The theories of Shakespeare’s authorship began with Delia Bacon, an American author and playwright. She derived the theory that the works attributed to Shakespeare had been written by a group of writers led by Francis Bacon, and included Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh and she believed that they credited their work to Shakespeare for political reasons, such as the notion that being a playwright would end their political career in an aristocratic nation. She spent most of her life obsessed with finding evidence and was convinced that Bacon left clues of his authorship in the plays but it resulted in the …show more content…
The leading Oxfordian theory, states the belief that the true author is Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford since he was well-educated and a nobleman and the plays contained many parallels with his own life. There is also the theory of Christopher Marlowe, despite having died in a tavern brawl, who is believed under elaborate circumstances to have survived and written the plays. Many other theories include William Stanley, Earl of Derby; Ben Jonson; Thomas Middleton; Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; and even Queen Elizabeth I as the true