The legacy of one man has reached the hearts of millions of people throughout the centuries. Men and women from all walks of life have read his poetic words and have been touched in a way that no other author has ever been able to duplicate. The works of William Shakespeare have never been forgotten, despite the fact that his plays and poems were written hundreds of years ago. Every one of his plays was written with a mastery unknown before his time and never seen again. Yet these plays have often become the topic of controversy as those involved in the debate have come to different conclusions regarding the exact meaning of Shakespeare's words. One single theme or passage of a play can create several different schools of thought. Therefore it is necessary to examine each play thoroughly and discover how different people understand the works of Shakespeare as well as the Bard himself. .
To understand why Shakespeare's works have so often been the subject of controversy, one must first realize that there has been a long standing debate over the actual authorship of the famous Shakespearian works. Some attribute his works to Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or to Edward De Vere the Earl of Oxford. The prime contender of these three to Shakespeare would be De Vere. Critics say that these men were far more likely to be able to write these ingenious plays due to their education and social standing. Shakespeare was only educated in grammar school. Yet it is important to note that the grammar schools of Shakespeare's days were quite different from that of today's schools. Shakespeare would have been educated in Latin and other highly intellectual subjects up until the point that he was a teenager. Some Oxfordians claim that because Shakespeare's name has been found to be .
spelled differently on several different works, it means that a different person wrote each work (Blum 112).