Kurt Kreiler, a German academic, this time,  claims to have uncovered "the strongest evidence yet" that the incomparable canon of works attributed to William Shakespeare is not by him,  but is authored by Edward de Vere,  Earl of Oxford and has written extensively in an attempt to prove it.  "The Man who Invented Shakespeare"  has been published recently in Germany;  the English translation should appear during 2010.

According to the article by Allen Hall, in the Telegraph of Nov.23rd.,  the book claims that there are strong resemblances with the style of writing of the plays,  that de Vere was highly educated (unlike the "lowly born"  Will Shakespeare,  a favourite canard touted by such would-be's) and claims that Hamlet is "almost autobiographical" about the Earl's  life, ignoring inconvenient details such as that he did not actually murder his uncle or die poisoned or by violence.  The author also claims that the Earl's nickname at court was "Spear-shaker"  because his coat of arms showed a lion brandishing a spear. Oxford is known to have written comedies - none of them has survived -  but no tragedies, which is another rather awkward fact.

Among the many claimants to have written the plays of "Shakespeare" - there are a couple of dozen listed in "Who Wrote Shakespeare"  by Prof. Sam Schoenbaum,  headed by one Will Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon - the Earl of Oxford already holds a prominent place.  He was first postulated in 1920 by the unfortunately named Thomas Looney!    His candidature, however, tends to fall over one inconvenient stumbling block,  namely, that he died in 1604.  That means that he would have had to have written over a dozen major plays* in advance & kept them in his desk to release to the theatres at a rate of one or two a year - which is self-evidently, ridiculous.  All in all, whatever circumstantial evidence is produced to bolster up this claim,  it remains totally unlikely to be true without some major discoveries yet to be made.

*Such as:  Othello, Measure for Measure, All's Well that Ends Well,  Timon of Athens, Macbeth,  King Lear, Pericles, Prince of Tyre,  Anthony & Cleopatra, Coriolanus,  Cymbeline,  A Winter's Tale,  The Tempest,  Cardenio,  All is True (King Henry VIII),  and The Two Noble Kinsmen.