“The Sonnets stand there for every one to read, and no arguments could have the same value as an intimate knowledge of the poems themselves viewed in the light of the actual facts of the life and reputation of Edward de Vere. Upon all who wish to arrive at the truth of the matter we urge the close and frequent reading of the Sonnets…
J. Thomas Looney
1870 – 1944
“We are unable to place ourselves in the position of a reader who, with the facts concerning Oxford that we have submitted, can become conversant with these Sonnets without realizing that they reflect at once the soul and the circumstances of ‘the best of the courtier poets of the early days of Queen Elizabeth.'”
– John Thomas Looney, “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1920)
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