His only alleged connection to the plays came seven years after his death in the tribute by Ben Jonson in the First Folio.

FORBES: Yes, Shakespeare Really Did Write Shakespeare

Ben Jonson will appear a line after a popular instant coffee blend has been mentioned, Dante will be found next to a mime artist, Marcel Marceau, and Lawes himself figures auditioning for Ronnie Scott.

ECONOMIST: Hard work-but worth it

Few historians understood how people outside the nobility functioned, but there was a thriving middle class able to give its progeny a classical education in public schools, of which Shakespeare and fellow literary luminary Ben Jonson were beneficiaries.

FORBES: Bard En Garde: Jousting With The Doubters

There was little awareness of how other classes of people in the era functioned, including a thriving middle class able to give its progeny a classical education in public schools, of which Shakespeare and fellow literary luminary Ben Jonson were beneficiaries.

FORBES

Yes, documents from 400 years ago could be lost, yet we have letters from Thomas Nashe, Philip Massinger, Gabriel Harvey, Samuel Daniel, George Peele, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and William Drummond, Anthony Mundy, John Lyly, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe and others, many of them lesser writers.

FORBES: Yes, Shakespeare Really Did Write Shakespeare