only possible explanation of this remarkable fact is that Shakespeare and Bacon were one and the same person--a theory that the most hardened Baconian has not yet thought it advisable to advance. _Wm. Shakespeare, Money Lender and Poet._ Mr. Theobald is unfortunate in his selection of the points he raises in Shakespeare’s career in order to belittle the character of the poet. He writes: “His known occupations, apart from theatre business, were money-lending, malt-dealing, transactions in house and land property.” There is not the slightest evidence to show that Shakespeare traded as a money-lender; his only interest in malt-dealing was confined to one transaction, and his transactions in houses and lands were those of any man who invests his savings in real estate. The phrase is, as the most superficial Shakespeare student will recognise, misleading in substance, and incorrect as a statement of fact. In another part of his determinedly one-sided book, Mr. Theobald dismisses, in a paragraph, the contention that Shakespeare’s poems are illuminated and illustrated by Shakespeare’s life. The obvious rejoinder is that there is nothing in the life of Shakespeare that makes it difficult for us to accept him as the author of the Plays, whereas the whole life and character of Bacon makes his pretensions more than difficult, even impossible, of acceptance. In 1593, _Venus and Adonis_ was published by Shakespeare’s friend and fellow townsman, Richard Field, and in the following year _Lucrece_ was issued at the sign of the White Greyhound in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Both poems were dedicated to Shakespeare’s first and only patron, the Earl of Southampton, with whom Bacon is not known to have sought any intimacy until 1603, when he addressed to him a characteristic letter of conciliation. (In 1621, when Bacon was accused of corruption, the Earl of Southampton pointed out the insufficiency of the Lord Chancellor’s original confession, and it was largely the result of his firm and unfriendly attitude that Bacon’s abject submission and acknowledgment of the justice of the charges, was placed before the Lords). These poems constituted Shakespeare’s appeal to the reading public. The response was instantaneous and enthusiastic. “Critics vied with each other,” writes Mr. Sidney Lee, “in the exuberance of the eulogies, in which they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus.” _Lucrece_, Michael Drayton declared, in his _Legend of Matilda_ (1594), was “revived to live another age.” In 1595, William Clerke, in his _Polimanteia_, gave “all praise” to “Sweet Shakespeare” for his _Lucrecia_. John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to “honey-tongued” Shakespeare in his _Epigrams_ (1595), eulogised the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, although he mentions the plays _Romeo_, and _Richard_, and “more whose names I know not.” Richard Carew, at the same time, classed him with