I won't be surprised by Bates book, because I never had a question about Shakespeare til recently, when someone dragged out the old Bacon theories, and I started looking for evidence to show how idiotic the idea that someone else wrote Shakespeare was--I was surprised at how little evidence of the Great Man there really was--no portraits, no letters, no manuscripts, a lot of speculation as to his life, but no real chronology-- it tends to be "Most likely", or "in all probability"--I discreetly stopped championing the mythical Shakespeare, and have tended to be more interested in exploring the rather remarkable pieces that somehow or other all got tied together into the body of "Shakespearean Plays"--