I now give the essence of Mr. Greenwood’s words {13a} concerning the nom de plume of the “concealed poet,” whoever he was.

“And now a word upon the name ‘Shakespeare.’  That in this form, and more especially with a hyphen, Shake-speare, the word makes an excellent nom de plume is obvious.  As old Thomas Fuller remarks, the name suggests Martial in its warlike sound, ’Hasti-vibrans or Shake-speare.’  It is of course further suggestive of Pallas Minerva, the goddess of Wisdom, for Pallas also was a spear-shaker (Pallas a’p?’ t?? p???e?? t?’ d???); and all will remember Ben Jonson’s verses . . . " on Shakespeare’s “true-filed lines” —

“In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.”

There is more about Pallas in book-titles (to which additions can easily be made), and about “Jonson’s Cri-spinus or Cri-spinas,” but perhaps we have now the gist of Mr. Greenwood’s remarks on the “excellent nom de plume” (cf. pp. 31-37.  On the whole of this, cf.  The Shakespeare Problem Restated, pp. 293-295; a nom de plume called a “pseudonym,” pp. 307, 312; Shakespeare “a mask name,” p. 328; a “pseudonym,” p. 330; “nom de plume,” p. 335).

Now why was the “nom de plume” or “pseudonym” “William Shakespeare” “an excellent nom de plume” for a concealed author, courtier, lawyer, scholar, and so forth?  If “Shakespeare” suggested Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom and of many other things, and so was appropriate, why add “William”?

In 1593, when the “pseudonym” first appears in Venus and Adonis, a country actor whose name, in legal documents—­presumably drawn up by or for his friend, Francis Collyns at Stratford—­is written “William Shakespeare,” was before the town as an actor in the leading company, that of the Lord Chamberlain.  This company produced the plays some of which, by 1598, bear “W.  Shakespere,” or “William Shakespeare” on their title-pages.  Thus, even if the actor habitually spelled his name “Shakspere,” “William Shakespeare” was, practically (on the Baconian theory), not only a pseudonym of one man, a poet, but also the real name of another man, a well-known actor, who was not the “concealed poet.”

“William Shakespeare” or “Shakespere” was thus, in my view, the ideally worst pseudonym which a poet who wished to be “concealed” could possibly have had the fatuity to select.  His plays and poems would be, as they were, universally attributed to the actor, who is represented as a person conspicuously incapable of writing them.  With Mr. Greenwood’s arguments against the certainty of this attribution I deal later.