All that we can allege with any certainty about Shakespeare, between 1586 and 1602, is that he must have obtained employment at one or other of the only two theatres existing in London at that time (The Theatre, and The Curtain)—perhaps, as Malone has recorded, in the capacity of call-boy—that he became an actor, was employed in polishing up the stock-plays presented by the Company, and that Love’s Labour’s Lost was produced in the Spring of 1591. Assuming that Shakespeare was the author of this play—assuming, that is to say, that Ben Jonson, John Heming, and Henry Condell were neither arrant fools, nor wilful perjurers—it is evident that the “insignificant,” “shrunken, sordid soul,” “this ridiculous mouse” had education, application, a natural taste for the stage; and what is more—and more than Mr. Theobald can comprehend—he had genius. Mr. Theobald does not arrive at any such conclusion. Apart altogether from Mrs. Gallup’s cipher revelations, he is convinced by another “flash of intuition” that Ben Jonson was a fellow conspirator with Bacon in the ridiculous plot of foisting Bacon’s plays upon the world as the work of Shakespeare, and that Heming and Condell were but the tools of the disgraced Lord Chancellor. But if Shakespeare was not advancing towards prosperity by the feasible methods I have conjectured, how can Mr. Theobald account for his ultimately emerging from the “depths of poverty” into a position of comparative affluence? The explanation is simplicity itself: “If a needy, and probably deserving vagabond” (page 11).—Why deserving? He was a “shrunken, sordid soul” on page 7!—“dives into the abyss of London life, lies perdu for a few years, and then emerges as a tolerably wealthy theatrical manager; you know that he must have gained some mastery of theatrical business.” So far the inference is legitimate and convincing; but how? Must he not have disclosed exceptional ability as an actor or playwright, or—? listen to Mr. Theobald!—“he must have made himself a useful man in the green room, a skilful organiser of players and stage effects—he must have found out how to govern a troop of actors, reconciling their rival egotisms, and utilising their special gifts; how to cater for a capricious public, and provide attractive entertainments. Anyhow, he would have little time for other pursuits—if a student at all, his studies would be very practical relating to matters of present or passing interest. During this dark period he has been carving his own fortune, filling his pockets, not his mind; working for the present, not for the future. But it was exactly then that the plays began to appear.”

Mr. Theobald’s argument can only be described as a reckless, illogical, and absurd distortion of possibilities, and it is the more inconsequential since it proceeds to defeat its primary object. In the first place it is supremely ridiculous to assume that the paltry services of Shakespeare in the green room and the carpenter’s shop, secured for him his pecuniary interest in the Globe Theatre, or the respect and friendship of the leading dramatists of his day, or even the enmity of jealous rivals in the craft. Yet Mr. Theobald attempts to substantiate his conclusions by distorting the obvious meaning of Robt. Greene’s reference to Shakespeare in A Groat’s Worth of Wit. Greene was not an actor, but a dramatist; he was a man of dissolute habits, a poet of rare charm, but a playwright of only moderate ability and repute. He was a gentleman by birth, and a scholar by training. He had the lowest opinion of actors—he envied them their success, and despised their avocation. In The Return from Parnassus he betrays his prejudice in the following lines, which are put into the mouth of a poor and envious student:—

To the jaundiced mind of Robert Greene, the accumulation of means by an actor was a crime in itself, but that a mere mummer should dare to compete with the scholar and the poet in the composition of plays—more, that he should write plays that exceeded in popularity those of the superior person, the student—was a personal affront. On his death-bed, in 1592, Greene found an outlet for his resentment in writing an ill-natured farewell to life, in which he girded bitterly at the new dramatist, whose early plays had already brought him into public notice. He warns his three brother playwrights—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele—against the “upstart crow, the only Shake-scene in the country” who “supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you.” How it is possible to interpret these words to mean that the “upstart crow” was not an author, “but only an actor who pretended to be an author also,” the oldest inhabitant of Colney Hatch and Mr. Theobald must decide between them. These anything but “cryptic” words, as Mr. Theobald describes them, can have but one interpretation, and that is the one their author intended. They do not imply that Shakespeare, the “upstart crow,” is not the author of the plays imputed to him, but that he considers his plays as good as those of the older dramatists. His profession of authorship is not questioned, but the quality of his work is savagely challenged. Any other construction put upon the passage is sheer nonsense. Mr. Theobald appeals to the “most gentle and gentlemanly critics” to be patient and tolerant with the Baconians—“men as sound in judgment and as well equipped in learning as yourselves”—but it is high time that this kind of wilful misrepresentation and perversion of common sense should be condemned in plain language. If Greene had believed that Shakespeare was wearing feathers that did not rightfully belong to him, if he were pretending to be what he really was not; if, in Mr. Theobald’s confident explanation, he had no right to profess himself an author at all, we may be quite certain that Greene would have said so outright—he would not have adopted a “cryptic” style, and left it for Mr. Theobald to decipher his meaning.

Mr. Theobald’s alternative theory that the word “Shake-scene” does not refer to Shakespeare at all, is even more preposterous. “In 1592 ‘Shakespeare’ did not exist at all, and only two or three of the plays which subsequently appeared under this name could have been written.” But those two or three plays included, as far as we can tell, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Comedy of Errors—plays of sufficient promise to secure any author recognition as a poet and dramatist. If Mr. Theobald entertains any serious doubts as to the identification of Shakespeare in the “Shake-scene” of Greene, he may be advised to read the apology for this attack which Henry Chettle, the publisher, prefixed to a tract of Greene’s in the same year. “I am as sorry,” Chettle wrote, “as if the originall fault had been my fault, because myselfe have seene his (i.e., Shakespeare’s) demeanour no lesse civill than he (is) exelent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty and his facetious grace in writing that aprooves his art.”

This apology put forth by Henry Chettle is an invaluable attestation to the character and literary standing of Shakespeare—“his uprightness in dealing” is a matter of public report, and “his facetious grace in writing” is frankly acknowledged. At a period when professional rivalries ran strong, and no man’s reputation was above attack, a publisher and fellow author is seen regarding Shakespeare not only as a man to whom an apology was due, but to whom it appeared expedient to make one. In treating of the personal history of Shakespeare, it must be borne in mind that although the duly-attested facts regarding him are regrettably few, the poet was widely known to the leading literary and theatrical men of his day. Ben Jonson, his brother actor and dramatist, and Michael Drayton were his intimate friends. Condell and Heming remained in close relationship with Shakespeare until his death, and Richard Burbage was his partner in the business of the Globe Theatre. In Pericles and Timon, Shakespeare worked in collaboration with George Wilkins, a dramatic writer of some repute, and William Rowley, a professional reviser of plays. There were besides, the members of the Globe Company, men who lived their lives beside him, rehearsed under him, learned from him, interpreted him. Yet none of these men appear to have entertained the slightest doubt upon the genuineness of his claims to authorship, while every contemporaneous reference to him is couched in terms of affection and admiration. The only possible explanation of this remarkable fact is that Shakespeare and Bacon were one and the same person—a theory that the most hardened Baconian has not yet thought it advisable to advance.