The biographers should record these facts, and not strive to shun them, for the literary antiquaries have unearthed and brought them forward, and they tell the true story of Shakspere’s life, though we do not linger lovingly over them, for, like Hallam, “we as little feel the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was afterward an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his native place in middle life, with the author of ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Lear,’” for the Stratford records are as barren of literary matter as the lodgings in Silver street, London. Not a crumb for the literary biographer in either place! Professor Wallace has added another non-literary document in the matter of Shakspere’s deposition in the case of Bellot vs. Mountjoy, which he discovered in the public record office, but it in no way contributes to a literary biography. The truth is that, with all their industry, the antiquarians have in this regard not brought to light a single proven fact to sustain the claim that this Shakespere was either the author of poems or plays. This bit of new knowledge gives us a glimpse of this William Shakspere as an evasive witness, having a conveniently short memory. These depositions disclose his intermediation in the matter of making two hearts happy, but not the faintest glimpse of the author of poems or plays. When the claim of authorship is challenged, new particulars of the life of Shakspere, such as this and others that have been unearthed by antiquarians, whether in the public record office or corporation archives, are alike worthless so far as establishing the poet Shakspere’s identity. They fail to confirm the identity of the actor Shakspere with the author of the plays and poems that are associated with his name. There are no family traditions, no books, manuscripts, or letters, addressed to him, or by him, to poet, peer or peasant. The credible evidence supplied by contemporaneous, or antiquarian, research do not identify the player and landowner with the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Othello.”