“The effort of Mr Looney to solve this conflict is a little unfortunate in some respects, though most interesting in many others. A schoolmaster by profession, he is inclined to speak like one. Mr Looney thinks he has proved his theory. Of course, he has not. But he has opened most promising vistas, and it is to be hoped that his leads will be followed up.” Edwin Björkman
+ − Bookm 51:677 Ag ’20 3350w
“Mr Looney’s dominant fault is that his work is wholly inferential. However much we may be convinced that De Vere, had he been a genius, might have written such plays as Shakespeare’s, there is no tangible fact to connect them with him.” Joseph Krutch
− Nation 111:248 Ag 28 ’20 580w
“The argument connecting Oxford with the Shakespearean plays has the abundance of strained literary and personal analogies, and the amazing absence of common sense which characterize most Baconian endeavors.” J: Corbin
− N Y Times 25:18 Je 27 ’20 1600w
“The volume appears to have all the paraphernalia of scholarship but little of its critical spirit.”
− Outlook 125:615 Ag 4 ’20 220w R of Rs 62:112 Jl ’20 90w − Sat R 129:308 Mr 27 ’20 800w
“That we cannot agree with his conclusions we attribute partly to some grave defects which seem to us to exist in his reasoning, and partly to some general considerations which he appears to have overlooked.”