 Proponents of the Shakespeare authorship question , who assert that someone other than Shakespeare was the real author of the plays attributed to him , have claimed to find hidden signs in the portrait pointing to this supposed secret . Indeed , Dover Wilson suggested that the poor quality of the Droeshout and funeral effigy images are the underlying reason for " the campaign against ' the man from Stratford ' and the attempts to dethrone him in favour of Lord Bacon , the Earl of Derby , the Earl of Oxford , or whatever coroneted pretender may be in vogue at the present moment . " In 1911 William Stone Booth published a book claiming to demonstrate that the features of the engraving were " anatomically identical " to those of Francis Bacon , proving that he wrote the works . He achieved this by creating " combination images " from several portraits of Bacon and then superimposing them on the engraving . Using similar methods Charles Sidney Beauclerk subsequently concluded that the portrait depicted the Earl of Oxford . In 1995 Lillian Schwartz , using a computerised version of the same technique , argued that it was based on a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. 
