SOURCE: "Looking for Shakespeare: Two Partisans Explain and Debate the Authorship Question," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 268, No. 4, October, 1991, pp. 43-61.

In the following essay, Bethell discusses the parallels between Hamlet and the life of Edward de Vere, and insists that the experiences of de Vere—most notably his courtly life and familiarity with Italy—show that he is more likely to have written the plays than Stratford's Shakespeare.

Hamlet is derived from a story in François de Belleforest's Histories Tragiques (1576), not yet translated into English when Shakespeare adapted it. Shakespeare introduced new characters and greatly enlarged the roles assigned to various characters by Belieferest. One of these magnified characters is Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain to the King of Denmark, who is not even named in the original story. As long ago as 1869 the scholar George Russell French noted the similarities between Queen Elizabeth's principal minister, Lord...