But these works (wholly unknown) were not (on the Judge’s theory) the works which, after Shakespeare’s death, Ben praised, as his, in verse; and, more critically, praised in prose: the works, that is, which the world has always regarded as Shakespeare’s. THESE were Bacon’s, and Ben knew it on Judge Webb’s theory. Here Judge Webb has, of course, to deal with Ben’s explicit declarations, in the First Folio, that the works which he praises are by Shakespeare. The portrait, says Ben, Was for gentle Shakespeare cut. Judge Webb then assures us, to escape this quandary, that ‘in the Sonnets “the gentle Shakespeare himself informs us that Shakespeare was not his real name, but the “noted weed” in which he “kept invention.”’ * The author of the Sonnets does nothing of the kind. Judge Webb has merely misconstrued his text. The passage which he so quaintly misinterprets occurs in Sonnet lxxvi.: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why, with the time, do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? WHY WRITE I STILL ALL ONE, EVER THE SAME, AND KEEP INVENTION IN A NOTED WEED, THAT EVERY WORD DOES ALMOST TELL MY NAME, SHOWING THEIR BIRTH AND WHENCE THEY DO PROCEED? Oh, know, sweet love, I always write of you, And you and love are still my argument; So all my best is dressing old words new, Spending again what is already spent: For as the sun is daily new and old, So is my love still telling what is told. *Webb, pp. 125,156,235,264. Judge Webb is fond of his discovery. The lines capitalised are thus explained by the Judge: ‘Here the author certainly intimates that Shakespeare is not his real name, and that he was fearful lest his real name should be discovered.’ The author says nothing about Shakespeare not being his real name, nor about his fear lest his real name should be discovered. He even ‘quibbles on his own Christian name,’ WILL, as Mr. Phillipps and everyone else have noted. What he means is: ‘Why am I so monotonous that every word almost tells my name?’ ‘To keep invention in a noted weed’ means, of course, to present his genius always in the same well-known attire. There is nothing about disguise of a name, or of anything else, in the sonnet.* *Webb, pp. 64,156. But Judge Webb assures us that Shakespeare himself informs us in the sonnets that ‘Shakespeare was not his real name, but the noted weed in which he kept invention.’ As this is most undeniably not the case, it cannot aid his effort to make out that, in the Folio, by the name of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson means another person. In the Folio verses, ‘To the Memory of my Beloved, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What he has Left Us,’ Judge Webb finds many mysterious problems.