Subject: Or, his plays got leaked.
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Posted on: 2014-09-30 16:00:00 UTC
And after they gained a huge following, the Ministry(?) at the time decided it was easier to just pass Shakespeare off as a Muggle fantasy writer than to try memory-charming nearly everyone in England.
Also, while I don't subscribe to the theory that Shakespeare was a front for another playwright, perhaps it's true in the Potterverse: maybe the Wizarding World needed to set up someone with a known Muggle history as the face of the plays, since the actual wizard author wouldn't have any birthplace where people could attest to his growing up there. Shakespeare was likely a squib, or perhaps related by marriage to a wizard or witch.
(An aside: I'm surprised and disappointed that I never see the theory that that the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays could have been a woman. It would have been inappropriate for a woman to write in his time, so it makes sense a female playwright would need a cover in order to publish and produce her plays!)