CHAPTER VIII: "THE SILENCE OF PHILIP HENSLOWE"



When Shakespeare is mentioned as an author by contemporary writers,
the Baconian stratagem, we have seen, is to cry, "Ah, but you cannot
prove the author mentioned to be the actor." We have seen that Meres
(1598) speaks of Shakespeare as the leading tragic and comic poet
("Poor poet-ape that would be thought our chief," quoth Jonson), as
author of Venus and Adonis, and as a sonneteer. "All this does
nothing whatever to support the idea that the Stratford player was
the author of the plays and poems alluded to," says Mr. Greenwood,
playing that card again. {155a}

The allusions, I repeat, DO prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was
believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is
found to have been conspicuously before the town. "There is nothing
at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal
knowledge of Shakespeare." There is nothing at all to prove that
Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of nine-
tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions.
"On the question--who was Shakespeare?--he throws no light." He
"throws no light on the question" "who was?" any of the poets
mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names
. . . To myself this "sad repeated air,"--"critics who praise
Shakespeare do not say WHO SHAKESPEARE was,"--would appear to be, not
an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly
believes it to be an argument,--otherwise he would not use it: much
less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was
notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any