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I've often said, anyone who takes the time to really look into the Authorship Question may not come away convinced, as I am, that "Shakespeare" was the Earl of Oxford, but they cannot rationally continue to believe he was the Stratford man.

NO idea where these "scholars" conjure the idea that it was unusual for a theatrical personage to seek fame and/or notoriety!!

The man from Stratford called himself Shaksper, something we know from nearly eighty references in contemporary documents, almost all with different spellings but the same phonetics. But it is common practice to call him Shakespeare, and thus obfuscate a very important distinguishing difference.

Civilians understandably miss the point entirely. "Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? What does that even mean??"

But that connection to the theater (which may even have been a post mortem invention!) is the best link between the Stratford man and the playwright, so those in the Stratford camp cling to it.

This is what ultimately convinced me. Virtually all his contemporaries left some kind of "paper trail," something that identified them as writers in their lifetimes. For the Stratford man, Brawn-Do style circular thinking kicks in. He is an author because he wrote the plays, and he wrote the plays because he is an author.

This despite not one word we can be absolutely certain is in his own hand!