[nickcarraway]

It's impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays. Unfortunately, the Earl left many samples of writing that were actually his. There is no way the person who wrote those ordinary verses etc. is the writer of Hamlet and King Lear. Writing style is almost as unique as DNA. In some plays we can identify verse to verse, which were written by Shakespeare, and which weren't. You would could never mistake something by Marlowe as Shakespeare, or vice versa. It's also clear to see Shakespeare's writing develop over time. If another person were to have written Shakespeare's work, it would be quite evident in that person's writing.

[lfod1776]

"It's impossible that Edward de Vere wrote Shakespeare's plays."

I'm not sure where you get your "information". The only serious argument that has ever been proposed againt de Vere's authorship is the conventional dating of some of the plays ( especially "the Tempest" ) as having been written after de Vere's death. Among the eminent Shakespearean actors who believed that de Vere was the author of the plays were Orson Welles, John Gielgud, Leslie Howard, and Derek Jacobi. Do you consider them all fools in their own area of professional competence? Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Henry James were all convinced that the Stratford man could not be the author, but lived before the de Vere hypothesis was proposed. "Hamlet" has striking autobiographical references to de Vere's life, and in particular the character of Polonius is a thinly veiled caricature of de Vere's father-in-law, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who was Prime Minister to Queen Elizabeth. Since conclusive evidence has never been found ( a manuscript would be most helpful ), the authorship of the plays will never be certain.