Like other theological disputes, the authorship dispute is over origins: Where did these works come from? What circumstances, influences, and qualities of mind made them possible? What was this genius from which they emanated? Seeing the origin of the works in the man from Stratford, traditionalists are, in the terminology of the dispute, Stratfordians—defenders of the faith; orthodox believers in the one true church. The heretics banging their ninety-five theses against the church door are anti-Stratfordians—against Stratford as the origin—but their quest for truth has splintered them into sects, sometimes warring but loosely affiliated under the sign of their dissent from orthodoxy: Baconians, Marlovians, Oxfordians, Sidneyans, Nevillians, and others, each named according to their god.

—Elizabeth Winkler, Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies