At the time, this first English anthology was compiled and published, thirteen of the Shakespeare plays and two poems had been issued. Nevertheless Shakespeare does not figure in the anthology of his day. Why? The play-actor, William Shakspere, in his life time was not publicly credited with the personal authorship of the plays and poems called Shakespeare’s, except possibly by three or four poeticules, Bomfield, Freeman, Meres, and Weaver, who followed each other in the iteration and reiteration of the same insipid and affected compliments, not one of them implying a personal acquaintance with the author. Some few persons may have believed that the player and play-wright were one and the same person, and were deceived into so believing. This much we do know, that the player Shakspere never openly sanctioned the identification, although he may have been accessory to the deception. It should be borne in mind also that no poet was remembered in Shakspere’s will, as were the actors. Many writers of that age were communistic in the use of the name “Shakespeare” as a descriptive title, very much like the Italians’ pantomime called “Silverspear,” standing for the collocuted works of not one, but several play-makers. Sir Thomas Brown complained that his name was being used to float books that he never wrote. In the list before us there are forty-nine plays which were published with Shakespeare’s name. Doubtless there were many others: not one in fifty of the dramas of this period, according to Hallowell-Philips, having descended to modern times. Many writers of that age wrote anonymously and pseudonymously. Edmund Spencer, author of “The Shepherd’s Calendar” remained incognito for seven years. Eight years after this work appeared George Whitstone ascribed it to Philip Sidney and a cotemporary writer, mistaking Spencer’s masking name for the author of the works. Spencer committed “The Faerie Queen” to the press after nine years. Only four of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays were published in Fletcher’s lifetime and none of them bore Beaumont’s name. Fletcher survived his partner nine years. Robert Burton, author of “The Anatomy of Melancholy,” maintained his incognito for a time, he avers, because it gave him greater freedom. Jean Baptiste Poquelin preferred to be known as Molière. Francais-Marie Aronet won enduring fame as Voltaire. Sir Walter Scott maintained his incognito as the great unknown for years like “Junius,” “whose secret was intrusted to no one and was never to be revealed.” Sir Walter Scott preserved his secret until driven to the brink of financial destruction. Drayton also had written under the pseudonym of Rowland. Who can doubt that the author of “Hamlet,” “Lear” and “Macbeth,” chose to sheath his private life and personality as a man of letters in an impenetrable incognito—“the nothingness of a name.”