Such considerations as these, as they came one by one to light, began to suggest to thinking minds that perhaps William Shakespeare was enjoying, by default, estates belonging to somebody else. But it is curious to see how gradually. In 1783, Theobald, a competent and painstaking scholar of the text, declares that there were "portions of the plays which proved beyond a doubt that more than one hand had produced them." More than fifty years after came Dr. Richard Banner (who wrote his famous letter on "The Learning of Shakespeare," in or about 1789), and appears to have been the first actual anti-Shakespearean and unbeliever. Dr. Farmer sought--by demonstrating that much of the learning of the plays could have been, by sufficient research, procured at second-hand--to account for (what he could not overlook) the utter inadequacy of the historical man to the immortal work {182}assigned him; just as if it were not, if any thing, an increase (or say a substitution) of marvels to suppose a busy actor and manager rummaging England for forgotten manuscripts in the days when no public libraries existed, and when students lived in cloisters; or (let us say) that he knew precisely where to lay his hand on every obscure tract, letter, or memorandum ever drawn from a classical source! And just as if the encyclopaedic learning required was lessened by the fact that the plot of the perfected play was borrowed or rewritten from an older drama of the same name! For example of Farmer's argument, take the following. In the play of that name, Timon says:= ```"The sun's a thief, and with his great attention ```Robs the vast sea. The moon's an arrant thief, ```And her pale fire she snatches from the sun. ```The sea's a thief whose liquid surge resolves ```The moon into salt tears. The earth's a thief ```That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen ```From general excrement: each thing's a thief."=