Perhaps he thinks to find a way out of what appears to me to be a dilemma in the following fashion:  He will not accept Titus Andronicus and Henry vi, though both are in the Folio, as the work of his “Shakespeare,” his Unknown, the Bacon of the Baconians.  Well, we ask, if your Unknown, or Bacon, or Ben,—­instructed by Bacon, or by the Unknown,—­edited the Folio, how could any one of the three insert Titus, and Henry vi, and be “in no little doubt about” Troilus and Cressida?  Bacon, or the Unknown, or the Editor employed by either, knew perfectly well which plays either man could honestly claim as his own work, done under the “nom de plume” of “William Shakespeare” (with or without the hyphen).  Yet the Editor of the Folio does not know—­and Mr. Greenwood does know—­Henry vi and Titus are “wrong ones.”

Mr. Greenwood’s way out, if I follow him, is this:  {225a} “Judge Stotsenburg asks, ’Who wrote The Taming of a Shrew printed in 1594, and who wrote Titus Andronicus, Henry vi, or King Lear referred to in the Diary?’” (Henslowe’s).  The Judge continues:  “Neither Collier nor any of the Shaxper commentators make (sic) any claim to their authorship in behalf of William Shaxper.  Since these plays have the same names as those included in the Folio of 1623 the presumption is that they are the same plays until the contrary is shown.  Of course it may be shown, either that those in the Folio are entirely different except in name, or that these plays were revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they” (who?) “called Shakespeare.”

Mr. Greenwood says, “My own conviction is that . . . these plays were ’revised, improved, and dressed by some one whom they called Shakespeare.’” {226a} (Whom who called Shakespeare?) In that case these plays,—­say Titus Andronicus and Henry vi, Part 1,—­which Mr. Greenwood denies to his “Shakespeare” were just as much his Shakespeare’s plays as any other plays (and there are several), which his Shakespeare “revised, improved, and dressed.”  Yet his Shakespeare is not author of Henry vi, {226b} not the author of Titus Andronicus. {226c} “Mr. Anders,” writes Mr. Greenwood, “makes what I think to be a great error in citing Henry vi and Titus as genuine plays of Shakespeare.” {226d}

He hammers at this denial in nineteen references in his Index to Titus Andronicus.  Yet Ben, or Bacon, or the Unknown thought that these plays were “genuine plays” of “Shakespeare,” the concealed author—­Bacon or Mr. Greenwood’s man.  It appears that the immense poet who used the “nom de plume” of “Shakespeare” did not know the plays of which he could rightfully call himself the author; that (not foreseeing Mr. Greenwood’s constantly repeated objections) he boldly annexed four plays, or two certainly, which Mr. Greenwood denies to him, and another about which “the Folio Editor was in no little doubt.”