Short answers, pulled from the story.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (the 12th of April 1550 - the 24th of June 1604) was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. He was heir to the second-oldest earldom in England, a court favourite, a patron of the arts, and noted by contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright.
The Oxfordian theory proposes that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays and poems traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. It was introduced by English schoolmaster J. Thomas Looney in a book published in 1920. Though rejected by nearly all academic Shakespeareans, it has been among the most popular alternative authorship theories since the 1920s.
Oxford sold off almost all his inherited lands to raise ready money, and his extravagant spending, combined with punishing debts from his royal wardship, drained his estate throughout his life. In 1586 Queen Elizabeth granted him a £1,000 annual pension to relieve the financial distress. He died in 1604 having spent the entirety of his inherited estates.
Oxford patronised both adult and boy acting companies. Beginning in 1580, he sponsored Oxford's Men (also known as Oxford's Players), which toured the provinces between 1580 and 1587 and remained active until 1602. He also established Oxford's Boys at the Blackfriars, composed of the Children of the Chapel and the Children of Paul's, managed by Henry Evans.
Oxford was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London after Anne Vavasour, one of the Queen's maids of honour, gave birth to his son on or around the 21st of March 1581. He was released on the 8th of June after intervention by his father-in-law Lord Burghley, but remained under house arrest until July. He was subsequently banished from court until June 1583.
Eight of Oxford's poems were published in the 1576 miscellany The Paradise of Dainty Devises, and his earliest published poem appeared in Thomas Bedingfield's 1573 translation of Cardano's Comforte. His poem "What cunning can express" appeared in The Phoenix Nest in 1593 and was republished in England's Helicon in 1600. Contemporary critics, including Puttenham and Webbe, ranked him among the finest Elizabethan courtier poets.