VR-21, thank you for your post.
We need to talk. But give me until tomorrow to answer you.
In particular, I need to find out the name of a book that was published probably in the ‘80s which I wanted to buy but can’t remember the title or the name of the author. It was a thick book. It was probably the first book that came out naming Edward DeVere as the author of Shakespeare’s plays.
Between you and me and the rest of FR, my father purchased it for me, he passed away, and a family member, an in-law, grabbed it and took it home. I am sure to this day she has never read page 1 of it.
Never the less, I have been crazy to find that book so I can order it.
Thank you. I will write tomorrow. I need to get my thoughts in line (brain).
The idea that Oxford authored the plays (despite having died in 1604) didn’t originate in a book in the 1980s, it’s at least as old as 1920:
“Shakespeare” Identified
In Edward De Vere the Seventeenth
Earl of Oxford
by J. Thomas Looney
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/etexts/si/00.htm