Not having found the slightest trace of Shakespeare in 1592 as writer of plays, or as adapter or elaborator of other men’s work, his advent into literature must have been at a later date, if at all. In 1593 “Venus and Adonis” appeared in print with a dedication to Lord Southampton, and signed “William Shakespeare.” In 1594 appeared another poem, “Lucrece,” also with a dedication to Lord Southampton. The poems bore no name of an author on the title page. Here is literary tangibility, but does it establish the identity of their author, or attest the responsibility of the young Stratford man for the poems which were published under the name of Shakespeare? This was the first mention of the now famous name? Was it a pseudonym, or was it the true name of the author of the poem? The enthusiastic reception of the poems awakens a suspicion when we learn that their popularity was due to a belief in their lasciviency; and that the dedicatee was the rakish Henry Wriothesley, third Earle of Southampton; and, furthermore, that the name of the dedicator, “Shakespeare,” was one of a class of nicknames which in 1593 still retained in some measure that which was derisive in them. In 1487 a student at Oxford changed his own name of “Shakespeare” into “Saunders,” because he considered it too expressive and distinctive of rough manners, and significant of degradation, and as such was unwilling to aid in its hereditary transmission, when all that is derisive in the name Shakspere remained fixed and fossilized in the old meaning. In those unlettered times, lascivious persons were sometimes branded, so to speak, with the nickname “Shakspere.” Primarily, the name has no militant signification. There is no such personal name in any known list of British surnames. They are of the parvenu class without ancestry.