The Oxford Case
This Star of England. By Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. (Coward- McCann, New York. $10.) THIRTY years ago • Mr. Looney tried to show that the works of Shakespeare were written by Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Now Mr. and Mrs. Ogburn have written a portentous book of 1,300 pages which is very much in the Looney tradition. One author, we are told, is a lawyer by profession, and he can seldom have had so difficult a brief ; the other is the author of several mystery stories, and although our own Michael Innes has been a notable contributor to Shakespearian criticism, Mrs. Ogburn reminds us rather of the lady described by Thurber, who took a Penguin Macbeth for a mystery yarn.
As Oxford died in 1604 the plays have to be written earlier than is usually thought ; and, as apparently most of the plays are thinly veiled autobiography, the chronological sequence has to be com- pletely altered. As this sometimes means that the play was written before its source, the Ogburns conclude that in such cases the source Was based on the play. Antiochus is a portrait of Lord Burghley, who is also depicted as Shylock and Polonius. The veiled accusation that Burghley committed incest with Lady Oxford leads to the dating Of Pericles as early as 1576. Twelfth Night appeared in 1580, the year before its source, and it was followed by the second and third parts ofifenry VI. Macbeth appeared in 1589, in spite of the allusions in it to events of 1605. It was followed by Venus and Adonis ! Anyone who can believe that the author of Macbeth and King Lear could afterwards write Venus and Adonis will also be able to believe that Southampton was the son of Oxford and Queen Elizabeth.
The book is entertaining if read as fiction ; but the authors produce no evidence worthy of the name. EVER is an anagram of VERE, and a very common word into the bargain, but this is the kind of evidence which would enable us to prove that Oxford wrote Paradise Lost and The Waste Land. The commonest rhetorical devices, used by dozens of Elizabethan poets, including Oxford and Shakespeare, are taken to prove the former's authorship of the plays. Oxford's highly conventional and artificial verse is thought to dis- play " a note of realism not heard before in English poetry." The proof by means of parallels is carried to wild lengths. Oxford's reference to the lark as " the messenger of morning " is offered as a parallel to " It was the lark, the herald of the morn." The phrase " pinch him black and blue " is used as evidence that Oxford wrote Lyly's plays as well as Shakespeare's, and by similar methods it is proved that he wrote The Spanish Tragedy and Edward II. We are Informed casually that Belimperia and Horatio in Kyd's play " were, of course, Elizabeth and Oxford."
The authors of this book believe, that nearly all Shakespeare's plays were written by 1590, but they are hard put to it to find docu- mentary proof. They have to assume that Phyllida and Choryn, performed in 1572, was A Midsummer Night's Dream in an earlier form ; and that The Rape of the Second Helene is the same as All's Well.
When the Ogburns come to discuss Shaksper (sic) of Stratford they use every device to make him appear as a provincial oaf. Stratford had an excellent grammar school ; the Ogburns call it " a Grammar school of sorts." They tell us that Shaksper was illiterate and that when he was asked to write "he always declined, saying he was 'in paine. " But Aubrey's story, from which this is obviously taken,:tells us that Shakespeare would not be debauched and, if invited, writ " he was in pain." A last example of distortion may be mentioned. The Town Clerk of Stratford met Shakespeare in London and discussed the question of the enclosures in which the poet was financially inter- ested. The Ogburns comment : " Shakespeare did not discuss the theatre, did not discuss literature or the drama." If he had done, the Town Clerk would not have reported it in the letter about the enclosures from which this story is taken. I have met several Town Clerks and I can safely say that I have never discussed literature with them.
The good citizens of Stratford need not lose any sleep over this
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