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Startling news? Well...

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For a bit of fun, head over to Shakespeare Geek (the link is on the right side, the first one under Interesting Blogs) and click on the title. Look for the first post for today (April 1), titled "Actual Shakespeare Letters Found?!" and read it. Be sure to click on the link provided at the end of the blog entry to see what is really going on. Just remember what day this is.

I don't want to spoil the surprise, but after you finish you will agree with me when I say that people in the past have gone to a lot of trouble to supply ANYTHING that could link William of Stratford to the author of the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare. Yes, Stratfordians would give their eye teeth (what does that expression mean anyway?) to be able to have even a millionth of what we Oxfordians have to link our candidate. The only recourse Stratfordians (like James Shapiro) have is to deny that the plays and sonnets can be autobiographical in any way or that they can tell us anything about what the writer read and knew about, even if they contradict themselves while doing it (again like Shapiro). It's kind of pathetic in its way.

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Note on the William Henry Ireland forgeries: Doug Stewart has written a novel about the Ireland scandal, The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly due out this month from DaCapo Press. 
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