The allusions, I repeat, _do_ prove that Shak(&c.), the actor, was believed to be the author, till any other noted William Shak(&c.) is found to have been conspicuously before the town. “There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of Shakespeare.” There is nothing at all to prove that Meres, native of Lincolnshire, had any personal knowledge of nine-tenths of the English authors, famous or forgotten, whom he mentions. “On the question—who was Shakespeare?—he throws no light.” He “throws no light on the question” “who was?” any of the poets mentioned by him, except one, quite forgotten, whose College he names . . . To myself this “sad repeated air,”—“critics who praise Shakespeare do not say _who Shakespeare_ was,”—would appear to be, not an argument, but a subterfuge: though Mr. Greenwood honestly believes it to be an argument,—otherwise he would not use it: much less would he repeat it with frequent iteration. The more a man was notorious, as was Will Shakspere the actor, the less the need for any critic to tell his public “who Shakespeare was.” As Mr. Greenwood tries to disable the evidence when Shakespeare is alluded to as an author, so he tries to better his case when, in the account-book of Philip Henslowe, an owner of theatres, money-lender, pawn-broker, purchaser of plays from authors, and so forth, Shakespeare is _not_ mentioned at all. Here is a mystery which, properly handled, may advance the great cause. Henslowe has notes of loans of money to several actors, some of them of Shakespeare’s company, “The Lord Chamberlain’s.” There is no such note of a loan to Shakespeare. Does this prove that he was not an actor? If so, Burbage was not an actor; Henslowe never names him. There are notes of payments of money to Henslowe after each performance of any play in one of his theatres. In these notes _the name of Shakespeare __is never once mentioned as the author of any play_. How weird! But in _these_ notes the names of the authors of the plays acted are never mentioned. Does this suggest that Bacon wrote all these plays? On the other hand, there are frequent mentions of advances of money to authors who were working at plays for Henslowe, singly, or in pairs, threes, fours, or fives. We find Drayton, Dekker, Chapman, and nine authors now forgotten by all but antiquarians. We have also Ben Jonson (1597), Marston, Munday, Middleton, Webster, and others, authors in Henslowe’s pay. _But the same of Shakespeare never appears_. Mysterious! The other men’s names, writes Dr. Furness, occur “because they were all writers for Henslowe’s theatre, but we must wait at all events for the discovery of some other similar record, before we can produce corresponding memoranda regarding Shaksper” (_sic_) “and his productions.” {157a}