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as the author of 'Hamlet,' and Weaver's as the author of Romeo and Juliet,' are contradicted respectively by our first quotation from Nash, and the circumstances attending the publication of the fourth 4to edition of Romeo and Juliet.' Then Bolton only couples Beaumont's name with plays, and Davies and Freeman, though apparently acquainted with books, are not known as being acquainted with the scandals of theatrical life.

Now these are all the allusions made to Shakespeare during his life, though he was before the public as an author for nearly a quarter of a century; and, considering how many people must have known him, it is marvellous they are so few. Why have we nothing from Thomas Kydd, George Peele, Thomas Lodge, George Chapman, Samuel Daniel, Ben Jonson, Michael Drayton, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Marston, John Fletcher, Francis Beaumont, John Middleton or Philip Massinger? They were all contemporaries, poets and dramatists; and, if not all known as friends, must certainly have been acquaintances. But the silence of Philip Henslowe is even more remarkable. Shakespeare and he, to a great extent, monopolized the patronage of the play-going public

were rival theatrical managers, perhaps open enemies, but assuredly keen-sighted acquaintances, who watched one another for almost twenty years. Yet, though Henslowe kept a diary which has come down to us, in which he noted all matters of interest, there is not a word about Shakespeare, good, bad, or indifferent. Indeed, for anything he has recorded, Mr. William Shakespeare may have been a myth. Now the silence of these people strikes us as far more surprising than that of the greater personages to whom Dr. Ingleby refers.

But it may be suggested that, perhaps, Shakespeare was noticed without being named, as is often the case now. There were doubtless many lampoons then; for more than a few are extant, and he may have been their subject as well as another. And so, Ben Jonson's sonnet on Poet-Ape, may be a case in point. At any rate we will give the reader an opportunity of forming an opinion by transcribing it. The italics are ours.

Poor Poet-Ape, that would be thought our chief,
Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit,

From brokage is become so bold a thief
As we, the robbed, leave rage and pity it.

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At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean,
Buy the reversion of old plays. Now grown
To a little wealth and credit in the scene,

He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own,
And told of this, he slights it. Tut! such crimes
The sluggish, gaping auditor devours,

He marks not whose 'twas first, and after times

Many judge it to be his, as well as ours.

Fool! as if half-eyes will not know a fleece
From locks of wool and shreds from the whole piece.
(Gifford's Ben Jonson, III. 235)

This is really a paraphrase of Greene's Complaint. And, though Ben Jonson may not have been one of Greene's friends, he knew all about the 'Groatsworth of Wit'; for, in his comedy of the Silent Woman,' we read, " And one of them, I know not which, was cured with the Sick Man's Salve (religious tract, 1591), and the other with Greene's Groatsworth of Wit" (Jonson's Works, IV. 2). And, if the epigram do not apply to Shakespeare, we do not know to whom it can apply. It cannot be meant, as has been suggested, either for Marston, or Dekker, though Jonson quarrelled with both, because neither of them " grew to a little wealth," as Shakespeare

did

very soon.

said, that Dr.

It must therefore, we think, be
Ingleby has omitted from his

'Centurie of Prayse,' one of the most important allusions in contemporary authors. Gifford does not suggest the time at which Jonson's epigrams were written; but we may fairly assume that this was composed before 1598, when success had not yet dawned on him; and when, as we shall hereafter see, his friendship with William Shakespeare had not commenced.

CHAPTER XIII.

AUTHORSHIP OF THE PLAYS, CONTINUED.

Ben Jonson's Testimony.

WE now come to the well-known evidence of Ben Jonson, that, in fact, which has been put forward as an answer to all objectors to Shakespeare's authorship, and which is prefixed to the Folio of 1623. And first, we have the lines set opposite the portrait of the presumed author.

To the Reader.

This figure, that thou here see'st put,
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,
Wherein the Gra ver had a strife

With Nature to out-doe the life.

Oh, could he but have drawne his wit,

As well in brasse, as he hath hit

His face; the print would then surpasse

All that was ever writ in brasse.

But since he cannot, Reader, looke

Not on his Picture but his Booke.-B. J.

It would be unfair to found any conclusion on an engraving made in the beginning of the