Theory" coincide in this, that William Shakespeare was fortunate in the manuscripts brought to him, and grew rich in making plays out of them and matching them to his spectacles. Such, briefly sketched, are the theories concerning these glorious transcripts of the age of Elizabeth, which, while two centuries of literature between is obsolete and moribund, are yet unwithered and unstaled, and the most priceless of all the treasuries of the age of Victoria. And yet, there seems to be a feeling that any exploration after their authorship is a sacrilege, and that this particular historical question must be left untouched--as Pythagoras would not eat beans, as parricidal--that William Shakespeare is William Shakespeare--and the doggerel curse of Stratford hangs over and forefends the meddling with his bones. But no witch's palindrome for long can block the march of reason and of research. Modern scholarship is every day dissolving chimera, and, if this Shakespeare story has no basis of truth, it must inevitably be abolished along with the rest. If this transcendent literature had come down to us without the name, would it have been sacrilege to search for its paternity? And does the mere name of William Shakespeare make that, which is otherwise expedient, infamous? {300}Or, is this the meaning of the incantation on the tomb--that cursed shall he be that seeks to penetrate the secret of the plays? Such, indeed, was the belief that drove poor Delia Bacon mad. But we decline to see any thing but the calm historical question. It seems to us that, if we are at liberty to dispute as much as we like as to whether two a's or only one, or three e's or only two belong of right in the name "Shakespeare," surely it can not be debarred us to ask of the Past the origin of the thousand-souled pages we call by that name. We believe that, if the existence of these three theories--as to each of which it is possible to say so much--proves any thing, it proves that history and circumstantial evidence oppose the possibility of William Shakespeare's authorship of the works called his, and that there is a reasonable doubt as to whether any one man did write, or could have written, either with or without a Bodleian or an Astor Library at his elbow, the whole complete canon of the Shakespearean works.