Supposedly, Elizabeth spoke five languages fluently by the age of eleven, and continued to learn bits of other languages, including German, as she grew older. Before long she could speak or read English, Welsh, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, and Italian.
Conspiracy theorists have proposed that Elizabeth, a gifted wit and writer herself, might have written some or all of Shakespeare’s plays. This argument often has classist origins – many scholars have been reluctant to ascribe some of the greatest works of literature of all time to the son of a glover from Stratford – and is almost certainly false.
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