> > Edward de Vere was a Duke who a lot of people think wrote Shakespeare... and after doing a
> > history paper on the subject, i agree wtih them... i'm not going to put all the reasons here,
> > though...
> >
> > uni"unless someone actually CARES..."peg
>
> Go on then...

pardon me while i pull up my history paper and summarize all the points...
okay, just to provide some background info for those who don't know... the man everyone hears about when they're taught about Shakespeare (born in Stratford-on-Avon, actor in London, all that) was actually named William Shaksper... if I need to refer to that man, I'll say Shaksper... de Vere is Edward de Vere.... Shakespeare is just the writer, whoever he may have been.
so, to the points...

-the backgrounds of the two men are an obvious point to consider. Shaksper was most likely trained in the Stratford Grammar school, where he would have been taught highly subjective information. we have no evidence that he ever read or wrote anything except for 6 signatures on various legal documents, all of which (the documents) were written by other people.

-de Vere was tutored by the man who translated Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, the book that has the most influence, next to the Bible, on Shakespeare's plays. he travelled extensively and had connections with the English court, as well as 2 master's degrees and background in law.

-Shakespeare would have been the ideal nom de plume for de vere. the de vere coat of arms had a lion shaking a spear on it, a prominent scholar once said to de vere "...thy *will shakes spears*", the goddess of the theater, Pallas Athena, was referred to as the spear-shaker. a book of poetry published by the royal court, in which they refered to several men of the court who wrote poetry without their own names, and said edward de vere was the best of these.

-we DO have several things written by de vere. from the things we have, de vere's vocabulary was 98% the same as shakespeare's.

-in all of elizabethan writing, the phrase "I am that I am," as said by God, can only be found in Sonnet 121 and one of de Vere's letters.

-while de Vere's daughter was engaged to the Earl of Southampton, two of Shakespeare's plays were dedicated to the Southampton family.

-_A Midsumemr Night's Dream_ was first performed at the marriage of another of de Vere's daughter's weddings.

-de Vere's son-in-law and brother published the most famous folio of Shakespeare's works.

-the plot line of _Hamlet_ has some parallels to de Vere's life. his mother remarried soon after the death of his father, and his new gaurdian attempted to get rid of him.

-in -Henry IV, Part I_, Prince Hal and several friends "rob" Falstaff on Gad's Hill. In real life, de Vere and some friends played the same prank on a man - at Gad's Hill.

-while in Italy, de Vere borrowed money from a Jewish banker, a situation in _The Merchant of Venice_

-through his characters, Shakespeare expresses contempt for those who purchase and use land for financial gain, an attitude that de Vere held. Shaksper, on the other hand, bought and used land for a profit numerous times during his life.

-Edward de Vere's Bible has been studied extensively. in it, many passages are underlined, and many of these are ones that are used in Shakespeare's plays. Quite a few of these are very little known. Falstaff says many of the lines that make references to verses, including "whoreson Achitophel" (I Samuel 16:23), "an everlasting bonfire-light" (Matthew 25:41), "the son of utter darkness" (I Thessalonians 5:5), "Blessed are they that have been my friends, and woe to the cheif lord justice!" (the Beatitudes), and "I fear not goliath with a weaver's beam" (II Samuel 21:19). In _Hamlet_, Hamlet says "took my father grossly, full of bread". All Shakespearean scholars believe this to be a reference to Ezekiel 16:49. In de Vere's bible, this is the only verse in the book of Ezekiel underlined. all fo the other verses mentioned above are also underlined.

that seems to be all the stuff i have in my paper... there are, of course, arguments against de Vere, but not many. i went on in my paper to say WHY the question was important... but i'm not going to go into that either. so that is why i believe shakespeare's plays were written by Edward de Vere, Duke of Oxford.

uni"hey, you asked for it"peg