novel, Escape (1924), Brooks wrote extensively on the Shakespeare authorship question, and in 1937 produced a preliminary volume, Will Shakspere: Factotum and Agent, in an attempt to prove that Shakespeare did not write the works attributed to him. In this book, Shakespeare is considered to be a pseudonym, and the sonnets are attributed to Thomas Nashe, Samuel Daniel, Barnabe Barnes and some other editorial hand. A contemporary scholar reviewing Brooks's ideas commented that although "there is absolutely no evidence to support any of his statements [this] disturbed neither Brooks nor his publishers." Six years later, he fulfilled his earlier promise of identifying the supposed real author by publishing Will Shakspere and the Dyer's Hand (1943) declaring that Sir Edward Dyer was the true author. His methodology consisted of specifying 54 criteria or qualifications which worked to the exclusion of the many false claimants the establishment of the true author's identity, only all of which his candidate, Sir Edward Dyer, was thought to meet in "concordance with the pattern". The book, in the ironical words of one historian of the phenomenon, "did not ignite a crusade". William Shakespeare was, in Brooks' imaginative reconstruction, little more than a "fool, knave, usurer, vulgar showman, illiterate, bluffer, philander, pander, and brothel keeper" who however acted at the same time as the literary agent of Dyer, the concealed author. An anonymous reviewer for Time magazine summed up the plot in the following way: He depicts Shakespeare as a butcher's son in Stratford, "a country youth who has to leave school early in order to assist his father in the killing of cattle ... one who sows his wild oats so liberally that he must, first, marry against his will a woman eight years his senior, and, secondly, run away to London, apparently to escape legal prosecution." ... in London he got a job holding theatergoers' horses. Soon he earned enough money to rent out theatrical costumes and furnishings. Something of a wit in his coarse way, he began editing plays for production, soon became a play agent, buying and renting the works of others. On the side he kept a brothel: "In his tavern in Deadman's Lane, sub-leased to Widow Lee, Will Shakspere ... created ... a roistering hubbub." His "broken, almost falsetto voice" became a feature of London life. His "fat body" was soon "taxed by excesses." Many suffered from "his scheming tricks ...