Short answers, pulled from the story.
George Vertue initially wrote Richard Burbridge's name before crossing it out and writing Taylor instead. He described John Taylor as a respected member of the Painter-Stainers' Company and possibly an actor with the Children of Paul's.
The Earl of Ellesmere donated the painting to the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1856. This transaction made the work the first portrait ever acquired by the institution.
Tarnya Cooper identified that the sitter wears an earring and loose shirt-ties which are features emblematic of poets like John Donne and Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Pembroke. Her 2006 conclusion stated these clues make the Chandos portrait the most likely representation of the playwright.
Gerard Vandergucht engraved the painting for Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of Shakespeare's works. Jacobus Houbraken produced another print in 1747 that circulated widely among literary circles.
Victorian critics recoiled at the idea that the Chandos portrait represented Shakespeare with dark features and foreign expression because they expected an essentially English man. J. Hain Friswell insisted one cannot readily imagine our essentially English Shakespeare to have been a heavy man with a Jewish physiognomy.