As an English teacher, I often have students create dramatic skits on given themes. And often when I read them students occasionally write in their classmates’ names instead of the fictional characters they made up. Once, a student wrote “Mr. Chimski” for “Mr. Chimsee,” an evil prison warden! The rub is understandable: if you are creating characters based on real persons, the mixup seems inevitable in the heat of creation.

One hard evidence we have for Shakespeare’s authorship can be found in the 1599 edition (the second quarto) of Romeo and Juliet, where at the end of scene 17 a stage direction instructs “Enter Will Kempe.” Kemp is not a character in the play, but a real person for whom Shakespeare wrote the part of Peter the Clown. Shakespeare mixed up the character with the real person. Continue reading →