Life of William Shakespeare in Stratford. Samuel Schoenbaum speculates that, "Maybe Shakespeare took Knell's place and thus found his way to London and stage-land." Shakespeare's father John, as High Bailiff of Stratford, was responsible for the acceptance and welfare of visiting theatrical troupes. However, there is no direct evidence of Shakespeare's membership of the Queen's Men, so it remains speculation. Though Shakespeare is known today primarily as a playwright and poet, his main occupation was as a player and sharer in an acting troupe. How or when Shakespeare got into acting is unknown. The profession was unregulated by a guild that could have established
History of the Shakespeare authorship question print that Shakespeare did not write the works bearing his name. Hart claimed that Shakespeare was a "mere "factotum" of the theatre", a "vulgar and unlettered man" hired to add obscene jokes to the plays of other writers. Hart does not suggest that there was any conspiracy, merely that evidence of the real authors's identities had been lost when the plays were published. Hart asserts that Shakespeare had been "dead for one hundred years and utterly forgotten" when old playscripts formerly owned by him were discovered and published under his name by Nicholas Rowe and Thomas Betterton. He speculates that