Edward de Vere? Who was he?  The name jumped out from Google HotTrends at me and I was curious and wanted to explore it.  Nah…no real buzz potential here …. but then,  I kept on thinking… what an unusual name, so I looked again at Edward de Vere and came up with an intersting BBC Article saying Actors question Bard’s authorship:

“..Actors including Sir Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance have lauched a debate over who really wrote the works of William Shakespeare.

Almost 300 people have signed a “declaration of reasonable doubt”, which they hope will prompt further research into the issue.

What’s kinda interesting is that argument that is being put forth - that:

1. Shakespeare’s plays, their emphasis on law, could have been penned by a 16th Century commoner raised in an illiterate household.

2. Stratford-Upon-Avon is never referred to in any of Shakespeare’s plays.

I suppose Shakespeare could have avoided writing about Stratford-Upon-Avon because he was more interested in other times, other places than his own but that he knew a lot about English Law while being bought up illiterate, that’s harder to dismiss.

I, personally, don’t have any opinion on all of this, but it’s been familar to me for most of my life that Shakespeare’s authorship has been questioned all along - and still is.