[i]t would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of shakespeare in the age of shakespeare. let me imagine, since the facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called judith, let us say.

why does woolf imagine the story of this gifted woman rather than writing a true story?

woolf wanted the story to be more entertaining than what actually happened to shakespeare’s sister.
gifted women poets in the elizabethan era were not given the chance to be successful and remembered.
woolf doesn’t want to reveal the real name of the woman she’s writing about.
women poets in the elizabethan era have often been written about.