The man from Stratford-upon-Avon we know as William Shakespeare was baptised
Gulielmus Shakspere in 1564. What is important about this is that onomatologists readily admit that the surname 'Shakspere' has absolutely no historical root or derivation to or from the name 'Shakespeare'. I know they sound familiar to the ear but they derive from completely different and unconnected roots.
Just as importantly, the first dozen or so play texts that appeared in quarto form did so with the name 'Shake-speare'
hyphenated. An example from 1598:
View attachment 70664
The name 'Shake
-speare' has even less connection (if possible) to the name 'Shakspere'. They are literally chalk and cheese. In fact it has no history of ever being a surname in England at that time.
As you say MJF, this mask was a signature of the
spear-shakers, and it was a title of initiation and life purpose.
The question of single authorship is already ridiculous because even MS academia accepts as a given that the great bard collaborated with a wide number of other writers on his scared texts including:
Thomas Nashe
Thomas Kyd
George Peele
Anthony Munday
George Wilkins
Thomas Middleton
John Fletcher
And that's before you get anywhere near Francis Bacon for whom there is untold evidence of his influence and pen through every part of the output (including famously a whole set of notebooks full of lines he used to jot down for fun and future use and which somehow just ended up being used in Shake-speare's plays...)
Then of course we have William Derby, Earl of Stanley... Bacon's rival poet and to my mind the 'poetic soul' at the heart of the whole affair, but that's quite another matter...
So we have a factory - or rather a philosophy school with a purposeful output disguised as entertainment with many pens and many purposes with two great pens - at its center. And it had not a jot of ink to do with the paid patsy from Stratford who took his money and lived the high life, despite repeated attempts to out him as a fraud by his jealous contemporaries.
Once upon a time I wrote more extensively on this matter
here.