I don't believe the 'string of coincidences that make anyone but Shakespeare the writer' theories. My teacher in English Literature AP tried his best to make it sound feasible, but even then the supposed possibility sounded ludicrous to me. Was the man obscure? Sure. We really don't have a clue who taught him the written word outside of schooling nor how his daughters came to learn it outside of the presumption that he was the one. Add to it that he couldn't even spell his own name right in his own will and you get some things that sound like he may have been a pen name. But look at the possible perpetrators and you see the case unravel. There's not a person outside of royalty living in the time period that could have written it with the level of education required, and dukes of royal blood just didn't dirty themselves writing plays (seeing as acting in general was looked down upon). One can argue that Christopher Marlowe was the man behind it all; but one of Shakespeare's plays hints at his mysterious death, the two knew each other as seperate people, and Marlowe received it in the eye way too young in life to pen things such as The Tempest that seems to use the elder character as a self-portrait of the playwright himself (Shakespeare, to my own steadfast belief; he was of just the right age to have some experience in age).
So, overall, I don't believe that it was anyone but Shakespeare. Nor do I think he's overrated- if anything, mandatory novellas in school such as Heart of Darkness have more of a chance at boring you to death with colonial commentary than Hamlet's frankly gripping dialogue in the play sharing the same name.
