SB replied: For a long time that was true - too much myth-making, too much unfounded speculation, and the Stratfordians only have themselves to blame for giving Alternative Authorship theorists so much ammunition. 

But there's lots of excellent scholarship too, grounded in evidence and common sense - which is a lot more than the Alternative Authorship theorists can say.

SB replied: The problem of dating is pretty much true of any piece of writing in the Elizabethan/Jacobean period. And we do have plays being described as "first performances", or being recorded on the Stationer's Register.

I'm not sure why "how, "why" or "where" is a consideration? 

Michael Penn wrote: Positing him as the author as the starting point can lead to a host of further circumstantial assumptions the likelihood of which remains based on that primary authorial assumption. This doesn't mean he wasn't the author. But it renders every biography of "Shakespeare" extraordinarily speculative.

SB replied: As per my reply to JB, yes, it's undoubtedly the case that far too many biographers have over-indulged their imagination, filling in gaps, using circular logic, making Shakespeare the man they want him to be, rather than trying to understand who he really was.

But that's a tendency that's dying down, if not entirely extinct. Oddly enough, if, as I've also posted above, Stratfordians have only themselves to blame for giving Alternative Authorship theorists so much ammunition, they also have them to thank for making them work harder, using facts and evidence rather than relying on myth and speculation.

SB replied: It's widely accepted that Shakespeare used a range of sources, including earlier plays, when writing his own -  even Hamlet, with the so-called "Ur-Hamlet" being claimed as a source.

Greene's comment seems to be one of indignation that the earlier plays by Shakespeare's social betters and better-educated contemporaries aren't as successful or enjoyed as much as the ones by the Warwickshire lad. 

Edited to add: On a related tangent, have you watched the BBC Comedy "Upstart Crow", starring David Mitchell as Will?

A recorded first performance (or is it rather a first recorded performance?) marks a point at which some version of a play (an extant quarto version? that in the Folio? some lost version?) appeared in public, but it tells us nothing about when Stratford Will himself wrote said play. 

The how, when, where, and why about any author can't ever not be a consideration in his biography -- and if we have direct evidence, all the better to understand his authorship; but if we have no direct evidence, then all the worse.

SB replied: This is a typical cheap trick by Alternative Authorship theorists - "we don't know exactly when something was written, so it could have been written at any time".

The truth is, we pretty much can go by the first recorded performance as a pretty reasonable barometer of when a play was written. 

Michael Penn wrote: The how, when, where, and why about any author can't ever not be a consideration in his biography -- and if we have direct evidence, all the better to understand his authorship; but if we have no direct evidence, then all the worse.

SB replied: Then you pretty much cast all Elizabethan/Jacobean writing into doubt.

And I'm still not sure why "where" is a factor? Does it really matter if, say, Othello, was written in London or Birmingham?

A first recorded performance (which again, is not the same as a recorded first performance, and, again, of what version?) does help us know that (some version of) a play was not written later than that recorded date. It does not tell us when it was written. This is not at issue, though.

The point is not the passive question of "when was this play written?"; rather, it is the active question of "when did Stratford Will write this play?" The challenge is establishing authorship without prior assumption. But we have no direct evidence of Stratford Will writing any play: no how, when, where, and why about he himself being the author.

Does this mean he wasn't the author? No. But it doesn't help establishing his authorship.

SB replied: Most people recognise that publication or performance of a work usually closely succeeds the writing of said work. 

There are of course exceptions - "Now And Then", written by John Lennon around 1977 was initially considered for being further worked upon by the three remaining Beatles in 1994/1995 before being vetoed by George, was then picked back up again by Paul and Ringo in 2024, and is included on the Blue Album - The Beatles from 1967-1970. 

But by and large, composition and publication are usually pretty closely aligned.

SB wrote: That would be true of pretty much any Elizabeth/Jacobean author with the possible exception of Ben Jonson, who never doubted Will's authorship even if he had doubts about his writing.

Again - why is "where" a factor here? What does it matter "where" a play is written?

Again, again, again: not the passive but the active question -- where did Stratford Will himself write anything? If we had even one piece of direct evidence of that "where" (or the how, when, or why of his doing the writing), this entire debate would be over. Lacking that is a lack. 

How much such a lack is true or not about other authors contemporary with Shakespeare begs instead of addresses the active question. 

And that lack direct evidence then leads to questions about other kinds of direct evidence, e.g., direct evidence of education, of any correspondence from him or to him identifying him as a writer, of his being paid to write, of his personal relationship with a patron (not a dedication, but direct evidence, all of this direct), of his own extant original manuscripts, of anything handwritten by the man himself about anything literary, of anything in his lifetime that he wrote commending others or that we know he received commending him as a writer (direct evidence), of any books he owned, he wrote in, he borrow or he gave, etc. There's not a paucity of this kind of direct evidence for most or all of Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Does this mean Stratford Will wasn't Shakespeare? No. But it doesn't help.