As we have seen in our earlier articles, Was Shakespeare A Fraud? - The Six Scrawled Signatures and Why Shakespeare Was a Fraud - The Top 10 Arguments, we have found it very hard to reconcile Shakespeare's background, education and heritage with the literary genius expressed within his plays and other works.
With illiteracy prevalent within his own family - both his parents and both of his own children being illiterate - together with NO original documentary evidence anywhere of manuscripts, plays or indeed any letters from Shakespeare to anyone, we have to even express concern that he may not have been even literate.
Now this is clearly a controversial position for the established scholars to reconcile and accept.
The Stratfordians, as they are called, rely upon the status quo to protect their position - saying the burden on proof is on others to disprove Shakespeare wrote his own plays rather than them prove he wrote the plays.
They argue the performance of the plays over the last 400 years provides the groundswell of opinion and evidence that he did.
So if Shakespeare didn't have the profile to write his own plays who do scholars and others believe did? Shakespeare's position as the powerhouse of English Literature was at its strongest in the 19th Century and this is when the authorship debate began to take off.
With his popularity, came doubt as people tried to understand how an uneducated man with illiterate parents and illiterate kids could write such beautiful works.
In trying to consider the candidates, we have to be aware of the logistical issues that we have to face as a result of dealing with Elizabethan times - some four hundred years ago.
We need to understand that Elizabethan records fall significantly of our record keeping today and with the passage of time and disasters in between - for example the Great Fire Of London in 1666 - many records that could have provided us with accurate answers were unfortunately not created, have been lost or worse been destroyed.
So as a result, the detective story goes on, based upon circumstantial evidence, anecdotes and pure logic used to try and identify who Shakespeare really was.
Over the years there have been a variety of contenders put forward by scholars and non-scholars alike over the years ranging from Elizabeth 1st through to Sir Walter Raleigh and a variety of relatively unknown writers of the time - about 77 in total.
In general the literature comes down to three key contenders, who are categorised into 3 principal schools of thought: The Marlovians.
The Marlovians support Christopher Marlowe - an established and significant playwright in Elizabethan times, whose reputation was going from strength to strength as a writer but from worse to worse as a man, with a history of violence just beneath an arrogant surface.
His Cambridge education, complemented by a Masters, provides strong support for the intellectual capability to write.
The problem, however, is that Marlowe officially died in a bar fight in 1593, according to the official coroners report that ws found in 1925.
So he died some 20 years before Shakespeare's last play was performed for the first time - in 1613.
The Marlovians believe, without any formal proof, that Christopher Marlowe's death in 1593 was actually staged and that he lived on in exile in Italy to write Shakespeare.
The Baconians - Francis Bacon was a published poet and very closely linked with the Court of Elizabeth - being William Cecil's nephew.
Cecil was to become Lord Burghley, Lord Chancellor after heading up the English Secret Service.
Again Bacon's educational background was very strong to support his ability to write Shakespeare, with his intimate knowledge of the Court of Elizabeth and his legal training at Gray's Inn considered very strong to support the context of many of the plays.
Many of the Baconian arguments have focused upon the very content of the plays and sonnets saying they reflect very closely the life of Francis Bacon, himself.
Equally he is the only major contender who was still alive when the First Folio (Shakespeare's first official publication) was published (in 1623 - 7 years after Shakespeare's death).
The Oxfordians - The Oxfordians support Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl Of Oxford as the author of Shakespeare.
He was a nobleman in Elizabeth's court and an established poet.
His University of Cambridge education together with his legal background and training at Gray's Inn provide intellectual support for his authorship.
Like Francis Bacon he had very strong inks by marriage to William Cecil, who was to become the Lord Chancellor - again giving credence to the context of many of Shakespeare's plays.
The significant problem with the Oxfordian argument is that he died in 1604 - but the Oxfordians look at the notion that all the plays were written before his death and were subsequently performed and published - perhaps a convenient argument to support their thesis - or perhaps they employed "ghost writers".
In general terms, the Authorship Debate is a fascinating detective story trying to piece together all the pieces of circumstantial evidence that exists.
Reasonable people are allowed reasonable doubt and in our blog Was Shakespeare A Fraud? we will be adding to the controversy.
Please join in and lets try and find out who Shakespeare really was.