Note 21 — Front matter

Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford and Lord Great Chamberlain, was one of the most talented, eccentric, extravagant, irresponsible, and intersting men of the Age of Elizabeth. He was born in 1550 and died in 1604. He was inordinately quarrelsome, temperamental and reckless, and therewithal endowed with a high degree of musical talent and literary ability. Men of letters found him friendly and helpful, and he was the patron of a company of actors. He was as erratic in his relations with the Queen as with others, and in 1592 he fell out with her because she refused to grant his petition for a monopoly to import into England certain oils, wool, and fruits—a refusal which doomed him, for financial reasons, to live in retirement. This is the man who, in the opinion of some writers, was the "real Shakespeare."