Historians agree that what we consider to be the works of Shakespeare actually bear little resemblance to the Bard's original compositions and are beginning to reevaluate Shakespeare's actual contribution to literature.

Norman Dewey-Smith, a man nearly lost to history, is thought to be the one responsible for this centuries-long misunderstanding. Dewey-Smith, a man reportedly obsessed with transforming language, was a leading scholar of historical works at the Royal Society of Archival and Historical Documents in London in the late 1400's. Historians are unable to agree on precise dates, but we do know that by 1490 Dewey-Smith was in charge of the archive that housed Shakespeare's original works and that by 1510 there are accounts from local actors that Shakespeare's plays had taken on a different tone with more "olde sounding" language than they were comfortable with. Without access to the original documents, these concerns were brushed aside as simple artistic jealousy and the rest, as they say, is history.

How did Dewey-Smith accomplish this grand ruse? We know now that sometime between 1490 and 1510, Dewey-Smith recreated the entire works of Shakespeare, injecting many serious plays with strange metaphors and translating the text from their original state into what we have now accepted as "olde English". After his work was complete, Dewey-Smith completed his deception by destroying the original documents.

Having uncovered Dewey-Smith's plot and using other historical documents from the Royal Society of Archival and Historical Documents as reference, historians and Shakespeare scholars have recently begun undoing Dewey-Smith's work and hope to have recreated Shakespeare's original body of work by 2010.