Well certainly I don't have that prejudice at all. For me, it's just the problem of how a totally uncultured butcher-and-skinner apprentice managed to transform himself into the Bard. I don't think that's an unreasonable question. As to any wishful thinking on my part, I really don't have a dog in this fight, just a lot of curiosity about alleged facts that don't seem to add up.
And I'd be very glad to take instruction on this matter!
Maybe you'd enjoy consulting your ancestor about what he found? James Phinney Baxter's book, The Greatest of Literary Problems, was published by Houghton-Mifflin in 1915. So it must be out of print. But I'm reading it at www.questia.com, a subscription service. It's pretty fascinating. And I haven't even got to the alleged Francis Bacon tie-in yet. Among other things, he presents an interesting description of the Elizabethan Court and the intellectual tenor/climate of the time.
Have a wonderful, blessed Christmas, Cicero!
The most complete and objective life of Shakespeare I know is Samuel Schoenbaum's magisterial summary of the known evidence, "Shakespeare's Lives."
There is plenty more detail and speculation, of course, in hundreds and thousands of books, including whole industries on whether Shakespeare was Protestant, Cathlic, or agnostic, but that's a good one to start with, if you don't mind reading 800 pages. It's very well done.
P.S. I've been re-reading Schoenbaum's book. It really is marvellous, wears its incredible researches lightly, most witty and readable.
I noted from one of your posts that you've learned of all kinds of libels against the Man from Stratford. Forgive me, but that could be a sign that you've been reading one the many cranks who've made this subject their life's work, and hopelessly muddied it in the process.
Here's the last bit I'll say on the subject, because, to be honest, I find it tiresome. Ben Jonson died in 1636. He'd known Shakespeare well ever since his fellow playwright first came to London at the end of the previous century. All the candidates to replace the Bard, including Bacon, were long dead by 1636. Jonson went to his grave praising to the sky the boundless genius of one William Shakespeare from the little English countryside town of Stratford-on-Avon.
For what reason would Ben Jonson seek to praise a fraud? Why would Jonson want to deny de Vere, or Bacon, or Marlowe, the rightful credit they deserved for great works of art, if indeed they produced them? The cranks contend that Jonson was corrupt, bought off by de Vere or some other special interest, or that he was too stupid to know his friend really couldn't write worth a lick. Similar charges on all manner of Shakespearean data fly all over the anti-Man from Stratford literature.
That's why Occam's razor must be applied. The cranks must devise enormous conspiracies and acts of skullduggery to make their case. But the simple answer, that a remarkable once in a millenium genius sprang up and blossomed in the English countryside, satisfies Occam's test, and has about it that delicate, elusive sound, the sweet ring of truth.