Edward de Vere & William Shakespeare

No one had any reason to doubt the Stratford man's authorship of the works during his lifetime because apparently nobody thought he wrote them in the first place!

“… when he died in 1616, no one seemed to notice. Not so much as a letter refers to the author's passing.”

Not until seven years after he died did a document appear pointing to him as the author. Nobody seems to have known who “Shakespeare” was, and most probably did not care. There is little reason to think that the author was a prominent person during his lifetime. The Stratford monument is so ambiguous that Stratford's residents had little to question. Some think it was originally erected as a monument to William's father, John Shakspere.

J. Thomas Looney, British schoolmaster and scholar, evolved the theory of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as author in his book, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford

it is generally agreed that the play was created to celebrate a wedding in a noble household. There are two such occasions appropriate for this first performance. One is the wedding in 1595 of Elizabeth Vere, Lord Burghley’s granddaughter, to William Earl of Derby at Greenwich Palace