"I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him."
- Sigmund Freud
"I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up."
- Charles Dickens
"I have never thought that the man of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the plays of Shakespeare."
- Lewis F. Powell Jr.