I appreciate reading a variety of intelligent and well-supported viewpoints. Unfortunately, this article omits whatever facts don’t support Waugaman’s conspiracy theory, and the resulting article is, at best, misleading.
Let’s start with the fact that Oxford died in 1604, and Shakespeare kept writing plays for another decade (some of them co-written). It’s tough to fool a co-writer. Tougher still to be a ghost co-writer.
Given that every candidate commonly put forward as the true author of Shakespeare’s works is noble/royal, such claims that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays smack of an ugly elitism denying the possibility that ordinary people can be geniuses. Such theories also cherry-pick evidence and ignore everything we know about theatre and early modern history.
I find it irresponsible to not at least offer a rebuttal by a Shakespeare expert (which I certainly am not). If PAW printed an article by a flat-earther or moon-landing-denier, or, to draw on a more recent example, an advocate of treating COVID with hydroxychloroquine, I assume that such an article would be put in context with a better-supported, fact-based rebuttal. Shakespeare deserves no less.
Reliable Shakespeare information can be found at shakespeareauthorship.com.