Shakespeare Was a Red Bull-Swilling Time Traveler Aided by Elves

Cue the Law & Order doink doink sound, because the mystery that is the Bard of all bards has been solved—or so says HuffPo.

If you've ever felt grossly inadequate while pondering the fact that William Shakespeare (allegedly) penned 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 2 narrative poems in his 52 years of life, then it may come as a relief that a computer program in London has shown he (allegedly) had help on at least one of those plays. (We, for the record, still feel inadequate.)

Over the years, a number of historians have argued whether the author we know as Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare. (Did that just psych your mind?) Crackpot Theories on his identity/ies include: he was actually Queen Elizabeth I (because maybe a man couldn't achieve such literary profusion, but a multitasking woman who ruled an empire as her day job could certainly find time); he was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford; he was actually Francis Bacon (when he wasn't being a philospher, scientist, politician, and lawyer); he was actually a group of writers.

SparkLife has a few Bard theories of its own:

• He had a workshop of elves composing works. There were actually several kinds of elves: history elves, comedy elves, tragedy elves, and poetry elves. Romance elves were the offpsring of tragedy elves and comedy elves. Trolls wrote sonnets.
• Shakespeare was the first inventor of Ye Olde Redde Bull, but the recipe was believed to be lost in the same fire that claimed two of his plays, until it was rediscovered in a trunk in Austria in 1987.
• All his works came to him in dreams, a la Stephenie Meyer.
• All his works came to him from Above, on stone tablets, a la Moses.
• William Shakespeare was actually Will.i.am from the contemporary hip hop group the Black Eyed Peas. Will.i.am created a time machine that runs on funk in the BEP recording studio, traveled back to the 17th century, and planted his works under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare." To further mess people up, he paid some white guy with male pattern baldness to let him use his likeness. It's worth noting that Ophelia's original name in the working Hamlet was actually Fergalicious. (Sidenote: not "Fergalicious," but hysterical.)
• Shakespeare could write with his toes, allowing him to pen two works simultaneously. It helped that he had eleven fingers as well.
• Shakespeare was one man with multiple personalities, all of them writers, and at least two of them insomniacs.

What do you think about the Shakespeare authorship debate? Any theories of your own?