These times were not as our own, and must not be judged by ours.  Whoever wrote the plays, the actor, or Bacon, or the Man in the Moon; whoever legally owned the manuscripts, was equally incurious and negligent about the preservation of a correct text.  As we shall see later, while Baconians urge without any evidence that Bacon himself edited, or gave to Ben Jonson the duty of editing, the first collected edition (1623), the work has been done in an indescribably negligent and reckless manner, and, as Mr. Greenwood repeatedly states, the edition, in his opinion, contains at least two plays not by his “Shakespeare”—­that “concealed poet”—­and masses of “non-Shakespearean” work.

How this could happen, if Bacon (as on one hypothesis) either revised the plays himself, or entrusted the task to so strict an Editor as Ben Jonson, I cannot imagine.  This is also one of the difficulties in Mr. Greenwood’s theory.  Thus we cannot argue, “if the actor were the author, he must have been conscious of his great powers.  Therefore the actor cannot have been the author, for the actor wholly neglected to collect his printed and to print his manuscript works.”

This argument is equally potent against the authorship of the plays by Bacon.  He, too, left the manuscripts unpublished till 1623.  “But he could not avow his authorship,” cry Baconians, giving various exquisite reasons.  Indeed, if Bacon were the author, he might not care to divulge his long association with “a cry of players,” and a man like Will of Stratford.  But he had no occasion to avow it.  He had merely to suggest to the players, through any safe channel, that they should collect and publish the works of their old friend Will Shakspere.

Thus indifferent was the main author of the plays, whether he were actor or statesman; and the actor, at least, is not to blame for the chaos of the first collected edition, made while he was in his grave, and while Bacon was busy in revising and superintending Latin translations of his works on scientific subjects.

We now understand why there are so few contemporary records of Shakspere the man; and see that the neglect of his texts was extreme, whether or not he were the author.  The neglect was characteristic of the playwrights of his own and the next generation.  In those days it was no marvel; few cared.  Nine years passed before a second edition of the collected plays appeared:  thirty-two years went by before a third edition was issued—­years of war and tumult, yet they saw the posthumous publication of the collected plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.

There remains one more mystery connected with publication.  When the first collected edition of the plays appeared, it purported to contain “All His Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.”  According to the postulate of the Baconians it was edited by the Author, or by Jonson acting for him.  It contains several plays which, according to many critics, are not the author’s.  This, if true, is mysterious, and so is the fact that a few plays were published, as by Shakespeare, in the lifetime both of the actor and of Bacon; plays which neither acknowledged for his own, for we hear of no remonstrance from—­whoever “William Shakespeare” was.  It is impossible for me to say why there was no remonstrance.