If de Vere wrote the plays, why didn't he use his own name?

Several poems have been found that were written by Edward de Vere under his own name, poems that are similar to some of those attributed to Shakespeare. In addition, de Vere's guardian Lord Burghley, the most powerful man in England, seems to be satirized as Polonius in Hamlet. de Vere seems to have quit writing when he was still a young man. Many people are sure, however, that the writing continued under the name "William Shakespeare." Why wouldn't de Vere have put his own name to the plays? People think it was because writing plays was beneath the dignity of nobility. Furthermore, de Vere would have been barred from using his own name because he had inside knowledge of all the court intrigues. Powerful people like Lord Burghley and even Queen Elizabeth would have been embarrassed had the public known de Vere was the author. So, de Vere chose a natural penname. Then, when de Vere's friends and relatives decided to publish his plays long after his death, they chose as a "frontman" the obscure, semiliterate, country bumpkin, William Shakspere of Stratford, who also had the advantage of being dead.

--Brain Maclauchlan

Sources:

Austin, Al. The Great Literary Mystery. New York: Free Press, 1989.

Matus, Irvin Leigh. Shakespeare, In Fact. New York: Continuum, 1994.

Michell, John F. Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, 1992.

Schoenbaum, S. Shakespeare's Lives. New Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991.

Sobran, Joseph. Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time. New York: Free Press, 1997.

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