A licence to print a Troilus and Cressida was obtained in 1602-3, but the quarto of our play, the Shakespearean play, is of 1609, “as it is acted by my Lord Chamberlain’s men,” that is, by Shakespeare’s Company.  Now Dekker and Chettle wrote, apparently, for Lord Nottingham’s Company.  One quarto of 1609 declares, in a Preface, that the play has “never been staled with the stage”; another edition of the same year, from the same publishers, has not the Preface, but declares that the piece “was acted by the King’s Majesty’s servants at the Globe.” {298a} The author of the Preface (Ben Jonson, Mr. Greenwood thinks, {298b}) speaks only of a single author, who has written other admirable comedies.  “When he is gone, and his comedies out of sale, you will scramble for them, and set up a new English Inquisition.”  Why?  The whole affair is a puzzle.  But if the author of the Preface is right about the single author of Troilus and Cressida, and if Shakespeare is alluded to in connection with Cressida, in Histriomastix (1599), then it appears to me that Shakespeare, in 1598-9, after Chapman’s portion of the Iliad appeared, was author of one Troilus and Cressida, extant in 1602-3 (when its publication was barred till the publisher “got authority"), while Chettle and Dekker, in April 1599, were busy with another Troilus and Cressida, as why should they not be?  In an age so lax about copyright, if their play was of their own original making, are we to suppose that there was copyright in the names of the leading persons of the piece, Troilus and Cressida?

Perhaps not:  but meanwhile Mr. Greenwood cites Judge Stotsenburg’s opinion {298c} that Henslowe’s entries of April 1599 “refute the Shakespearean claim to the authorship of Troilus and Cressida,” which exhibits “the collaboration of two men,” as “leading commentators” hold that it does.  But the learned Judge mentions as a conceivable alternative that “there were two plays on the subject with the same name,” and, really, it looks as if there were!  The Judge does not agree “with Webb and other gifted writers that Bacon wrote this play.”  So far the Court is quite with him.  He goes on however, “It was, in my opinion, based on the foregoing facts, originally the production of Dekker and Chettle, added to and philosophically dressed by Francis Bacon.”  But, according to Mr. Greenwood, “it is admitted not only that the different writing of two authors is apparent in the Folio play, but also that ‘Shakespeare’ must have had at least some share in a play of Troilus and Cressida as early as the very year 1599, in the spring of which Dekker and Chettle are found engaged in writing their play of that name,” on the evidence of Histriomastix. {299a} How that evidence proves that “a play of Troilus and Cressida had been published as by ‘Shakespeare’ about 1599,” I know not.  Perhaps “published” means “acted”?  “And it is not unreasonable to suppose that this play” ("published as by Shakespeare”) “was the one to which Henslowe alludes”—­as being written in April 1599, by Dekker and Chettle.