“The principal Shakespeare claimant these days is not [[Francis Bacon|[Francis] Bacon]] but Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. The case was launched on an indifferent public in a book called Shakespeare Identified in 1920 by a Gateshead schoolmaster with the unimprovable name of J Thomas Looney. Looney surmises from the plays certain attributes that the author of Shakespeare had and then alights on Oxford as possessing them. A small cult following was convinced, including Sigmund Freud.Yet the search for documentary evidence yielded nothing.”