Yes, i admit I have fallen into the circularity of the pro-Bill faction who say, among many things, just because the author had an amazing range of knowledge, it does not prove that the author could not be Bill.

By being an intellectual giant, Bill could have picked up all his knowledge of everything by reading.

I did not confer the title "intellectual giant" upon the author, but fell into the trap of lazy thinking, letting myself believe that if the pro-Bill faction were defending him as an intellectual giant, it must be something worth defending.

Having said that, I am willing to concede that the plays could have been written by anybody without a shred of knowledge about anything, if it will move the debate forward.

Now, didn't Jonson ascribe the works to Bill following the line taken by Sir William Cecil (aka Lord Burghley, a guy who had many, many reasons to hate De Vere)?   I have no exemplar proof that Johson had no personal contact himself with our Bill - it is others who say they never met and Ben simply passed on what he had heard from that source.   

Could it be that the importance of Sir William's words may have been given too much weight, by the sheer repetition of them by lots of people who also had also never met our Bill?