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Who really said it

The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Name

Not Aldous Huxley — an anonymous joke from 1860 Unknown Anonymous · first printed 14 January 1860
Disputed Free to reuse

The earliest strong match Quote Investigator has found is an unsigned news item in The Spectator of London, 14 January 1860, which jokes that the plays ‘were not by William Shakespeare, but by another person of the same name’. That is thirty-four years before Huxley was born. Huxley did use the joke — but the Homer version, in his 1925 novel Those Barren Leaves, and like Twain, Chesterton and Zangwill before him he made no claim to have invented it.

Last verified 2 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Name” Not Aldous Huxley. An anonymous joke first printed in The Spectator (London), 14 January 1860: "the well-known plays and poems were not by William Shakespeare, but by another person of the same name." Huxley used only the Homer version, in his 1925 novel "Those Barren Leaves." · Verbatim: “This rivals the new discovery about Shakespeare,—that the well-known plays and poems were not by William Shakespeare, but by another person of the same name!”

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Aldous Huxley. Use the credit shown above instead.

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In context

Evoking the themes of doubt, knowledge and truth. Theme: "The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Name". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Name". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Earliest strong match
The Spectator (London), ‘The “New Planet” and Its Discoverers’
Published
14 January 1860, volume 33, start page 37, quote page 38
Author
Unsigned news item — no author named
Huxley’s actual use
Those Barren Leaves (1925), chapter 5, page 368 — the Homer variant

This rivals the new discovery about Shakespeare,—that the well-known plays and poems were not by William Shakespeare, but by another person of the same name! The Spectator, 14 January 1860

The joke arrives already fully formed, as an aside in a report about the possible discovery of a new planet — which is a good sign it was current before it was printed. Quote Investigator says as much: the remark is highly mutable, and it suspects earlier instances exist.

Scanned volume
The Spectator, volume 33 (1860) on Google Books
Quote Investigator — the 1860 to 1925 chain

How we verified this

  • The earliest strong match Quote Investigator has located is The Spectator of 14 January 1860, in an unsigned item about a supposed new planet. The researcher Stephen Goranson is credited with finding it the full citation chain ↗.
  • The joke then spreads under a series of borrowed names across the nineteenth century: an unnamed Frenchman (1868), Harper’s Bazar (1870), an Oxford don in the Homer form (1874), a ‘puzzled pupil’ (1883) and Lewis Carroll in Christ Church common room (1885) the chronological citations ↗.
  • Mark Twain printed the Homer version in The Century Magazine in 1887 — explicitly as a schoolchild’s howler he was reprinting, not as his own line. Quote Investigator believes that is why the joke later attached itself to him Twain’s 1887 article ↗.
  • Aldous Huxley’s turn comes in Those Barren Leaves (1925), where a character says the author of the Iliad is ‘either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name’. Israel Zangwill had already used the Shakespeare form in 1895 and put it in quotation marks, signalling it was common property the 1895 and 1925 citations ↗.
Public domain

Free to reuse. The earliest known printing is an unsigned item in The Spectator of 14 January 1860 — anonymous, and published far enough before 1931 to be in the public domain in the United States; you may reproduce that 1860 wording in full. Huxley’s 1925 Those Barren Leaves sentence is old enough to be public domain in the United States too, but it is a different sentence — the Homer variant — so quote the 1860 Shakespeare text here rather than his. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Everyone used it; nobody owns it

This is a joke with an unusually crowded set of claimants, and the reason is that most of them really did say it — decades after it was already in print, and without ever claiming to have made it up.

Used the Homer version in 1925 borrowed, not invented

In Those Barren Leaves a character says the Iliad is by ‘Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name’. The Shakespeare form predates his birth by thirty-four years the 1925 citation ↗.

Reprinted a schoolchild’s line in 1887 quoting, not coining

Twain’s ‘English as She is Taught’ collects classroom howlers; the Homer joke is presented as a pupil’s answer. Quote Investigator believes this is the origin of the later Twain attributions Twain’s article ↗.

Put it in quotation marks in 1895 signalled it was not his

Writing in The Pall Mall Magazine, Zangwill wrote that he did not care whether Shakespeare was written by Shakespeare or ‘by another man of the same name’ — the quotation marks are his the 1895 citation ↗.

Later or second-hand credits unsupported as origin

Each is named in a source from 1885 or after — Carroll in a magazine recollection, Lamb in an 1899 novel, Jowett in a 1901 weekly. All postdate the 1860 printing the chronology ↗.

An anonymous joke, printed in The Spectator on 14 January 1860 and in circulation ever since — used by Twain, Zangwill, Chesterton and Huxley, coined by none of them the evidence ↗.

Context

Why it never dies

The joke works by taking authorship scepticism perfectly seriously and following it one step too far: if the man from Stratford did not write the plays, then they were written by someone else called William Shakespeare. It is a logical shrug, and it has been redeployed against Homer, Moses, Theocritus and the Apocrypha.

That flexibility is also why it cannot be pinned to anybody. A joke that can be restated in twenty ways leaves no fixed string to search for, which is precisely the condition in which a saying drifts toward whichever famous wit is nearest.

Not by William Shakespeare, but by another person of the same name.

Read the full story

Quote Investigator dates the Shakespeare form to January 1860 and the Homer form to an Oxford periodical in 1874, and it is careful to say this is a snapshot: the remark’s mutability makes it likely that earlier instances are waiting to be found. An 1840 review in The London Quarterly Review already lays out, quite seriously, the theory of a ‘Homer II’ who wrote so like Homer I that the world confused them — which may be the straight-faced scholarship the joke was written against.

The pattern is worth recognising because it recurs. When four or five famous wits are all credited with the same line, the usual explanation is not that one of them is lying; it is that the line was common property and each of them used it in front of a writer with a notebook.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Doubt Knowledge Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Namequoteinvestigator.com

The full chain from 1860 to 1925, with every intermediate claimant and the Homer variant alongside.
The Spectator, volume 33 (1860)books.google.com

Google Books full view of the volume Quote Investigator cites for the 14 January 1860 item.
Aldous Huxley on Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Huxley quotations, with separate Attributed and Misattributed sections.
Those Barren Leavesen.wikipedia.org

Huxley’s 1925 novel — the book in which he actually used the joke, in its Homer form.
Israel Zangwillen.wikipedia.org

The humorist who used the Shakespeare form in 1895 — in quotation marks, as an existing saying.
Shakespeare authorship questionen.wikipedia.org

The long-running controversy the joke is making fun of.

Popularly credited author

Why it gets pinned on Huxley

Aldous Huxley

1894–1963 · English novelist and essayist

Aldous Huxley did use this joke — which makes him a more defensible candidate than most, and a more misleading one. He used the Homer version, in a novel published in 1925, sixty-five years after the Shakespeare form was already in print. Repeating a joke and inventing one are different acts, and quotation sites almost never mark the difference.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Anonymous, The Spectator, 1860

“The ‘New Planet’ and Its Discoverers.” The Spectator (London), vol. 33, 14 January 1860, start page 37, quote page 38, column 1. Unsigned. Citation per Quote Investigator; volume available in Google Books full view.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The Plays of Shakespeare Were Not Written by Shakespeare but by Another Man of the Same Name’?” Last verified 2 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-plays-of-shakespeare-were-not-written-by-shakespeare/

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