SOF Animated Shorts
Was William Shakespeare really the author of his plays, or was the greatest writer in English history hiding behind a pen name? Get ready for the real story of Shakespeare in this series of animated shorts.
In this introductory video, we explore the Shakespeare authorship question, one of the most fascinating literary mysteries of all time. While the traditional story places Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, some of history’s most influential thinkers, including Mark Twain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, and Sigmund Freud, questioned whether the man from Stratford could have written works like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet.
“Hamlet” is arguably the most famous play of all time — and one of the most mysterious. The true identity of the play’s author can help us to understand the many hidden meanings within “Hamlet”. And the biography Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, has fascinating parallels with the classic play’s plot and characters.
The intense political censorship of the Elizabethan era meant that almost all writers of the day wrote under pen names at one time or another. Scholars estimate that as much as 70% of all published writing during that time came out under a pseudonym. Was William Shakespeare a pseudonym for another writer?
