(which was originally placed on the stone over William Shakespeare's vault in the chancel of Trinity Church, Stratford--was recut in the new stone which was found necessary fifty years ago, and now appears with the verbal contractions as given above) are all the literary compositions which, according to the local traditions of Stratford, his home, where he was born, lived, and died--where alone, for a century or more after his death his reputation was cherished--William Shakespeare ever produced. There is nothing: in them inconsistent with the record of the man himself; and, so far as we know, have never been rejected by the Shakespeareans themselves. It certainly would not be honest, in our present appeal to history, to insert in this edition--we may fairly call it "The Stratford Edition"--of Master Shakespeare's poetry, all that he edited for the stage; or, worse yet, borrowed and dressed up, and--according to Robert Greene--passed for his own. We are very far from desiring even to do justice to poor Robert Greene, if in so doing we shall detract a hair's weight from the merits of William Shakespeare. But it is not impossible to say a good word even for Greene. Although his language is not within such bounds of propriety as the Shakespeareans could wish, {125}modern research has amply proved that he told the truth, and that William Shakespeare borrowed, or rather seized upon and adopted, without compensation, the work by which Greene earned his bread. For Greene's language, Chettle, Greene's editor, makes haste, sometime afterward, when William Shakespeare had been taken up by "divers of worship" to apologize, as far as an editor can apologize for an author. We shall see, further on, how William Shakespeare was shrewd enough to make himself useful to these "divers of worship," and in those days, and for a century after, no slavery was so abject as the slavery of letters to patronage. So, of course, Chettle hastened to make his peace with them too. But the truth remains, nevertheless, that poor Greene told only the truth. It is fashionable with the Shakespeareans to sneer at Greene, because he was "jealous" of Shakespeare. He appears to have had reason to be jealous! But no name is bad enough to bestow on him. Mr. Grant White says: "Robert Greene, writing from the fitting deathbed of a groveling debauchee, warns three of his literary companions to shun intercourse with," etc., "certain actors, Shakespeare among the rest." If Robert Greene died from over-debauch, it is no more than Shakespeare himself died of, according to the entry in the diary of the Rev. John Ward. "It is not impossible," says Mr. White, "even that this piece of gossiping tradition is true." Mr. White is right to call it "gossiping tradition," for it is piece and parcel of all the other mention of William Shakespeare of Stratford. If it were not for "gossiping tradition," we had never heard, and Mr. White had never written, of that personage. But {126}Mr.