Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising, From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings it then I scorn to change my state with kings.” “I may not evermore acknowledge thee, Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, Nor thou with public kindness honor me, Unless thou take that honor from thy name; But do not so; I love thee in such sort As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. “As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth. For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, Or any of these all, or all, or more, Entitled in my parts do crowned sit, I make my love engrafted to this store. So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give That I in thy abundance am sufficed, And by a part of all thy glory live.” In 1590 Shakspere was part owner of a theater. In 1590 Bacon obtained his first show of favor from the court; he became Queen’s counsel extraordinary, but the office was without emolument. At this time plays for the theater were written and rewritten again and again to meet the demand. Young lawyers and poets produced them rapidly. Each theatrical company kept from one to four poets in its pay (Amer. Cyc.) Shakspere appeared to be ready to father anything that promised success, and there are at least six plays published under his name or initials which most critics say are not his, nor have they ever appeared in the genuine canon. In 1591 a poem by Spenser was published containing these lines: “And he, the man whom Nature’s self has made To mock herself and truth to imitate, With kindly counter under mimic shade: “Our pleasant Willy, ah, is dead of late: With whom all joy and jolly merriment Is also deaded and in dolor drent.” [20] From 1590 until Shakspere retired from the stage, how could it be said that he was “poor,” bewailing his “outcast state” and “cursing his fate?” But it is certain that Bacon’s condition answered precisely to that description up to November, 1594, when Essex gave him an estate worth £1,800; aye, even until 1604, when King James granted him a pension of £60; if not even up to 1607. Mark now the modesty of the poet in 1590: