William Shakespeare as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after "Volpone", although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in "As You Like It", and the Chorus in "Henry V", though scholars doubt the sources of
History of the Shakespeare authorship question Faris al-Shidyaq, but developed seriously by Iraqi writer Safa Khulusi in the 1960s. It was later endorsed by Muammar Gaddafi. Such claims for a non-English origin for Shakespeare were linked to the expansion of his influence and popularity globally. Claimants have been detected in other countries, and he has even figured as a "contested heirloom", appropriated to various competing national or ethnic identities. His Englishness was first disputed in the wake of the Romantic "Shakespeare mania" ("Shakespearomanie") that swept Germany, and led to assertions of his Nordic character, and to claims that he was essentially German. However, no alternative German