THE SIX LOVES OF "SHAKE-SPEARE."

By Louis P. Benezet '99. New York: Pageant Press, 1958. 126 pp. $3.00.

Louis P. Benezet's conclusion to The SixLoves of "Shake-speare" reads as follows: "the name of the world's greatest dramatist, Edward de Vere, is practically unknown, while throngs of worshippers stand in awe before the rude doggerel upon the grave of a man who probably could neither read nor write."

In other words, it is Mr. Benezet's unalterable conclusion, one that he has held uncompromisingly for many years, that Shakespeare was an ignorant country bumpkin and could not have written the plays ascribed to him but that the seventeenth Earl of Oxford could have and did. Shakespeare, as his signature indicates, could scarcely write his name.

Few Shakespearean scholars agree with Mr. Benezet. I once heard at Harvard the late Prof. George Lyman Kittredge cleverly and completely demolish a similar conclusion.

However, to Mr. Benezet justice to de Vere must be done, and there is great importance in presenting the evidence in favor of this man. In this book in a most readable, almost conversational, style he has presented his case in as convincing a manner as possible. He marshals the evidence, passionately believed in, as a good lawyer would do in court. He links intimate details of de Vere's life with hitherto obscure passages in the sonnets which he regards as largely the private correspondence of de Vere and even pages from his diary.

Edward de Vere could have no more doughty champion than my old friend Louis P. Benezet.