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In all our efforts to beef up homeland security, the one word that everyone tries to avoid in an effort to be politically correct is profiling.  Our long-suffering flying public is about to endure even more delays and inconvenience because of further changes in security protocols.

We are also about to spend an additional one-billion dollars on the newest high-tech security apparatus.  But technology will not solve our security problems.  Shortfalls in our security defenses come not from technology lapses, but from human error.  Whether it is connecting the dots between Homeland Security, FBI and the CIA, or TSA officials leaving their post or failing to follow procedures, it is these human errors that could be the cause of terrorists’ successes.

While technology can cover some of the problems, it seems to me that profiling of passengers is the least costly and the most effective way of dealing with potential terrorist threats.  The American public does not like to face the fact that we are at War, and if the country is at War, sacrifices have to be made.  Profiling is not necessarily discriminatory.  The suspect could be black, white, male, female, Muslim, Christian or Jew.  We know of course that the vast majority of Muslims are law-abiding and would have nothing to do with Al-Qaida or similar organizations.  However, it is regrettably true that, while not all Muslims are terrorists, every terrorist is a Muslim. So accordingly, our Homeland Security officials need to know the background of every Arab and Muslim name that appears on a passenger list.  Homeland Security needs to train specialist officers to interview these selected passengers on their arrival at airports with flights bound for the USA.  This is an expensive process, but it’s probably a lot cheaper than further investments in advanced technologies.

These officials should be trained to observe passengers as they move towards the check-in desks, looking for nervousness, or other behavioral patterns that might be suspicious. The trained interviewers should review passports and tickets and ask a series of simple questions, making eye contact with the passenger to discern suspicious behavior. 

These procedures have for many been carried out on all flights to and from Israel – a country that has been continually under terrorist threats for the past forty or fifty years – and very few incidents have taken place over the past decade or so.  More importantly, the passengers going through this process are dealt with courteously, speedily and efficiently.  And clearly, the process seems to work.

Perhaps Homeland Security and our other agencies will now move towards these procedures, which would certainly relieve stress and discomfort for the vast majority of the flying public and should eliminate the sort of incident that happened on the Delta flight to Detroit over Christmas.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

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Travel isn’t much fun these days what with security checks, taking off your clothes, taking off your shoes, and sometimes being “patted down” by security officers.  The planes are old and jammed full, and if you’re on a flight that serves food, it is usually less than appetizing.   

During the holiday season, travel becomes even less appealing.  My daughter, who lives in Paris with her husband and my granddaughter who is seven, was planning to take the Eurostar railroad to London on Saturday.  My daughter makes many such visits to see other members of our family – my other daughter, her husband and three kids, and my father-in-law.  She is a regular traveler on Eurostar, which takes two hours and ten minutes for the journey from Paris to London.  Her plans on Saturday however were thwarted, much to the disappointment of all. 

On Friday, two Eurostar trains broke down in the tunnel under the English Channel and two thousand plus passengers were stranded for more than seven hours – sometimes without heat or light.  Eventually, they were evacuated from their trains and escorted into another tunnel which carries freight.  The freight train was stopped so as they could board, and they then endured a short but dirty and unpleasant journey through the rest of the tunnel to the English side.

The Eurostar service has yet to reopen.  Management says that the cause of the problem was extreme cold and snowy conditions in France, causing the trains to freeze – which was not a problem – but when they entered the Chunnel where the temperatures can rise to 75 degrees or more, the trains encountered extreme condensation which led to a breakdown of the electrical circuits.

The London visit was only going to be a short less than 24-hour trip, because today my Paris contingent is flying from Paris (the flight delayed by snow) to the Dominican Republic where the rest of  us are meeting up tomorrow.

On Friday, my English daughter and her family flew in from London via Philadelphia.  They were extremely lucky to be ahead of the storm; and, although they were delayed in London (more snow) they were ahead of the major storm that hit the east coast.  Had they been traveling on Saturday, they would have encountered two feet of snow in Philadelphia and been diverted, possibly to Chicago!  They however arrived safely although somewhat exhausted, but in essence only suffered minor delays.

Tomorrow all eleven of us will be (we hope) in the Dominican Republic, subject to any further flight delays (more snow expected in Chicago tonight).  Hopefully, we will be lucky and arrive safe and sound.  It will be worth it to have some nice warm temperatures (we hope) after chilly Chicago.

The disruption caused by the massive storms over the weekend on the east coast and more additional storms expected during this week has and will likely continue to cause chaos to holiday season travelers.  They all have my extreme sympathy. 

Trying to meet up with family or make travel connections for the holiday period is going to be a nightmare.  All of which makes the case in my mind, to investing in high speed rail as they do in Europe.  Despite the problems encountered in the under channel service between London and Paris this past few days, the high-speed rail network around Europe works extremely well, is very efficient and cost effective.  It is far less stressful these days to take a train than having to get to an airport an hour and a half before the flight and go through all the security problems and then mechanical or weather delays, which has become the norm.

Hopefully, the weather forecasters will be wrong and that the snow forecasts for tomorrow (which we hope won’t hold us up) and later in the week, will not be too frustrating and stressful for the millions of people eager to get together with families and friends over what should be a joyous holiday season.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

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Publishing has not been fun of late.  The past few years, the industry has been facing consolidation, declining sales, tightening margins, and competition from television and the Internet. 

An increasing number of Americans are reading less, if anything at all.  Their hectic lifestyles leave less time for leisurely pursuits.  At the same time, there is increasing competition for such leisure time by network television, the explosion of cable channels, and the internet.  The declining readership of newspaper and informational magazines reinforces this point.  So, it’s not surprising that publishers, book distributors, book retailers, and authors are all feeling the pinch.

Out of this gloomy prospect, there is one possible shining star.  The digital age has brought us the electronic book – Kindle and others.  Many in the industry are hailing this new inventive popular answer to reading in the digital age, as a savior for all.  Unfortunately as is sometimes the case, even silver linings can have black clouds. 

Amazon’s pricing of the majority of its E-Books at $9.99 leaves very little profit for all concerned.  The dissatisfaction of this pricing policy, as voiced by both publishers and authors alike, prompted Amazon to make attempts to increase their sales prices across a wide range of offerings.  However having established a base at $9.99, increased prices immediately lead to a decline in sales.  The result is considerable dissatisfaction from all contributors. 

Other disputes are now arising as to the ownership of the electronic rights to older titles, or those so called “black-list” books.  Some authors, who have chosen to work with newly established E-Book specialty publishers, are running into resistance from the print publishers.  Of course E-Books and the electronic age were not envisaged when many publishing agreements were established with their authors.  But now the digital age brings the promise of lucrative revenue, maybe for years to come, on titles considered dead or moribund. 

Very few publishing agreements gave exclusive rights to publish in electronic formats, and authors and agents are concerned that existing print publishers are not offering sufficient royalties on E-Book editions, which of course are much cheaper to produce. 

This week’s Sunday New York Times chronicled details of legal battles already raging over E-Book rights.  Authors and publishers are fighting to establish law for a new E-world.  It is early days in the E-Book publishing world, and there are a number of challenges, including ownership of rights, royalty levels, Amazon pricing, and language in older contracts. 

These may take some years to resolve but in the meantime, despite the conflicts and dissatisfaction, the digital age and the electronic book is providing the publishing industry perhaps with its last chance of growth potential.

From a personal point of view, I’ve yet to make up my mind whether the Kindle fills my reading requirements.  Although I recognize the convenience – particularly when traveling – of reading E-Book versions by my favorite authors, I still like the feel of a book, the turn of the page, and the knowledge that some incredible literary talents are sitting on my bookshelves.  This certainly adds to the comfort zone of one of my major pleasures of life.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com 

As we watch the excruciating debate on the efforts to pass Health Care Reform in this country, many Europeans look aghast upon our torturous process.  They see the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on lobbying, negative TV adverts, and the political politics of fear being used in the debate for what is considered a human right in virtually every other developed country.  The U.S. is the richest country in the world with the largest economy, and yet we do not provide health insurance for more than 40-million Americans. Under our present system, one major medical catastrophe can make a family destitute, individuals can be refused insurance because of previous medical conditions, employees are unable to transfer their insurance cover from one job to the other, and people without insurance can only resort to emergency medical care. Despite this, our medical insurance costs are more than double of any other developed country.

You would think it would be a simple decision to decide to rectify this major shortfall in the American way of life, but of course politics – as always – gets in the way, especially when there are elections looming within the next twelve months.

I’ve recently been able to view the medical care provided by the UK National Health Service.  I have an elderly 84-year-old partially disabled cousin, who lives alone in London.  She has had a history of medical problems, necessitating two hip replacements and a knee replacement.  She suffers from other ailments, including poor circulation and is only able to get around with the aid of a walker. 

The National Health Service has, for many years, provided for carers, nursing visits, and other free medical services when needed.  Unfortunately, my cousin’s mental health has also been deteriorating, and she is suffering from increasingly severe dementia.  She lives alone and has, to her credit, struggled to maintain her independence.

However, at the beginning of September, she fell and was rushed to hospital. Luckily, there was no physical damage as a result of the fall, but after a few days in hospital, she was transferred to a community health and care facility where she has remained for the past two and a half months, while they have attended to her physical ailments, and have been assessing her mental capacites.

I’m her closest relative and I have Power of Attorney over her affairs and well-being.  I have been trying to make arrangements for her to be transferred to a private residential nursing facility, in consultation with the hospital. The National Health Service operates under the UK law, that requires a full mental assessment of a patient that might lead to deprivation of liberty.  There are various legal safeguards, including the appointment of an independent Mental Capacity Advocate, before a decision is made.

Hopefully, we’re moving to a satisfactory conclusion on these delicate matters, but I’ve been struck by the contrast of the free care that she has received for many years, and what would have happened in the U.S. under similar circumstances.

My cousin only has a modest State and company Pension to live on, which I supplement.  I cannot imagine what three months of similar care in the U.S. would cost, and how it would be paid for.  My health care providers recently advised me of a 26% increase in health care premiums for 2010.

We cannot underestimate the complications of health care and the necessary reforms that are needed, but I would hazard a guess that nearly every family in the United States has faced nerve-wracking decisions relating to health care costs and issues.

Let us hope that the end of the political “game” results in true reform, lower costs, and health care for all.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com 

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• GOP health care protesters heckle woman in wheel chair (americablog.com)

My friend, Jian Ping, the author of the compelling Memoir of China – “Mulberry Child” – was devoted to her grandmother, who raised her during the difficult years of the Cultural Revolution, when her parents were detained and imprisoned and the family suffered persecution and deprivation.

She recently expressed some surprise at the level of interest and questions she receives about her grandmother, Nainai, from members of her audience during her many speaking engagements.  She had great love and admiration for her grandmother, who devoted her life first to her husband, then her children, and then the children of her son, who was Jian Ping’s father.  This old lady, who hobbled around with bound feet in the Chinese tradition, asked for little, had no personal agenda, and gave unconditional love and devotion to her charges. 

But I’m not surprised that Jian Ping receives much interest on this subject from her audience.  America is a nation of immigrants, and we all have grandparents, most of whom left their countries of their birth to escape war, pestilence, poverty, or persecution and seek a better life in the U.S., land of opportunity.

As we look back at our grandmothers, we are all amazed at their strength, love and devotion to their responsibilities, without complaint or reward while learning to adapt to their new home land, usually living in abject poverty as they struggled to create a family home for their many children.

My own grandmother falls into this category.  She was the second wife of my grandfather, whose first wife had produced four children and then died giving birth to the fifth.  He then married my grandmother who gave him six further children, and my grandmother thus had to bring up ten children, four of whom were not her own.  She however devoted her love and attention to all of them equally and throughout their lives, those children and their children looked on her with the utmost respect, admiration and love.

My grandfather died when his youngest child – my father – was seven years old.  He was fifty-years-old and left my grandmother with ten children to raise with no money and hardly a roof over their head.  She never remarried and spent the next forty-seven years as a widow until she died at the age of ninety-five.  She was a deeply religious woman, but one who did not push her beliefs on her children.  She cooked, sewed, cleaned, and scrubbed her whole life.  I remember her food as always being delicious all from her own special recipes, for which she had no written record, but complete judgment of the contributions to the contents. 

She spoke English with a thick Polish accent (sounding to me like the late Pope John – they both came from Krakow), and her English writing was poor to non-existent, as was her reading.  Nevertheless, she had patience, wisdom, strength, and old world remedies to overcome any obstacle or illness.

My parent’s generation and certainly my generation did not have to face anything like these hardships.  We are now grandparents.  I often wonder whether we will receive such admiration and respect from our children and grandchildren.  For the most part, we have had a privileged life in a modern society where our expectations are so much higher.  I truly believe we can never match the strength, character, and unselfish devotion of my grandmother or all the Nainai’s in the world.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

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We live in a modern world of ever-increasing forms of communication and instant information.  This is not all good.  The demise of the newspapers and quality news reporting on television has led us into a world of instant clips of a few seconds, from which we are supposed to form opinions of world events.  Over the past hundred years or so, the global public accessed the information on their own local environment, country, and global affairs though newspapers, which provided the reader with the opportunity of creating an informed opinion on issues that matter.

The arrival of radio allowed a wider audience to listen to news items and comment, and the advent of television brought to the public for the first time visual support to the news from news bureaus of the major networks around the world.  Unfortunately, network news is now no more than a news magazine of mostly irrelevant “fluff.”  The viewer therefore finds it increasingly difficult to seek out serious news and comment from around the world.  The dumbing down of America continues at a furious pace.

The Vietnam War was perhaps the first conflict that brought the horrors of daily combat into our living room with the true but unpleasant sight of death and destruction.  The embedding of reporters into tanks and other army vehicles at the beginning of the Iraq War was less than successful.  It failed to give us, the public, a larger view of the conflict or even the damage inflicted as a result of the US “shock and awe” bombing.

As our wars have changed from massed armies in uniforms with tanks and other equipment facing each other, into conflicts involving road-side bombings, suicide bombers, terrorist activities against civilians, and insurgents indistinguishable from the local civilian population, so the rules of war and the reporting thereof are changing.  Terrorist groups, insurgents and Jihadists have become ever more sophisticated in the use and manipulation of those few seconds of a TV image. 

In the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas, we now know that Hamas had deliberately placed their rockets, weaponry and their fighters in congested civilian areas, schools, and hospitals.  They invited television news teams – BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN and others – into the conflict arena.  We, the viewing public, were shown numerous clips of dead civilians, damaged schools, and terrified children.  These images prompted a United Nations investigation into war crimes abuses by the combatants, headed by, one should note, such human rights protectors as Libya and Saudi Arabia. The resulting outcome has created a furor.

While this conflict was filling our television screens every evening and we were told about the fourteen hundred Palestinian deaths, another conflict was developing, which received no television coverage at all.  The Sri Lanka government had launched a major offensive to finally eliminate the Tamil insurgency, which had been raging on and off for more than two decades.  This major military offensive totally destroyed numerous towns and villages, killing thousands of militants and civilians – men, women, and children – and forced over 150,000 people to flee their homes and hide in the jungles without shelter, food or water.  Eventually, the remnants of the rebels and an estimated 100,000 civilians were cornered on a spit of land, forcing the Tamil insurgents finally to surrender.  Nearly 100,000 civilians were placed into temporary refugee camps, where most of them are still languishing seven months after the end of the conflict.  However, there were no TV crews nor five-second clips of the death and suffering of those civilians.  So, no world outrage and no UN war crimes investigation.

But it prompts the question, what should be the rules of war in this new environment?  How does a democratic country who values life, – US, European, or the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel – respond to attacks from unidentifiable combatants operating deep in civilian areas?  Is it a war crime to respond to those attacks, knowing there will be some civilian casualties, or is the war crime perpetrated by those who use human shields, from behind which they launch their attacks?

The Geneva Convention and protests of proportionality of responses are inadequate in this new world.  The format of today’s armed conflicts has changed, and so should the accepted rules of engagement.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

"War Horse" Production London

There is a new memorial statue in Hyde Park in London honoring animals that went to War.  As is well known, the English adore their animals, particularly dogs and horses and the memorial has received favorable reviews and public support.

There is also a new play called “War Horse” produced at the National Theatre and now transferred to the West End.  “War Horse” follows the life of a farm horse rounded up and sold to the British Army at the beginning of World War I, much to the regret and opposition of the farmer’s son, who had nurtured, trained, and loved the horse.  With the aid of incredible puppetry, we follow the horrors of the First World War and the mass destruction of animals in their last hurrah before mechanical warfare took over.

The well known author and journalist, Max Hastings, wrote about the incredible contribution and suffering of over a million horses sent to France between 1914 and 1918.  Only 62,000 returned.  Throughout the centuries until the First World War, men had always relied on animals to provide an indispensible military advantage, and the Calvary in various forms had since the Middle Ages, become the “striking force” of armies of the period.

We’ve all seen those glorified paintings of the Calvary charging into battle with swords drawn as their wild-eyed mounts surge full tilt towards the enemy.  What has never been depicted however, were battlefields in which abandoned, maimed, or severely wounded animals wander in agony and bewilderment.  Armies have also listed their losses in men and guns.  Rarely, is there mention of the horses that gave their lives in the service of victory. 

World War I with its trench warfare, gas attacks, and gradual conversion to mechanical warfare was particularly cruel to those poor horses, as they suffered bullet and sword wounds and the torture of wire and mud. Even more horrifying were the Calvary charges, attempted particularly in the first few months of the war, which ended in total disaster in the face of raking machine gun fire.

Throughout the following years of the trench warfare on the Western front, horses worked in the most deplorable conditions, pulling guns, ambulances and supplies.  Thousands were left dying by nails and blades from the battlefield.  In the two-year period prior to the Armistice in November 1918, the British Army recorded the death of 58,000 horses and the wounding of a further 77,000.

What madness, that such things should happen during a 20th Century War.  Horses and other animals unable to comprehend the horrifying circumstances of their lives, died by the hundreds of thousands and few returned to a normal life for these unsung heroes.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

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My recent Blogs about the authenticity of William Shakespeare’s works have brought a number of comments and questions.  The most prevalent of these questions asks that, if Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, was the real author of most of Shakespeare’s work, was Shakespeare a fraud?  Personally, I don’t think so.

The Shakespeare – Oxford Society, which is dedicated to researching and honoring the true Bard, points out that there is significant evidence of Oxford’s status as one of several anonymous and pseudonymous Court writers of the 1580’s.  This was quite a common practice at the time; and, if the Earl of Oxford wanted to have his plays performed in front of the general public – a rabble of often low-class, loud, and drunken audiences – he would have been happy to ask William Shakespeare, a commoner actor/producer, to take title to these works for public performance.

On this basis, one should not accuse William Shakespeare of being a fraud.  He was just entering into a business arrangement that was common at the time.  We can be certain that neither he nor the Earl of Oxford would ever imagine that these literary works would receive world-wide distribution that would last four hundred years and be considered the work of a genius.

There should be a large amount of contemporary documents about the life of William Shakespeare, who would become renowned as the world’s greatest writer.  There are none.  Manuscripts, letters sent to him or about him between others, or printed stories or pamphlets are non-existent.  There are thus, no documents to show that William Shakespeare had any connection with the plays or poems performed as his work. 

Over the past couple of hundred years, many people have tried to identify the true author.  Amongst the most common are Francis Bacon, Marlowe, Derby and Rutland.  All of this has stirred the controversy, which incidentally never surrounded other great literary figures, such as Milton, Chaucer, Swift, Pope, etc.

The search for the real author has become the greatest manhunt in literary history.  And for the past one-hundred-fifty years or so, there have been many doubters.  Amongst them are, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldow Emerson, Sigmund Freud, Orson Welles, Sir John Gielgud, and even Supreme Court Justices, John Paul Stevens, and Harry Blackmun – all of whom have joined the ranks of those who give credit to the Earl of Oxford.

Some will say that it doesn’t really matter who the author is – it’s the work that counts.  I would agree, but nevertheless it would be good to give credit where credit is due.  Hopefully, sometime in the not too distant future, evidence will appear that will prove once and for all that the genius credited to William Shakespeare, the simple uneducated common man from Stratford, was really the acclaimed contemporary poet and author, Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford.

* Sources for the above from the Shakespeare – Oxford Society

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

My recent blog about the works of William Shakespeare and the long-running controversy over whether he was the true author of eighteen plays and hundreds of poems and sonnets appears to have stirred some interest.

I have received comments from those who support the theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of Shakespeare’s Works.

The Shakespeare – Oxford Society, which is dedicated to researching and honoring the true Bard, presents a compelling case for doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship. They point out that his character, background, education, family, friends, behavior towards his debtors and neighbors and his attitude to money and property is in direct conflict with the character of someone who became the world’s greatest author.

It is also pointed out that there has been controversy over true authorship – almost incessantly since the death of William Shakespeare, and it has been impossible to prove that Shakespeare wrote the plays, poems and sonnets.

The two main issues that have kept this issue simmering for centuries are that the mismatch between the man and the work and the absence of a proper documentary record, showing that the Stratford actor/merchant wrote these works.

On the other hand, the Earl of Oxford was one of the leading patrons of the Elizabethan Age, and during his lifetime, thirty three works were dedicated to him, being either original or translated works of world literature. He was also an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, poet, sportsman, and sponsor of at least two acting companies and a company of musicians.  He was well traveled and closely favored by Queen Elizabeth.

Reading the history of the Earl, his undoubted talents and royal connections, it seems perfectly plausible that he could be the true author of Shakespeare’s work.  Many members of the aristocracy of the time had reputations as poets, playwrights, and authors.  Hardly any of them published their creative work.  It would have been considered unacceptable for an aristocrat to be writing for the public theatre, which provides an explanation why Oxford might have used Shakespeare as his “front man” for his numerous creative works.

Oxford’s advanced education, knowledge of aristocratic life, the military and the law, background and knowledge of theatre lead to considerable praise for Oxford’s plays and poems. The uncanny similarities between Oxford’s life and many of the Shakespearean plays, gives additional weight to those supporters of the Oxford theory.

Amazingly, since the plays were written only 400 years ago, there is no record that can prove the authorship.  This from a country where there are numerous records going back to Roman times, where history and events were recorded meticulously and where scholarship was rewarded and manuscripts closely guarded.

I have come down on the side of those who support the Oxford theory.  I would be interested to receive your comments and thoughts on this issue.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

Over Labor Day weekend, I was in Wisconsin at the “American Players Theater,” where local actor, James DeVita, was performing a One-Man-Show – “Acting Shakespeare.”  This incredible and entertaining performance was broadly based on the Broadway format presented by the renowned English Shakespearean actor, Sir Ian McKellen in the late 1980’s. 

James DeVita’s entertaining performance described how he became a Shakespearean actor and the trials and tribulations that he suffered along the way.  But he also brought to the audience’s attention some history and facts about William Shakespeare.

We’re told that the Bard’s education didn’t go beyond a primitive grammar school.  Thus, he probably finished his formal education at age fourteen.  At age eighteen when he was working in his father’s leather business, he married Anne Hathaway eight years his senior, who was already pregnant with his child.  At age twenty-one, he decided to leave his wife, child, and father’s business and go to London to become an actor.  During the next eighteen years, Shakespeare “wrote” thirty-seven plays and hundreds of sonnets. 

I have read a number of books about Shakespeare over the years. Some biographies cover his life and describe the brilliance of the man, but other books have endeavored to prove that Shakespeare didn’t write anything and that the plays that we are so familiar with were written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. 

There are many mysteries surrounding the life of William Shakespeare.  Perhaps the most telling, which convinced me that this poorly educated man who had never left the shores of England could not have written all of those plays, is that when he died at the age of fifty-two back in Stratford-Upon-Avon, his Will made no mention of any of his plays, sonnets, or anything to do with his theatrical background, nor did he leave manuscripts, notes, or records relating to such a body of work, or mention any of his co-actors, producers and directors during his eighteen years in London. 

In addition, it is recognized his Will was poorly drawn, badly written and ungrammatical.  Could this really be William Shakespeare?  I decided there was a much better case to prove that De Vere was the true author of much of Shakespeare’s work; but, because of the fact that he was an aristocrat at the Court of Queen Elizabeth and a homosexual, he used Shakespeare as his “front man” at a time when anything to do with the theatre was considered low-class, rough, and tough. The theatre was banned from operating within the city limits, and no person of “class” would be seen at these entertainments.

So my conclusion is that William Shakespeare probably did not write these plays.  What do you think?

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com