There seems to be no reason whatever to believe this except the pressure of a keen desire for it to be true.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson.  Chapter 3 page 60.  Discussing the possibility that Shakespeare's lost years were spent in Lancashire.

However, it must be said that one or two troubling considerations need to be accounted for in all this. First, there is the problem that William Shakeshafte received an unusually large annuity of two pounds in Hoghton’s will—more than any other member of the household but one. That would be a generous gift indeed, bearing in mind that our William Shakespeare was just seventeen years old and could have been in Hoghton’s employ for only a few months at the time of the latter’s death. It seems more likely, on the face of it, that such a bequest would go to a longer-serving, and no doubt more elderly, employee, as a kind of pension.

There is also the curious matter of the name. “Shakeshafte” is clearly not an ingenious alias. Some scholars maintain that “Shakeshafte” was simply a northern variant of “Shakespeare,” and that our Will wasn’t trying to hide his name but merely to adapt it. This may be so but it suggests a further reason for uncertainty. “Shakeshafte” was not an uncommon name in Lancashire. In 1582 the records show seven Shakeshafte households in the area, of which at least three had members named William. So it requires a certain leap of faith to suppose with any confidence that this one was the young Will from Stratford. As Frank Kermode succinctly summed up the Catholic issue (in the New York Times Book Review), “There seems to be no reason whatever to believe this except the pressure of a keen desire for it to be true.” 

 

In addition to all this there is the problem of allowing Shakespeare time enough for both a Lancashire adventure and a return to Stratford to woo and bed Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare’s first child, Susanna, was baptized in May 1583, indicating conception the previous August—at just about the time he is supposed to have been in Lancashire. It is not impossible that William Shakespeare could have been a Catholic in Lancashire and a suitor to Anne Hathaway at more or less the same time—as well as a budding theatrical figure—but one may reasonably ask if that isn’t supposing rather a lot.