But was “Shakspere,” or any man, “known to the world as the author of the plays of Shakespeare”?  No! for Mr. Greenwood writes, “nobody, outside a very small circle, troubled his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.” {0e} To that “very small circle” we have no reason to suppose that Manningham belonged, despite his remarkable opinion that Twelfth Night resembles the Menaechmi.  Consequently, it is not “extremely remarkable” that Manningham wrote “Shakespeare’s name William,” to explain to posterity the joke about “William the Conqueror,” instead of saying, “the brilliant author of the Twelfth Night play which so much amused me at our feast a few weeks ago.” {0f} “Remarkable” out of all hooping it would have been had Manningham written in the style of Mr. Greenwood.  But Manningham apparently did not “trouble his head as to who the dramatist or dramatists might be.”  “Nobody, outside a very small circle,” Did trouble his poor head about that point.  Yet Mr. Greenwood thinks “it does seem extremely remarkable” that Manningham did not mention the author.

Later, on the publication of the Folio (1623), the world seems to have taken more interest in literary matters.  Mr. Greenwood says that then while “the multitude” would take Ben Jonson’s noble panegyric on Shakespeare as a poet “au pied de la lettre,” “the enlightened few would recognise that it had an esoteric meaning.” {0g} Then, it seems, “the world”—­the “multitude”—­regarded the actor as the author.  Only “the enlightened few” were aware that when Ben said “Shakespeare,” and “Swan of Avon,” he meant—­somebody else.

Quite different inferences are drawn from the same facts by persons of different mental conditions.  For example, in 1635 or 1636, Cuthbert Burbage, brother of Richard, the famous actor, Will’s comrade, petitioned Lord Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, for consideration in a quarrel about certain theatres.  Telling the history of the houses, he mentions that the Burbages “to ourselves joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Heminge, Condell, Phillips and others.”  Cuthbert is arguing his case solely from the point of the original owners or lease-holders of the houses, and of the well-known actors to whom they joined themselves.  Judge Webb and Mr. Greenwood think that “it does indeed seem strange . . . that the proprietor[s] of the playhouses which had been made famous by the production of the Shakespearean plays, should, in 1635—­twelve years after the publication of the great Folio—­describe their reputed author to the survivor of the Incomparable Pair, as merely a ‘man-player’ and ’a deserving man.’” Why did he not remind the Lord Chamberlain that this “deserving man” was the author of all these famous dramas?  Was it because he was aware that the Earl of Pembroke “knew better than that”? {0h}

These arguments are regarded by some Baconians as proof positive of their case.