Will the true Shakespeare please stand up?

I first heard of Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, in an extensive Nov. 24, 1974, Washington Post article. As an English major, I should have known about de Vere, the nobleman who, a convincing body of evidence shows, wrote the Shakespeare plays and sonnets.

I've kept the 1974 newspaper article, plus a few other clippings, tucked between the pages of my collegiate "Complete Works of William Shakespeare." Recently, I've been reading "Shakespeare by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the man who was Shakespeare" by Mark Anderson. Anderson's thorough review of de Vere's tumultuous life is a thoroughly researched and sourced biography that links events in de Vere's life to the plays and sonnets attributed to Shakespeare. He cites numerous characters in Shakespearean plays that were obviously based on the personalities and prejudices of various friends and relatives of de Vere. A number of sonnets appear to be commentary on documented events in de Vere's life.

The authorship of Shakespeare's plays has been in dispute for almost as long as they have been performed, and various writers have been suggested as the true author, but de Vere has been singled out in the past two centuries as the logical and evident author of the greatest body of literature in the English language. De Vere, at one time an intimate of Queen Elizabeth's court, a member of the House of Lords, a one-time resident of Italy (where several Shakespearean plays are set), an acknowledged poet under his own name and a brilliant scholar familiar with the classical works on which Shakespearean plays are based, had the education, experiences and opportunity to write the plays.

The man from Stratford on Avon known as Shakespeare had none of those qualifications. While de Vere had private tutors, access to one of England's finest private libraries and a university education, it cannot be proven that Shakspere was even literate. His (disputed) signatures spell his name in various ways — Shakspere, Shaxper, Shagspere — and there is no record of his attending any school. De Vere was a courtier in Queen Elizabeth's court, a nobleman, a peer in the House of Lords, a sailor with Sir Francis Drake against the Spanish Armada; he was intimately familiar with court intrigues that are prominent in Shakespearean plays. There is no record of the man from Stratford attending the queen's court. De Vere spent years in Italy and fell in love with the country. He lived in or visited Milan, Venice, Genoa, Padua and Verona, all of which receive mention or are the settings of scenes in Shakespearean plays. The man from Stratford apparently never left England and likely spoke in a Warwickshire accent that made him unintelligible to Londoners.

The problem Stratfordians face is explaining how anyone with so little education and so little exposure to the world could have written any of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. They can only attribute the inexplicable to a miraculous literary storm. Any student of literature knows that authors, willingly or unwillingly, place their life experiences in their writings. Dickens' novels were influenced by his life as an orphan. Flannery O'Connor's short stories are colored by her strict Catholic faith. Hemingway's novels reveal his obsession with manliness and romance. Faulkner's novels are firmly fixed in Mississippi. Yet, the Stratfordians contend that this uneducated man from Stratford could write gloriously and convincingly about the world of English nobility he had never known and about places he had never seen.

Anderson's massive tome explains why de Vere would be reluctant to attach his name to the plays and sonnets and why he would allow the pirated publication of his works without asserting his rights. (Shaksper of Stratford was notorious for filing lawsuits but never claimed that the pirated plays were his own.) He also offers a simple and persuasive explanation for the Stratfordians' major argument against de Vere, that he died in 1604 before all the plays were written (he shows that the plays were likely written before 1604, not after).

The acceptance of the authorship of de Vere has been been growing. Kenneth Branagh, the British actor who once aimed to film all of Shakespeare's plays (his "Hamlet" and "Henry V" are grand), is a recent convert to the de Vere side. Actor Derek Jacobi is another. Sigmund Freud was convinced that de Vere was the rightful author. Orson Wells, John Gielgud, Mark Twain and others have questioned the orthodoxy of Stratfordian authorship.

There is even a De Vere Society that is dedicated to celebrating the true author of English literature's most creative and influential author. Why do most academics cling to the man from Stratford? This has been accepted doctrine for centuries, and careers (and a tourism industry) have been built on Stratfordian authorship. But any objective review of the history of the two men shows that de Vere, not William Shaksper, is the logical author.