But though the mere names of the poets, Ben Jonson, Kit Marlowe, Frank Beaumont, Harry Chettle, and so forth, are accepted as indicating the well-known men whom they designate, this evidence to identity does not satisfy Mr. Greenwood, and the Baconians, where Will is concerned.  “We should expect to find allusions to dramatic and poetical works published under the name of ‘Shakespeare’; we should expect to find Shakespeare spoken of as a poet and a dramatist; we should expect, further, to find some few allusions to Shakespeare or Shakspere the player.  And these, of course, we do find; but these are not the objects of our quest.  What we require is evidence to establish the identity of the player with the poet and dramatist; to prove that the player was the author of the plays and poems. That is the proposition to be established, and that the allusions fail, as it appears to me, to prove,” says Mr. Greenwood.  He adds, “At any rate they do not disprove the theory that the true authorship was hidden under a pseudonym” {136a}—­which raises an entirely different question.

Makers of allusions to the plays must identify Shakespeare with the actor, explicitly; must tell us who this Shakespeare was, though they need not, and usually do not, tell us who the other authors mentioned were; and though the world of letters and the Stage knew but one William Shakspere or Shakespeare, who was far too familiar to them to require further identification.  But even if the makers of allusions did all this, and said, “by W. Shakespeare the poet, we mean W. Shakespeare the actor”—­That is not enough.  For they may all be deceived, may all believe that a bookless, untutored man is the author.  So we cannot get evidence correct enough for Mr. Greenwood.

Destitute as I am of legal training, I leave this notable way of disposing of the evidence to the judgement of the Bench and the Bar, a layman intermeddleth not with it.  Still, I am, like other readers, on the Jury addressed,—­I do not accept the arguments.  Miror magis, as Mr. Greenwood might quote Latin.  We have already seen one example of this argument, when Heywood speaks of the author of poems by Shakespeare, published in The Passionate Pilgrim.  Heywood does nothing to identify the actor Shakspere with the author Shakespeare, says Mr. Greenwood.  I shall prove that, elsewhere, Heywood does identify them, and no man knew more of the world of playwrights and actors than Heywood.  I add that in his remarks on The Passionate Pilgrim, Heywood had no need to say “by W. Shakespeare I mean the well-known actor in the King’s Company.”  There was no other William Shakspere or Shakespeare known to his public.