unparalleled scope, come up with an extensive assortment of facts about the Stratfordian. We find it enlightening to review these to see what activities are indicated for the purported...