But this view does not at all suit Mr. Greenwood, for it shows Ben regarding Shakespeare as the “Ape,” or Actor, and also as the “Poet” and author of the “works.”  Yet Ben’s words mean nothing if not that an actor is the author of works which Ben accuses of plagiarism.  Mr. Greenwood thinks that the epigram proves merely that “Jonson looked upon Shakspere (if, indeed, he refers to him) as one who put forward the writings of others as his own, or, in plain English, an impostor.”  “The work which goes in his name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” {244a} Mr. Greenwood put the same interpretation on Greene’s words about “Shakescene,” and we showed that the interpretation was impossible.  “The utmost we should be entitled to say” (if Shake-scene be meant for Shakspere) “is that Greene accuses Player Shakspere of putting forward, as his own, some work or perhaps some parts of a work, for which he was really indebted to another.” {245a} We proved, by quoting Greene’s words, that he said nothing which could be tortured into this sense. {245b} In the same way Ben’s words cannot be tortured into the sense that “the work which goes in his” (Poet-Ape’s) “name is, in truth, the work of somebody else.” {245c} Mr. Greenwood tries to find the Anti-Willian hypothesis in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit and in Ben’s epigram.  It is in neither.

Jonson is not accusing Shakespeare of pretending to be the author of plays written by somebody else, but of “making each man’s wit his own,” and the men are the other dramatists of the day.  Thus the future “may judge” Shakespeare’s work “to be his as well as ours.”

It is “we,” the living and recognised dramatists, whom Shakespeare is said to plagiarise from; so boldly that

“We, the robbed, leave rage, and pity it.”

Ben does not mean that Shakespeare is publishing, as his own, whole plays by some other author, but that his works are tissues of scraps stolen from his contemporaries, from “us, the robbed.”  Where are to be found or heard of any works by a player-poet of 1601, the would-be chief dramatist of the day, except those signed William Shak(&c.).  There are none, and thus Ben, at this date, is identifying Will Shakspere, the actor, with the author of the Shakespearean plays, which he expects to reach posterity; “after times may judge them to be his,” as after times do to this hour.

Thus Ben expresses, in accordance with his humour on each occasion, most discrepant opinions of Will’s works, but he never varies from his identification of Will with the author of the plays.

The “works” of which Ben wrote so splenetically in Poet-Ape, were the works of a Playwright-Actor, who could be nobody but the actor Shakespeare, as far as Ben then knew.  If later, and in altered circumstances, he wrote of the very same works in very different terms, his “utterances” are “not easily reconcilable” with each other,—­whoever the real author of the works may be.  If Bacon, or Mr. Greenwood’s anonymous equivalent for Bacon, were the author, and if Ben came to know it, his attitudes towards the works are still as irreconcilable as ever.