For some years past scarcely a month passes without my receipt of a communication from a confiding stranger, to the effect that he has discovered some piece of information concerning Shakespeare which has hitherto eluded research. Very often has a correspondent put himself to the trouble of forwarding a photograph of the title-page of a late sixteenth or early seventeenth century book, on which has been scrawled in old-fashioned script the familiar name of William Shakespeare. At intervals, which seem to recur with mathematical regularity, I receive intelligence that a portrait of the poet, of which nothing is hitherto known, has come to light in some recondite corner of England or America, and it is usually added that a contemporary inscription settles all doubt of authenticity. I wish to speak with respect and gratitude of these confidences. I welcome them, and have no wish to repress them. But truth does not permit me to affirm that such as have yet reached me have done more than enlarge my conception of the scope of human credulity. I look forward to the day when the postman shall, through the generosity of some appreciative reader of my biography of Shakespeare, deliver at my door an autograph of the dramatist of which nothing has been heard before, or a genuine portrait of contemporary date, the existence of which has never been suspected. But up to the moment of writing, despite the good intentions of my correspondents, no experience of the kind has befallen me. There is something pathetic in the frequency with which correspondents, obviously of unblemished character and most generous instinct, send me almost tearful expressions of regret that I should have hitherto ignored one particular document, which throws (in their eyes) a curious gleam on the dramatist's private life. At least six times a year am I reminded how it is recorded in more than one obscure eighteenth-century periodical that the dramatist, George Peele, wrote to his friend Marle or Marlowe, in an extant letter, of a merry meeting which was held at a place called the "Globe." Whether the rendezvous were tavern or playhouse is left undetermined. The assembled company, I am assured, included not merely Edward Alleyn the actor, and Ben Jonson, but Shakespeare himself. Together these celebrated men are said to have discussed a passage in the new play of _Hamlet_. The reported talk is at the best tame prattle. Yet, if Shakespeare be anywhere revealed in unconstrained intercourse with professional associates, no biographer deserves pardon for overlooking the revelation, however disappointing be its purport.