Professor: who are you? What's your name?
Student : May I know who is asking?
Is the student part i.e., "May I know who is asking?" polite enough? or if there is some other better way of putting it, please suggest.
@Randal'Thor It's at +4 / -3 now. It's a crazy theory as far as I can tell, but I have neither read Puskin (except The Stone Guest) nor Dumas.
@NapoleonWilson Not only the Emmerich film, unfortunately. J. Thomas Looney's book on his conspiracy theory was published exactly 100 years ago. (I won't be celebrating that.)
Actually, after those questions asking whether Shakespeare was hiding messages in his works or whether his parents belonged to the lower classes, I was worried that we might get new users that would defend those Shakespeare conspiracy theories. So it was important to write well-documented answers to those questions - to discourage "the loonies".
It's not that people aren't allowed to ask such questions - they are fully on topic here - but I didn't want Lit SE to become a new playground for Shakespeare conspiracy theorists.
I don't see that as a huge danger. I understand if you're a little allergic to the topic, but a canonical question on a matter that seems not too uncommon a belief would makes sense, if only to firmly answer with "no".
