Edward de Vere & William Shakespeare

He died in June 1604, probably from plague, at King's Place in Hackney, located in the London suburb of Stratford. He left no will and is presumed buried in St Augustine's church in the same parish. Contemporary testimony that he may be buried elsewhere is provided by Percival Golding, the youngest son of Arthur Golding, the uncle of De Vere. Golding wrote twenty years after De Vere's death that the 17th Earl "died at his house at Hackney in the month of June 1604 and lies buried at Westminster [Abbey]."

"And art is tongue-tied by authority," laments the Bard in one of his best-known sonnets.

Oxford, the poet-dramatist and patron of Shakespearean actors, was known in many Elizabethan circles merely as "the Lord Chamberlain," and the mystery surrounding the actual personality of this key figure in our real life drama resolves itself as neatly as the denouement of a Sherlock Holmes story. For everybody knows that it was "Mr. William Shakespeare" himself who was the principal playwright of "the Lord Chamberlain's company."