The slight mention of Shakespeare by the “judicious Webster,” as Hazlet calls him, comprehends no more than that Shakspere was one of the hack writers of the day: “detraction is the sworn friend to ignorance.” For mine own part I have ever truly cherished “my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours, especially of that full and heightened style of Master Chapman, the laboured and understanding works of Master Jonson, the no less worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Master Beaumont and Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker and Master Heywood.” These words written by the third greatest of English tragic poets are very significant, for Webster wrote for the theatre to which Shakspere, the player and play-broker, belonged; yet industry is the only distinguishing mark in Shakspere which he must share with Dekker, and Heywood, hack writers for the stage. Dekker’s many plays attest his copious industry, when we remember that this writer spent three years in prison, and Heywood’s industry cannot be doubted for he claimed to have had a hand and main finger in two hundred twenty plays. Copious industry signifies to the reader the existence of an author not utterly unknown, it is true, but it fails to identify him as the author of the immortal plays. What shall we say then? Were the works called Shakespeare’s but little known? Shakspere’s biographers say that they were the talk of the town. If that is true, then the writer who was commended for industry was not regarded by Webster as the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear,” and “Macbeth,” for Shakespeare’s distinctive characteristics are not individualized from those of Dekker and Heywood, while those of Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are. In the last four named is perfect interlacement of personality with authorship, but not so in Shakespeare. John Webster’s judgment of his fellow craftsman was just, “I have ever truly cherished my good opinion of other men’s worthy labours.” Webster never conceals or misrepresents the truth by giving evasive, or equivocating, evidence. He reveals the judicial trait of his character in placing Chapman first among the poets then living, assuming that the name Shakespeare was used by printers and publishers, if not by writers, as an impersonal name, masking the name of a true poet. Sidney, Marlowe and Spencer had then descended to the tomb.