They also introduce Kempe, the low comedy man of Shakespeare’s company, speaking to Burbage, the chief tragic actor, of Shakespeare as a member of their company, who, _as an author of plays_, “puts down” the University wits “and Ben Jonson too.” The date is not earlier than that of Ben’s satiric play on the poets, _The Poetaster_ (1601), to which reference is made. Since Kempe is to be represented as wholly ignorant, his opinion of Shakespeare’s pre-eminent merit only proves, as in the case of Gullio, that the University wits decried the excellences of Shakespeare. In him they saw no scholar. The point is that Kempe recognises Shakespeare as both actor and author. All this “is quite consistent with the theory that Shake-speare was a pseudonym,” {147a} says Mr. Greenwood. Of course it is, but it is _not_ consistent with the theory that Shakespeare was an uneducated, bookless rustic, for, in that case, his mask would have fallen off in a day, in an hour. Of course the Cambridge author only proves, if you will, that _he_ thought that _Kempe_ thought, that his fellow player was the author. But we have better evidence of what the actors thought than in the Cambridge play. In 1598, as we saw, Francis Meres in _Palladis Tamia_ credits Shakespeare with _Venus and Adonis_, with privately circulated sonnets, and with a number of the comedies and tragedies. How the allusions “negative the hypothesis that Shakespeare was a _nom de plume_ is not apparent,” says Mr. Greenwood, always constant to his method. I repeat that he wanders from the point, which is, here, that the only William Shak(&c.) known to us at the time, in London, was credited with the plays and poems on all sides, which proves that no incompatibility between the man and the works was recognised. Then Weaver (1599) alludes to him as author of _Venus_, _Lucrece_, _Romeo_, _Richard_, “more whose names I know not.” Davies (1610) calls him “our English Terence” (the famous comedian), and mentions him as having “played some Kingly parts in sport.” Freeman (1614) credits him with _Venus_ and _Lucrece_. “Besides in plays thy wit winds like Meander.” I repeat Heywood’s evidence. Thomas Heywood, author of that remarkable domestic play, _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, was, from the old days of Henslowe, in the fifteen-nineties, a playwright and an actor; he survived into the reign of Charles I. Writing on the familiar names of the poets, “Jack Fletcher,” “Frank Beaumont,” “Kit Marlowe,” “Tom Nash,” he says, “Mellifluous Shakespeare whose enchanting quill Commanded mirth and passion, was but ‘Will.’” Does Heywood not identify the actor with the author? No quibbles serve against the evidence.