Let us consolidate our common ground.   Shakespeare went to school until he was 12, and returned home to be his father's apprentice.

We enter the age of "the lost years".   One common theme of those days has him poaching venison and being chased off to London by an irate Lord.   Whatever. I think everyone agrees that he didn't go to sea, didn't travel around Europe and had no contact with Queen's court.

Whether the works of Shakespeare actually needed legal, medical and fine arts education is a moot point and is conceded as not being at the heart of our discussion.   Likewise, that his given name was Shagspere is deemed irrelevant (even though it was the name he used to get married).

He arrives in London, immediately and without fanfare writes stunning work, and packs it all in at the age of 40 to do more important stuff like trading corn.   His epithet (the only piece every given full credit to him, is such doggerel, it is dismissed as being some sort of joke).

When he dies, not one person notices that England has lost such a great author.   

Now on to the discourse!

Pete has given us another fine example of carefully picking the points to support a particular view point. For example, MacBeth is surely Guy Fawkes for heaven's sake.   And then quietly ignore that Hamlet is a biography of De Vere (Perhaps you just have to keep saying "It isn't, it isn't" until it stops bothering the thought processes.)

And he seems to accept the big one: hook, line and sinker.   

You see, the theory that William Shakespear wrote the plays and sonnets is, in itself, no more than a conspiracy theory.   A very special type, I grant you, but this theory does have almost nothing but circumstance to support it.   However, it was the first theory on the scene, was able to grab the center ground, is able to dismiss all challengers as being mere SCTF's and never has to actually prove a thing.   

You would be amazed at the mental contortions the Stratfordians get into to protect their boy Bill.   Well, they have to, don't they?   They are the ones who have got it right.