There's plenty of evidence to link the plays to someone called William Shakespear, & a total lack of any other candidate of that name.
I'd be interested to see it, if you have any links? The argument as I have heard it is that WS couldn't possibly have written the plays as he lacked the necessary education and experience - so who did? -
Indeed - and that, as far as I can see, is the entire argument. But note that it is equally applicable to Ben Jonson (began his career as a bricklayer, like his father), among others. The other supposed arguments are all specious. The lack of letters, diaries, etc., for example, applies equally to many writers of his time, e.g. Christopher Marlowe (the son of a shoemaker). Nobody back then saw any reason to preserve then.
There's the rub: the case against Shakespeare relies on applying a different standard to him than to his contemporaries. If one compares the case for de Vere, with that for Shakespeare, it quickly becomes clear that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that de Vere had eny had at all in any of the plays or poems attributed to Shakespear. He's just the sort of person who anti-Stratfordians think ought to have written them.
Wikipedia has several links, & Google turns up plenty more. Many books written on the subject, of which
The Case for Shakespeare, by Scott McCrea, is recent & seems to be highly regarded. I've read older studies, but years ago, & can't remember titles. I do remember that their arguments against Will S were no better than those on the de Vere Society website, once one compared them with the pro-Shakespear evidence. The pro-de Vere 'evidence' tends to be of the 'that bit of plain language is actually an encrypted message proving that de Vere wrote the lot', type.
The arguments that Shakespear (probably grammar school boy: it would have been normal for a prosperous tradesman such as his father to send his son the local grammar school, a short walk away) incorporated influences from & references to Greek plays which he wouldn't have read are silly. He'd probably have been able to read Latin translations, & there were plenty of English works which made reference to Greek plays, in sufficient detail for a bright bloke immersed in the theatre to have picked 'em up damn quick. One comment I've read elsewhere:
When people actively and militantly disbelieve that a creative and intelligent person could continue to educate themself post formal schooling, they say much about themselves and nothing at all about the subject of their disbelief.
They also overlook that his classical knowledge was actually rather weak, as was some of his geography (mocked in his lifetime, note), & he made frequent references to grammar school.
Ben Jonson wrote that he knew Shakespeare personally, & that Shakespeare wrote plays. Jonson endorsed the First Folio, & I can't see why anyone would believe that Jonson, who should have known, would pretend that the plays were by someone other than the true author. De Vere had been dead for almost 20 years: what secret was there to keep?
The Oxfordian view requires that during Shakespeare's lifetime & soon after,
and after de Vere's death, large numbers of people who know Shakespeare & had worked with him would collude to attribute works to Shakespeare that they almost certainly knew he hadn't written. It assumes that other playwrights who collaborated with Shakespeare after Oxford's death were in on the pretence, & never let it slip.
