How could de Vere be Shakespeare if he died before many of the plays were first published or performed?

Ten out of the thirty-seven known plays of Shakespeare came out after Edward de Vere's death. de Vere died on June 24, 1604. In 1612, The Tempest was published, and a year later Henry VIII. Henry VIII was published nine years after de Vere's death. There is no logical reason why this would happen. It is not as though de Vere could have been revising them. The simple explanation is de Vere was not Shakespeare. However, de Vere could have been trying to protect the royal family from an embarrassing public spectacle after his death. Indeed, if the Shakespeare writings were known to be about the royal family, it would have caused a big scandal. However, scandals and Edward de Vere were like two peas in a pod. de Vere was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. He did not have to fear her fury if he was the author. de Vere was a homosexual who had an affair with a young boy. Homosexuality was a crime in the Elizabethan era, and the punishment was severe. de Vere was willing to meet a horrid punishment just to chase around a small boy. He was not a man who would have cared what other people thought he should do. The evidence is clearly against him. He was dead before all the Shakespeare works were published and could not be the author.

--Scott Presser

Sources:

Matus, Irvin Leigh. Shakespeare, In Fact. New York: Continuum, 1994. 263.

Schoenbaum, S. Shakespeare's Lives. New edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. 64.

Sobran, Joseph. Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time. New York: Free Press, 1997. 143-148.

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