Monstrous adversary

the long version

"Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604), was one of England's premier noblemen under Queen Elizabeth I. Though he held no office of consequence, nor performed any notable deed, he was widely recognized as a courtier poet, as a leader of fashion, and as a patron of writers, actors, and musicians. He lived a life so privately scandalous and richly documented that his biography opens a window on to secret passages of Elizabethan life and manners." "Since 1920 Oxford has been touted by amateur historians and conspiracy theories as the true author of the poems and plays of William Shakespeare. It has become a matter of urgency to measure the real Oxford against the myth created by his apologists, and uncritically embraced by television documentaries, by playwrights, and by the popular press." "This new life of Oxford, the first since B.M. Ward's partisan biography of 1928, examines it subject exclusively through the medium of contemporary documents, many written in Oxford's own hand, many appearing for the first time in print. Monstrous Adversary will be of interest to professional historians as well as to Shakespeareans, teachers of English Literature, history buffs, and to any reader caught up in the so-called 'authorship debate'."--Jacket.