Yes

Adam Cross is director of drama at Harrow School, and formerly held the same position at King's College School, Wimbledon. Previously, he was learning and teaching co-ordinator at Shakespeare's Globe, and director-in-residence at Eton College. He has worked as a director and script developer for theatres including the National Theatre, and the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse. He was formerly a Trustee of the Polka Theatre.

I'm often so conscious when starting to work on Shakespeare that students can come to it with apprehensions of inaccessibility that I spend more time than I probably should at the start of the process enthusing about his genius; the sheer wonder that this one individual seemed to understand so much, and capture it all with complexity and economy in equal measure. The question of authorship can come up early on, of course, and it's a difficult question to answer. Clearly there's some evidence to support it or – more likely – the idea of shared authorship, but what artist doesn't collaborate continually? Part of the glory of engaging with Shakespeare is surely the constancy of the authorship idea.

Why buy into Hamlet's truth, for example, but not that of Shakespeare himself?

It seems to me that this debate can sometimes start from a place of cynicism, from the notion that it is somehow ‘unrealistic’ for one writer to demonstrate such holistic human insight – crossing boundaries of age, race, and gender. It does matter that Shakespeare wrote his plays, and the collective awe, fascination and solace we take from the fact that it all came from one pen is part of that story. When we engage with Shakespeare, it is the power of his stories that astonish, move, comfort and teach us. We suspend our disbelief in order to know ourselves that little better. Shakespeare himself, as master-craftsman, is part of a wider narrative which says that broad wisdom and truth can be humanly aspired to, and that we should persevere in seeking it. Why buy into Hamlet's truth, for example, but not that of Shakespeare himself? That seems distinctly unimaginative to me.

Yes

Leah Crimes studied English and Drama at Cambridge University. She has been an English and Drama teacher for 11 years, including 8 years as head of department. A literature and theatre obsessive, she directs a whole-school production and runs over 40 theatre trips every year. She is also a GCSE examiner and she is particularly interested in using educational research to inform teaching practice.

As students and teachers we are glutted with important historical, social and political contexts of all of the texts we study and teach. One of the key Shakespearean contexts is the authorship question. When even someone like even Mark Rylance has ‘reasonable doubt’ that Shakespeare wrote all of his plays, it is easy to see why ‘anti-Stratfordians’ are so enamoured with the various theories which started to gain traction in the Victorian era, when conspiracy theories became de rigueur.

How can we read or study his work without understanding the context?

I teach ‘Shakespearean women’ in connection to Shakespeare's relationships with Mary Arden and Anne Hathaway. We speculate about ‘the lost years’ and his life in London compared to that in Stratford-upon-Avon. How can we read or study his work without understanding the context? To study the work in isolation does it a great disservice as it is a reflection of the writer and the time.

The concept of actor-writer and collaborative working in Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre is widely known, and scholars have come to recognise that, like the writers’ rooms of today, 16th-century playwriting was a joint enterprise. In 2017, the New Oxford Shakespeare credited Christopher Marlowe as a co-author of all three parts of Henry VI following in-depth computer analysis that focussed on lexicon and style. Seeing Shakespeare's work co-credited in print caused some of my more purist colleagues to exude bitter rage – exemplifying that the ‘genius of Shakespeare’ is as important to Britain as the constitutional monarchy and cups of tea.

That the authorship question is so polarising surely gives us our answer. Of course it matters.

No

Phil Cleaves is a teacher, freelance writer and drama consultant. He has co-written Pearson's textbooks for the new Edexcel A level and GCSE Drama specifications. His website essentialdrama.com provides free content about drama that aims to make connections between secondary drama and higher education.

The Shakespeare authorship debate is an intellectual fancy that distracts from the plays as pieces of theatre. England seems to be particularly obsessed by authorship and the sanctity of the writer. The beauty of plays is that they are filtered through many creative lenses in the making of theatre – the producer, the director, the designers, the actors and the audience.

The play on paper is not the end of the creative journey, it is the beginning. Our education system would have it otherwise, where Shakespeare is read in classrooms and not performed. The plays are introduced in English literature and read over weeks until all theatricality and joy is ripped out of both the play and the student. There is so much beauty in these living plays when they are performed and we should be bringing them to life not killing them behind desks in a classroom.

It doesn't matter who the writer was, the play's the thing!

This literary heist has led to a culture that sees theatre performance as somehow intellectually secondary to reading playtexts, a snobbery that is also at the heart of the Shakespeare authorship debate – ‘How could a poor bloke with a humble education be so great?’

Our attention and energy needs to be put into challenging the dominance of literary analysis of theatrical texts. Imagine the difference of an education system that didn't view intelligence so narrowly – imagine the makers and the doers it would unleash. It doesn't matter who the writer was, the play's the thing!

No

Karen Pickles trained in classical dance and Acting and Musical Theatre at Arts Educational School in London. After working in television and theatre she retrained as a teacher. She was Director of Drama at Clifton College for six years and developed production work to involve musical theatre, outside Shakespeare productions and classical plays. Having left Clifton College, she specialises in providing drama in education to schools to support their marketing and drama provision.

Shakespeare is ostensibly our most famous playwright and the plays attributed to him are as true and relevant now as when he is said to have written them. The relationships between his characters resounds through the years, his portrayal of history informs how we learn about our past and his use of words is poetical and rhythmical – why waste time questioning his authorship when the work is so pertinent to our modern world?

It is vital that the conspiracy theory is not allowed to overshadow the quality of the work

James Wilmot, an 18th-century academic, was the first to question the cogency of Shakespeare's authorship, believing that Francis Bacon, with his higher social access and higher academic education, was a more likely author. This propelled others to claim similar, with many believed Edward de Vere wrote the works, such as A Winter's Tale – but deVere died in 1604 before it was written.

Shakespeare was well-educated, fully involved in London theatre life and his connections to Elizabeth I are well documented – Oberon alludes to her with his mention of ‘a fair vestal’ and a quarto edition of Love's Labours Lost proves that it was performed before her. Being so involved in the Royal Court would have given Shakespeare access to historical records and court life that informed his writing. The arguments against him are tenuous at best and miss the point of why his work has endured.

Without condoning plagiarism, it is vital that the conspiracy theory is not allowed to overshadow the quality of the work. Questioning Shakespeare's ability is a distraction that takes time away from the student who wish to learn, enjoy and understand his work.