Product Review

Now in its third edition, Four Essays on the Shakespeare Authorship Question is an introduction to the authorship issue. The first essay examines the evidence for why William Shakspere, the man from Stratford, cannot have been William Shakespeare, the author of the Works. The second essay offers 48 arguments for why Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was Shakespeare. The third essay explores the secret identity of Edward de Vere and explains why the timeless works of the aristocratic courtier, poet and playwright were attributed to the journeyman actor and businessman from Stratford, not just during de Vere's life, but for three centuries after his death. These essays draw upon the research and insights of many authors who have been investigating the authorship question since 1859, including Charles Wisner Barrell, Charlton and Dorothy Ogburn, Hank Whittemore, Mark Twain, John Thomas Looney, Charlton Ogburn, Jr., Elisabeth Sears, Paul Streitz, John Hamill and others. Four Essays on the Shakespeare Authorship Question is both a primer on the authorship question and a sophisticated treatise on the Prince Tudor theory. In teasing out the evidence for de Vere's true relationship to Queen Elizabeth, A'Dair offers a new theory on his parentage. In postulating a romantic love relationship between de Vere and his son, Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, A'Dair may have illuminated the most shocking truth of all about the greatest poet in the English language.