Baconian theory), not only a pseudonym of one man, a poet, but also
the real name of another man, a well-known actor, who was NOT the
"concealed poet."

"William Shakespeare" or "Shakespere" was thus, in my view, the
ideally worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be "concealed"
could possibly have had the fatuity to select. His plays and poems
would be, as they were, universally attributed to the actor, who is
represented as a person conspicuously incapable of writing them.
With Mr. Greenwood's arguments against the certainty of this
attribution I deal later.

Had the actor been a man of rare wit, and of good education and wide
reading, the choice of name might have been judicious. A "concealed
poet" of high social standing, with a strange fancy for rewriting the
plays of contemporary playwrights, might obtain the manuscript copies
from their owners, the Lord Chamberlain's Company, through that
knowledgeable, witty, and venal member of the company, Will
Shakspere. He might then rewrite and improve them, more or less, as
it was his whim to do. The actor might make fair copies in his own
hand, give them to his company, and say that the improved works were
from his own pen and genius. The lie might pass, but only if the
actor, in his life and witty talk, seemed very capable of doing what
he pretended to have done. But if the actor, according to some
Baconians, could not write even his own name, he was impossible as a
mask for the poet. He was also impossible, I think, if he were what
Mr. Greenwood describes him to be.

Mr. Greenwood, in his view of the actor as he was when he came to
London, does not deny to him the gift of being able to sign his name.