Shaksper" (sic) "and his productions." {157a}

The natural mind of the ordinary man explains all by saying,
"Henslowe records no loans of money to Shakspere the actor, because
he lent him no money. He records no payments for plays to
Shakespeare the author-actor, because to Henslowe the actor sold no
plays." That is the whole explanation of the Silence of Philip
Henslowe. If Shakspere did sell a play to Henslowe, why should that
financier omit the fact from his accounts? Suppose that the actor
was illiterate as Baconians fervently believe, and sold Bacon's
plays, what prevented him from selling a play of Bacon's (under his
own name, as usual) to Henslowe? To obtain a Baconian reply you must
wander into conjecture, and imagine that Bacon forbade the
transaction. Then WHY did he forbid it? Because he could get a
better price from Shakspere's company? The same cause would produce
the same effect on Shakspere himself; whether he were the author, or
were Bacon's, or any man's go-between. On any score but that of
money, why was Henslowe good enough for Ben Jonson, Dekker, Heywood,
Middleton, and Webster, and not good enough for Bacon, who did not
appear in the matter at all, but was represented in it by the actor,
Will? As a gentleman and a man of the Court, Bacon would be as much
discredited if he were known to sell (for 6 pounds on an average) his
noble works to the Lord Chamberlain's Company, as if he sold them to
Henslowe.

I know not whether the great lawyer, courtier, scholar, and
philosopher is supposed by Baconians to have given Will Shakspere a
commission on his sales of plays; or to have let him keep the whole
sum in each case. I know not whether the players paid Shakspere a
sum down for his (or Bacon's) plays, or whether Will received a