SHAKSPERE, SHAKESPEARE AND

DE VERE, by Louis P. Benezet '99. Granite State Press, Manchester, N. H., J 93- 35 PP. $1.00.

Dr. Benezet believes that the plays and poems assigned to William Shakespeare of Stratford were written by Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. A few persons in this and other countries share this belief, the most thorough attempt to support it being a volume called "Shakespeare" Identified in Edward De Vere by Mr. J. Thomas Looney of England. Dr. Benezet's method is to present Shakespeare as an unlettered and unintellectual person who could not possibly have written the masterpieces ascribed to him, and to contrast him with the better educated Earl, who, according to Dr. Benezet, had all the requirements necessary for writing the plays and poems. Passages from the plays and sonnets are quoted in support of the author's contention.

In commenting on this book I am torn between my desire to be fair to Dr. Benezet by praising his interest in literary scholarship and my conviction that his ideas are unsound and his arguments unfair. In a brief review I can give only one example of the latter: he says that "the Stratfordians tell us that the reason why he [Shakespeare] ceased writing plays after 1605 (the year after Oxford had died) .... was that, frankly, he had made his 'pile' and was not interested in exercising his brain any further." This is misleading because no Stratfordian would say such a thing; after 1605 Shakespeare wrote at least half a dozen plays, among them Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest.

There is little likelihood that Dr. Benezet will change his views, but it is unfortunate that he has not felt impelled to examine more carefully the soundness of his assumptions and his method.