Keanu Reeves is loved worldwide for action film roles but fans were left heartbroken after discovering he doesn’t believe in Shakespeare.
Keanu Reeves is an actor, musician, philanthropist, you name it. But he may be considered a “Shakespeare Truther”, the term given to people who theorize that William Shakespeare is not the sole writer of his plays. Reeves unexpected confession took fans by surprise and their hearts are completely shattered.
Keanu Reeves’ ‘childhood dream’ is to find real Shakespeare playwright
In 2019, Reeves, 59, headed to Buzzfeed to participate in their Q&A video alongside a hoard of puppies. The adorable dog video can boost any celebrity‘s reputation, but Keanu’s Shakespeare claim may have had the opposite effect.
When asked what period he would time travel to, the John Wick star answered:
“I always wanted to know – ever since I was growing up – who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare. So I wanna be there at that moment with ‘Shakespeare’ – cause I don’t really think it was ‘Shakespeare’. I’m an Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford [guy]. So I’d like to be there in the 1600s ‘Shakespeare’ writing Hamlet.
Cue the fan backlash.
“Shakespeare wrote the plays of Shakespeare,” one wrote. “Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get their head examined (and that includes you, Keanu Reeves.)
The speculation has floated around for centuries
The belief that Shakespeare did not write his English classics has existed for years with British scholar James Wilmot coining the anti-Stratfordian theory: the idea that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not actually write the literature associated with the name Shakespeare.
Wilmot concluded that Sir Francis Bacon, a philosopher and Lord Chancellor of England, was the true author who worked under the pseudonym. Other figures among many proposed in the theory include; Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby; and Christopher Marlowe.
Additional arguments suggest that Shakespeare stole works from others while the lack of information on his personal life has been used as proof.
Author and scholar Irvin Matus defended Shakespeare’s case in a 1991 The Atlantic article, claiming that the “sheer number of candidates put forward as having had the unique qualifications of position and education to be the True Author is evidence that these qualifications were not at all unique in Shakespeare’s time.”
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