My understanding is that he copied Cervantes. Just before he died he was working on a Cervantes play.
I don’t know where you get your crazy ideas from.
Problem: Cervantes did not speak English.
Shakespeare did not speak Spanish.
Were there any translations available to Shakespeare?
I can tell you that the first translation of Cervantes was not available to Shakespeare until after he died.
Dear Hobbes,
I can assure you that, do I love winding you up! as soon as I realised the opportunity I fell to the temptation 
I’m not wound up. You just make yourself look stupid. Why should that bother me?
You should know that flaming is not allowed on this Forum- I’d hate to see you banned.
Good. 
Actually on a serious note I did read once that just before his death Shakespeare was working on Cervantes play. I do not have the reference to such story so as to back up what I have just said. Whether Shakespeare could speak Spanish, or Cervantes English is neither here or there, communications in those days were sufficiently good so that they could have read each other’s work.
Well tbh I read some conjecture somewhere that says Shakespeare didn’t write all of his plays is about the extent of the so called reasoned evidence here. So you can either accept that even in history assertions need good evidence or you can accept that some guy saying something at some time, that didn’t really have the evidence warrants further examination. The claim made was specifically saying he did not do his own work (I am willing to accept he plagiarised, everyone does to some extent no man is an island, and still does, although these days it’s good form to reveal your sources, either by saying I was a huge fan of x as a child and drew a lot of inspiration from x, or crediting them directly). This whole thread is nothing but idle speculation, sure it’s great meat for a conspiracy theory, but none of the arguments so far hold any weight in academic circles, and I doubt if they continue to claim much but prove little, that they ever will.
One day someone will claim a 20th century author could not of been so fecund in his authorship, I have no doubt, and this argument will be had by our counterparts in that glorious 30th century, and it will be as much crap as it is now, then, but again riddled with more conjecture due to the passage of time. Fact is as time goes by and sources fail all things become doubted, but then they still need a source of conflict to be doubted, not a God of the gaps argument, or some crap about how no man can be that creative in the face of much more voluminous authors throughout all periods of history doing that. I as I said before think it is just some people cannot fathom that some people are supremely creative, because they think such a skill is magic. It is not, you could learn it yourself, creativity is a muscle not a preset condition of your birth, sure some may have a tendency to be more muscular than others but if you are uncreative, it means only that you choose to be, not that you cannot be, just like an 8 stone weakling can choose to be muscled like an athlete, so can any man develop a keen creative mind. We know Shakespeare did that, what we don’t know is exactly how and when his whole life happened, so we make up things to fit preconceived notions, often as not due to our own inadequacies. We like to mock genius, because it scares us, get enough scared people together and any wildly imagined idea is necessary, if only they chose to use that creative speculative power for good instead of backbiting eh?
I find that conclusion staggering.
Do I need to SPELL IT OUT.
Cervantes was not made available in ENGLISH until after Shakespeare died.
Communications might have been ‘good’, but as Cervantes was not available to WS, he was not able to work on a Cervantes play, unless you think they cracked telepathy.
Do you have any proof of this?
The first translation was in English, made by Thomas Shelton in 1608, but not published until 1612.
My understanding is that Shakespeare did not die until 1616.
You do realize if there are existing original manuscripts DNA might be pulled if who did what is all that important.
IMO at this point it is the work not the creator. The work now belongs to humanity as the natural heir.
Such manuscripts have been handled again and again for 100s of years. I think this bird has flown.
No what is important is the individual. Why? Because we have to prove that there has never a literary genius such as Shakespeare. And the key to this all is that he is English. If it turns out that his works are a collection of works of many, well there goes our literary genius.
Once when I was attending a science and engineering research council conference the speaker gave us this resounding summary, “we English are a nation of inventors and then others (hint, USA) market our inventions…”
No what is important is the individual. Why? Because we have to prove that there has never a literary genius such as Shakespeare. And the key to this all is that he is English. If it turns out that his works are a collection of works of many, well there goes our literary genius.
Once when I was attending a science and engineering research council conference the speaker gave us this resounding summary, “we English are a nation of inventors and then others (hint, USA) market our inventions…”
If they can date artifacts, there is a way to date DNA and also most DNA can be eliminated by nonrelation. But again, why really care?
Jabs, one person is many people. The work is important, that is the contribution to humanity.
You can’t date DNA as you think you can.
Dating an artifact requires the destruction of a small amount of the object.
DNA analysis does not render sufficient material for dating.
Furthermore - such dating methods are not accurate enough to distinguish from one generation to another.
Trust me, I’m an archaeologist
Ok good then since no certifiable, verifiable, noncontraversial evidence can be found then the argument is moot and the work gets the importance.
Right. Why should we care if those plays were written by Bacon, Marlowe or a Shakespeare club?
We really should not care.
You are very right who cares who wrote them, it is their human value that we should be interested in, but some people do care about who wrote them because that way they fly the nationalistic flag.