Charles Wisner Barrell

[1] He was impressed by the "real drama of the slums" portrayed by Ashcan artist John French Sloan in his etchings.

He became an ardent advocate of J. Thomas Looney's theory that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford.

He hoped to identify the illegitimate son of Oxford and Anne Vavasour, who he believed to be the Fair Youth of the sonnets.

[4] When the Second World War curtailed his activities in England, Barrell helped to establish an American branch of the Shakespeare Fellowship and publish a newsletter.

He stated that Edwards is revealing that Adon, a reference to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, is really the Earl of Oxford, forced by the Queen to use a pseudonym.

He examined the portrait using X-ray and infra-red photography in hopes of finding hidden clues to its origin, publishing his results in Scientific American in 1940.