You folks should read an authoritative biography on Shakespeare (Greenblatt, for one) or take a gander at Russ MacDonald's section on the authorship controversy ("The Anti-Stratfordians") in his Bedford Companion to Shakespeare. The "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" thesis has been discredited time and time again by the people who make it their profession to study not just Shakespeare, but early modern culture and literature as a whole. Edward De Vere died (conclusively, firmly, definitely died) in 1604, well before some of Shakespeare's most notable plays--Coriolanus, The Tempest, Macbeth (the latter referring to the Gunpowder Plot, an event occurring in 1605. . .