But people began to wonder. It was missing some Shakespearean hallmarks, like lengthy soliloquies. Then, cultural grandees began weighing in, and not in a positive way.

"That was embarrassing for Theobald because he was trying to make his reputation as the great Shakespearean scholar of the day," Hammond said.

Prof. Tiffany Stern, a professor of early modern drama at Oxford University, said that Theobald could have published the manuscripts he claimed to have as proof that he'd been working with Shakespeare's material.

"Everyone at the time assumes he is lying, and everyone at the time says, 'if they are genuine, publish them,'" she said.

Alexander Pope, who had feuded with Theobald, chose the playwright as the focus of "The Dunciad" -- a work in which a dunce replaces the Iliad's hero. And Pope's work is what brought Hammond from the 18th century to Shakespeare. He was working on Pope in the 1980s, and decided to investigate "Double Falsehood" further.

"I thought, I'll dig this out and read it, and I thought that this certainly has something behind it," he said. "It's not a forgery."

But it was 2002 before Hammond returned to the Bard. Proudfoot said he was willing to consider the evidence Hammond turned up, which the scholar considered "a huge boost."

Hammond's analysis turned up strong links to Shakespeare in elements like spelling, imagery and syntax.

Stern agrees there's a very real possibility that the play contains the bones of Shakespeare's work -- but also believes there are strong reasons why it may not, citing Theobald's obsessions with both Don Quixote and the Bard.

"Theobald was repeatedly writing plays in imitation of Shakespeare, poems in imitation of Shakespeare," she said. "He was fascinated with Shakespeare, and he was always trying to write in a Shakespearean style."

Scholars are keen to find another Shakespearean play, she said, and so want to believe that "Double Falsehood" is that work.

"You can put forward a real argument to say it's a fraud," Stern said, "and you can put forward a real argument to say there's a play in there somewhere."

In "Double Falsehood," Hammond said he found the presence of three writers -- Theobald, Shakespeare, and John Fletcher. Shakespeare and Fletcher had collaborated on two other plays: "Henry VIII" and "Two Noble Kinsmen."

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