The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as Musician, Poet, and Controller of the Queen's Revels

Extract

Experience has taught me to expect that the subject of my paper will be little, if anything, more than a name to my audience.

I have to introduce to you a very remarkable person, about whom there still hangs much mystery. We are told by his contemporaries that he was the best among them all for comedy, and that he was a poet of the highest order; yet not a single comedy bearing his name has come down to us; and of his poems, we have but a handful of short verses. I am going to trace to-day only a few threads in the elaborate tapestry of his life and times—his connection with the Court Revels—trusting to your familiarity with his period to supply the general background and atmosphere: and, to bring him to life as a person, I will first briefly sketch his story.