That he used his pen to prepare the prompter's manuscript of the pieces performed at his theater, we have already seen there is reason to believe. That he ever composed, on his own account, we have only a sort of innuendo of certain of his brother actors and playwrights, and a Stratford tradition, which we can trace to no other source than the source of the belief outside--that is to say, to the fact that the plays were produced under his management in London. The innuendo dubs him a poet; the Stratford tradition makes him to have written doggerel verses. But some have ventured to disbelieve both the innuendo and the tradition. Still, writing his life, as we do, from imagination, it is much easier to imagine the three men--Bacon, Raleigh, and Shakespeare--producing between them "Hamlet," "Othello," or the "Comedy of Errors," {177}than to imagine William Shakespeare alone doing it. Especially since, apart from the internal evidence of the plays, he "had his hands full" of work besides--the work in which he earned his competency. It can not be too clearly borne in mind that Shakespeare, in a space of ten or twelve years, actually made what is a fair fortune to-day. That Bacon and Raleigh, whose ambitions did not lead them to seek renown as playwrights, should have contributed their share to the plays--the first for gold which he needed, and the second for pastime which he craved--is not remarkable; we can see hundreds of young lawyers scribbling for gold while waiting for practice, or young "swells" trying their hand at comedies for the sport of the thing, by opening our eyes to-day. That the shrewd and successful manager should carefully pick into presentable and playable shape for his stage, these productions of his young friends, is, likewise, the easiest thing in the world to conceive of, or to see managers doing to-day. Possibly, William Shakespeare, or some other skilled playwright, took the dialogues--let us say, for example--of Bacon and Raleigh, put them into the form of plays, introduced a clown here or a jade there, interpolated saws and localisms, gave the characters their names, looked out for the "business," arranged the tableaux--in short, did what Mr. Wal-lack, or Mr. Daly, or Mr. Boucicault would have to do to-day to fit a play for the stage. It is thought that Shakespeare himself did it, because the plays are said to have been seen in his handwriting, and because, from that fact or otherwise, they went by his name in the days when they were first produced in London.