double share, or other, or any share of the profits on them, as
Henslowe did when he let a house to the players. Nobody knows any of
these things.

"If Shakspere the player had been a dramatist, surely Henslowe would
have employed him also, like the others, in that behalf." {159a}
Henslowe would, if he could have got the "copy" cheap enough. Was
any one of "the others," the playwrights, a player, holding a share
in his company? If not, the fact makes an essential difference, for
Shakspere WAS a shareholder. Collier, in his preface to Henslowe's
so-called "Diary," mentions a playwright who was bound to scribble
for Henslowe only (Henry Porter), and another, Chettle, who was bound
to write only for the company protected by the Earl of Nottingham.
{159b} Modern publishers and managers sometimes make the same terms
with novelists and playwrights.

It appears to me that Shakspere's company would be likely, as his
plays were very popular, to make the same sort of agreement with him,
and to give him such terms as he would be glad to accept,--whether
the wares were his own--or Bacon's. He was a keen man of business.
In such a case, he would not write for Henslowe's pittance. He had a
better market. The plays, whether written by himself, or Bacon, or
the Man in the Moon, were at his disposal, and he did not dispose of
them to Henslowe, wherefore Henslowe cannot mention him in his
accounts. That is all.

Quoting an American Judge (Dr. Stotsenburg, apparently), Mr.
Greenwood cites the circumstance that, in two volumes of Alleyn's
papers "there is not one mention of such a poet as William Shaksper
in his list of actors, poets, and theatrical comrades." {160a} If