The dictionary's contents indicate no understanding on the part of these authors of Edward, Earl of Oxford, as the true author of works under the pen-name, "William Shake-speare"; thus, it suffers fatally from a near-total lack of the people and places which were essential in the life of the real author.

The treatment here is confined to a purely superficial view: just what is largely obvious from a reading of the plays and poems themselves. But hardly anything of use beyond this.

One more example, among countless others, of the sorrow and the pity of failing to get the identity of the author correct.

Edward De Vere, the real author, is not even mentioned. Of his family, only Aubrey De Vere, the eldest son of John De Vere is mentioned--along with the facts that both Aubrey and his father, John, the 12th earl of Oxford, were executed at Tower Hill: Aubrey on 20 February, 1462 and John, six days later on 26 February. The title passed to John's second eldest son, also named John. John, the thirteenth earl, having no male heir at his death in March of 1513, the title next passed to yet another John De Vere, the second and at the time the only surviving son of Sir George (De) vere, the next eldest brother to the thirteenth earl. Because the fourteenth earl had no heir, the title passed to his second cousin, John De Vere, a great-grandson of Richard De Vere, the eleventh earl of Oxford. This John being Edward Oxford's grandfather and father to Edward's father, John De Vere, sixteenth earl of Oxford.

"Bassanio," a character from The Merchant of Venice, gets a mention but Amelia Bassano (later married to a Lanier or Lanyer), the most likely person to have been the real-life "Dark Lady of the Sonnets", gets none. Likewise for Alberico Gentili, John Florio, George Turberville or Angelo Sabino and Guido Morillon--all important in the life of Edward Oxford even if, as in the case of these latter two, Sabino and Morillon, they lived and died before Edward was born.

To have any reasonable hope of gaining a proper understanding of the author and the significance of his literary work, one has to be acquainted with the history of all these and many others, never mentioned in The Shakespeare Name and Place Dictionary (1995). ( )