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So how does this connect to the current, widely-held view that the Shakespeare canon was written by Edward de Vere, the poet and nobleman, rather than the uneducated Will Shakespere? De Vere wasn't a closet Catholic, was he?

IMO, any study of Shakespeare that covers anything other than the plays themselves, and their historical background is a waste of time.

We've gone from Shakespeare the great playwright and actor, to Shakespeare-was-Francis Bacon, to Shakespeare-was-a-homo (it's right there, in the sonnets), to Shakespeare-was-the-Earl of Oxford (it's right there, in the sonnets), and now Shakespeare-the-Great-Closet Catholic-playwright(it's right there in his plays).

Textual study can reveal all sorts of secret meanings if one wants ot look for them and find them. Basically, someone who may or may not have been named Shakespeare, wrote the greatest plays in the English language. End of story.

So how does this connect to the current, widely-held view that the Shakespeare canon was written by Edward de Vere, the poet and nobleman, rather than the uneducated Will Shakespere?

Or Marlowe.

I haven't read the book, so have no idea if she even touches on that. I would imagine she would be in the opposite camp. Shakespeare's family and associations indicate he was more middle class than unlettered peasant. I think there is some documentary evidence that Will attended elementary school in Stratford.

His father was on the town council for years, I believe he was a glove maker, a merchant. The town council position went by the wayside during the time period of the religious turmoil. I think the father's last will still exists and there's some indication in it that he remained Catholic.

I believe as a young man Will worked as a secretary for a nobleman. In a notoriously resistant county. The nobleman may have even been a well-known Catholic, I don't remember.

I just can't imagine when all this was going on that the Catholics turned to each other and said, "Well, that's it, lads. It was a good thousand years but it's all over now." Going underground, the catacombs and all that, is part of their heritage. Witness China today. And when they went they must have made some attempts to maintain what little they could of education outside the officially recognized institutions for their young people.

When the laws changed centuries later and they slowly emerged they weren't grunting troglodytes.