Article: Justices rule Bard is not to be denied

WASHINGTON Three Supreme Court justices, stepping a bit outside their jurisdiction, ruled Friday that William Shakespeare did indeed write the plays for which the world has given him credit.

Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens, participating in a rare moot court debate at American University Law School, ruled against a Shakespearean contemporary - Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford - as the likelier author of "Hamlet," "Romeo and Juliet" and "King Lear."

Controversy over who wrote Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems has simmered for a century and reheated with the 1984 publication of The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, who ...

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