For a host of persuasive but commonly disregarded reasons, the Earl of Oxford has quietly become by far the most compelling man to be found behind the mask of "Shake-speare." As Orson Welles put it in 1954, "I think Oxford wrote Shakespeare. If you don't agree, there are some awful funny coincidences incidences to explain away." Some of these coincidences are obscure, others are hard to overlook. A 1578 Latin encomium to Oxford, for example, contains some …showed first 75 words of 2224 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2224 total…e more I turn him round and round the more he so affects me. But that is all--I am not pretending to treat the question or to carry it any further. It bristles with difficulties, and I can only express my general sense by saying that I find it almost as impossible to conceive that Bacon wrote the plays as to conceive that the man from Stratford, as we know the man from Stratford, did.