That this promising young man, "when he came to London, spoke the
Warwickshire dialect or patois is, then, as certain as anything can
be that is incapable of mathematical proof." {17d} "Here is the
young Warwickshire provincial . . . " {17e} producing, apparently
five or six years after his arrival in town, Venus and Adonis . . .
"Is it conceivable that this was the work of the Stratford Player of
whom we know so little, but of whom we know so much too much? If so
we have here a veritable sixteenth-century miracle." {17f} Moreover,
"our great supposed poet and dramatist had at his death neither book
nor manuscript in his possession, or to which he was legally
entitled, or in which he had any interest whatever." {17g}

If it be not conceivable now that the rustic speaking in a patois
could write Venus and Adonis, manifestly it was inconceivable in
1593, when Venus and Adonis was signed "William Shakespeare." No man
who knew the actor (as described) could believe that he was the
author, but there does not exist the most shadowy hint proving that
the faintest doubt was thrown on the actor's authorship; ignorant as
he was, bookless, and rude of speech. For such a Will as Mr.
Greenwood describes to persuade the literary and dramatic world of
his age that he DID write the plays, would have been a miracle.
Consequently Mr. Greenwood has to try to persuade us that there is no
sufficient evidence that Will DID persuade, say Ben Jonson, of his
authorship and we shall see whether or not he works this twentieth-
century miracle of persuasion.

Of course if Will were unable to write even his name, as an
enthusiastic Baconian asserts, Mr. Greenwood sees that Will could not
easily pass for the Author. {18a} But his own bookless actor with a