"Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my name, Showing their birth, and where they did proceed?" fr. Shakespeare Sonnet #76 "Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, ..." fr. Shakespeare Sonnet #110 What do you think? Did a London street hustler, from nearby Stratford-on-Avon, with no more than an eighth grade education write the works of Shakespeare? How about a reckless, brilliant Earl who lived many strange adventures and turned to writing, under a pen name (in order to avoid the embarrassment of being known as a common playwright), after he ran through all of his money? This is the Introductory Biography to a two volume *Collected Poems of Edward de Vere*. Two smoking-gun proofs discovered and presented here for the first time together with lots of other information not generally known. Not an ounce of fluff or filler. This is a biography of Edward De Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, such as you have never read before: compressed, precise, entirely fact-oriented, the greatest fact being that De Vere can actually be proven to have written the works of William Shake-speare. It is all supported by extensive notes and bibliography and most of the sources are available for verification free-of-charge via the Google Book Search. You can check the veracity of every assertion if you wish or just skip the notes and read this as a popular biography.