bah-3
Explanation
This comic imagines a courtroom-style investigation into whether William Shakespeare was actually a sheep.
In the first panel, a lawyer-like figure addresses what appears to be a hearing, stating: "We have no direct quotes from William Shakespeare. Would we do like we do: circumstantial data." The premise is that since we have limited direct biographical evidence about Shakespeare, we must rely on indirect clues -- and those clues, absurdly, point toward him being a sheep.
The second panel lays out the "evidence": Shakespeare grew up in a town of about 2,000 people in the countryside, and the British countryside has always been filled with sheep. A large, fluffy sheep is shown to illustrate the point.
The third panel escalates the argument with fabricated statistical reasoning: "Recent survey data we concocted shows that every person under the age of 12 who sees a sheep impersonation, automatically regardless of accent or dialect, must make a sheep sound." The implication is that sheep are so culturally dominant in the English countryside that Shakespeare must have been one.
The final panel shows the absurd conclusion brought to life: a sheep standing at a podium saying "BAAAAAA" while an audience applauds with "clap clap clap."
The comic satirizes conspiracy theories and pseudohistorical arguments about Shakespeare's identity (such as claims that Shakespeare was secretly Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, or the Earl of Oxford). These theories often rely on chains of circumstantial evidence and logical leaps. By substituting an obviously ridiculous conclusion -- that Shakespeare was literally a sheep -- the comic highlights how this style of reasoning can be used to "prove" virtually anything if you string together enough loosely connected facts and ignore the absurdity of the conclusion.