The sheer geographical scope of the play gives us pause when considering the limited travels of William Shakespeare who, historians agree, likely did move beyond Stratford and London, England, and did not receive much beyond a scant elementary education. We must choose to believe (or not) that Shakespeare had knowledge of Cypress and Rhodes in Greece, of Turkey, in the nearby Middle East, and of Venice, Italy. He would also need experience meeting Moors and observing the ways in which they interacted and often conflicted with the Caucasian (white) majority populations of Europe.
Theories abound that Will Shakespeare did not write the plays. Several of the candidates offered as alternatives were participants in a kind of secret play society known as The Blackfriars, where experimental theatre played every night to an aristocratic audience. One theory goes that several of these intelligent, well-educated, well-traveled writers, actors, and poets helped pen the plays, including Edward de Vere, Francis Bacon, Richard Burbage, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare himself. Many Shakespeare plays were performed here first. Some of Shakespeare's lines have been traced to poetry penned by some of the poets involved in the theatre productions, and the language of the plays resembles that of the Geneva Bible, which Edward de Vere had in his possession, a sign of wealth and prestige at the time.
Perhaps the plays resulted from collaboration among the members of the club who, fearing controversy and possible execution for ridiculing the Crown of England, settled on the least offensive member of the group, the son of a grain merchant from a rural village, who never made much of a ripple in his life. This would explain why early drafts of the plays were not found with Shakespeare but with a surviving daughter of a member of the Blackfriars, the owner of the club, Edward de Vere. It may also explain why the settings of the play follow de Vere's travels as a military spy for Elizabeth I. If written by a group of poet-scholars, the mystery of how the plays went on being newly published after the deaths of both de Vere and Shakespeare may finally be resolved.