Curtis Yarvin supports it, which fits with what I know of him, i.e. his self-conception as a new Machiavelli. Gasda points out the appeal theories like this have to people who subscribe to a stratified view of society: a place for everything and everyone in his place. The plays are about royals and great leaders. What would a commoner know of that?
This bothers me beyond the class snobbery angle. To say that Shakespeare's writings on high-born figures must have meant that he was a court regular is to reduce them to gossip. Read a few passages from, say, King Lear. Does that sound right to you?
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I remember years ago somebody positing the idea that Roger Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays. Every so often the question rises again with somebody better educated from a higher social class being proposed as the true (and secret) Bard. It's all nonsense and arrogant nonsense at that.
One might as well wonder how it is we know for sure that any author from antiquity actually wrote the works attributed to them. Did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales? How do we know if Dante really authored The Divine Comedy?
What it comes down to is the fact of his genius is almost inexplicable - he has spoken directly to the individual human being in the western world in the centuries since his death. His comedies, tragedies, and poetry had appeal to everyone who heard them and with that he transcended the ordinary, the dull and egotistical simpletons who prefer a Shakespeare in their own image, or in the image of what they would like themselves to be or imagine themselves to be.
You mean a line like this one? Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
Fashions change and new forms of arrogant nonsense are always arising. That one seems to have staying power, getting repeated every few years despite the lack of evidence. Obviously it tickles someone's vanity.
Yes, authorship for just about anyone working before 2000 could theoretically be disputed. The idea of 24/7 self promotion hadn't come into play yet, and there wasn't the technology for it anyway. Whether that made for better writing, it didn't seem to hurt, and for the most part there's no real doubt about who wrote what (with some exceptions, of course.)
His genius was inexplicable coming from him. Of course it would have been inexplicable coming from nearly anyone, regardless of their position in life. So how did he come up with it? Somehow he came to an understanding of human nature, a deep one.
Good example. A fool is at liberty to speak the truth.
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