“No.  I had nothing to do with the Othello,” said Bacon.  “I never really knew who wrote it.”

“Never mind about that,” whispered Shakespeare.  “You’ve said enough.”

“That’s good too,” said Nero, with a chuckle.  “Shakespeare here claims it as his own.”

Bacon smiled and nodded approvingly at the blushing Avonian.

“Will always was having his little joke,” he said.  “Eh, Will?  How we fooled ’em on Hamlet, eh, my boy?  Ha-ha-ha!  It was the greatest joke of the century.”

“Well, the laugh is on you,” said Doctor Johnson.  “If you wrote Hamlet and didn’t have the sense to acknowledge it, you present to my mind a closer resemblance to Simple Simon than to Socrates.  For my part, I don’t believe you did write it, and I do believe that Shakespeare did.  I can tell that by the spelling in the original edition.”

“Shakespeare was my stenographer, gentlemen,” said Lord Bacon.  “If you want to know the whole truth, he did write Hamlet, literally.  But it was at my dictation.”

“I deny it,” said Shakespeare.  “I admit you gave me a suggestion now and then so as to keep it dull and heavy in spots, so that it would seem more like a real tragedy than a comedy punctuated with deaths, but beyond that you had nothing to do with it.”

“I side with Shakespeare,” put in Emerson.  “I’ve seen his autographs, and no sane person would employ a man who wrote such a villanously bad hand as an amanuensis.  It’s no use, Bacon, we know a thing or two.  I’m a New-Englander, I am.”

“Well,” said Bacon, shrugging his shoulders as though the results of the controversy were immaterial to him, “have it so if you please.  There isn’t any money in Shakespeare these days, so what’s the use of quarrelling?  I wrote Hamlet, and Shakespeare knows it.  Others know it.  Ah, here comes Sir Walter Raleigh.  We’ll leave it to him.  He was cognizant of the whole affair.”

“I leave it to nobody,” said Shakespeare, sulkily.

“What’s the trouble?” asked Raleigh, sauntering up and taking a chair under the cue-rack.  “Talking politics?”

“Not we,” said Bacon.  “It’s the old question about the authorship of Hamlet.  Will, as usual, claims it for himself.  He’ll be saying he wrote Genesis next.”

“Well, what if he does?” laughed Raleigh.  “We all know Will and his droll ways.”

“No doubt,” put in Nero.  “But the question of Hamlet always excites him so that we’d like to have it settled once and for all as to who wrote it.  Bacon says you know.”

“I do,” said Raleigh.

“Then settle it once and for all,” said Bacon.  “I’m rather tired of the discussion myself.”

“Shall I tell ’em, Shakespeare?” asked Raleigh.

“It’s immaterial to me,” said Shakespeare, airily.  “If you wish—­only tell the truth.”

“Very well,” said Raleigh, lighting a cigar.  “I’m not ashamed of it.  I wrote the thing myself.”