Edward de Vere (The Earl of Oxford), Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, all have been suggested as the true Bard of Avon. And all have very compelling reasons against them.
When Occam's Razor is applied, the Man from Stratford comes out way ahead.
It was a Frenchman, Jacques-Pierre.
I haven't read Harold Bloom's last book, but he was a friend of mine, and I heard him give a couple of talks from chapters that were going into it. No serious Shakespearean scholar I know credits the Oxford or Bacon theories.
One origin of such theories is snobbery. How could an unknown who had to fake his own gentility, from the boondocks of Stratford on Avon, write such great plays? They are clearly the work of a gentleman or a nobleman, such as the Earl of Oxford (actually an unpleasant and snooty man best known for quarreling with Sir Philip Sidney over who got first dibs on the tennis court).
Bloom said that Freud had a thing about Shakespeare because his central theory, labeled the Oedipus Complex, actually was based mainly on Hamlet, but he didn't want to give Shakespeare credit. So Freud joined the Oxford crowd. Freud had similar problems about Moses, another hated authority figure, and so argued that he was not really a Jew.
Betty, I should have said that Spedding is still likely the best edition of Bacon's work, but that you probably now need to consult the Oxford edition too, or at least as much of it has come out. Spedding was the standard for a hundred years, and still has a very helpful collection of notes.