[5] In 1719, in a note in the margin of a book, George Vertue wrote the name "Richard Burbridge" [sic], then crossed it out.

[6] Vertue also states that before the Duke of Chandos acquired it, the portrait was owned by Shakespeare's possible godson, William Davenant (1606–1668),[6][4] who, according to the gossip chronicler John Aubrey, claimed to be the playwright's illegitimate son.

[8] An image that is definitively identifiable as a depiction of the playwright is the engraving in the posthumously published First Folio of 1623.

[9] Since the man in the Chandos portrait resembles the one in the Droeshout engraving, the similarity lends an indirect legitimacy to the oil painting.

George Steevens said that the picture gave Shakespeare "the complexion of a Jew, or rather that of a chimney sweeper in the jaundice".

[10] According to Ben Macintyre, "Some Victorians recoiled at the idea that the Chandos portrait represented Shakespeare.

One critic, J. Hain Friswell, insisted 'one cannot readily imagine our essentially English Shakespeare to have been a dark, heavy man, with a foreign expression'.

"[11] Friswell agreed with Steevens that the portrait had "a decidedly Jewish physiognomy" adding that it displayed "a somewhat lubricious mouth, red-edged eyes" and "wanton lips, with a coarse expression.