WHSFM Does: Literature
The Bard of Stratford-Upon-Avon: largely considered the finest English language writer of all time. And with such classics as Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth, it's not hard to see why. But ever since the mid-19th century, some have speculated about the true authorship of those timeless plays.
While decidedly a minority position, some have long postulated that the works of William Shakespeare were written by someone else. New scholarship has resurfaced the debate, with an article in the most recent edition of British Literature Quarterly that suggests that most, if not all the Bard's works were plagiarized from an Irishman, if you'll believe it.
Don't tell the English!
Not much is known about the supposedly true author other than a few key facts.
The first is his name, Liam, which is a common Irish name.
Second, we know he was quite short of stature even for the time, when people grew to much shorter heights. (Poor nutrition, sanitation, and so on.)
Next, he seems to have had a rather severe case of cerebral palsy, or perhaps a related condition.
Most interestingly though, the enigmatic Irishman was known by his contemporaries to carry a large rod with a sharpened tip at the end.
Newly unearthed documents, which are referenced in the explosive new article, describing an individual of striking appearance: a short man with a shock of red hair, carrying around this rather arcane weapon, which would rattle about in his hand due to chronic tremors.
Now it may be years before this question is truly answered and the debate settled for good. The new article has been controversial, but just think—as little as a few months ago, you would've been called crazy to even suggest that the author of the most famous English literature of all time was, in fact, Wee Liam:
Wee Liam Shake-a-spear.
