Day, Middleton, Dekker and Sir Walter Raleigh could have instituted a civil suit against Ben Jonson for defamation of character, because of the defamatory words in conversation with William Drummond of Hawthornden, had the notes recorded by Drummond been published in the lifetime of the defamed. However, they had come to regard him, doubtless, as a notorious slanderer who would as soon falsify as verify, and was not to be believed in unsworn testimony about his fellowmen or as a credible witness as to any matter—one whose testimony was none too good under every sanction possible to give it. This is the writer who gave genesis to the Stratford myth. The matter-of-fact to be accentuated is that the contemporaries of the writer of the immortal plays did not know positively who wrote them; we do not know positively who wrote them; and our latest posterity, when Holy Trinity’s monuments, turrets, and towers shall have crumbled and commingled with the shrined dust of William Shakspere of Stratford-on-Avon, may not know positively who wrote them. In conclusion, it has not been our design to point out, or suggest, who, in fact, wrote the poems and plays, but rather to show that the man of Stratford was by education, temperament, character, reputation, opportunity and calling, wholly unequal to so transcendent a task, and that the authorship assumed in favor of this man, rests upon no tangible proof, but to the contrary upon strained and farfetched conjecture, merely. INDEX. Pages Alleyn Edward, 17, 18, 19, 42, 107 Addenbroke John, 115, 116 Aubrey John, 141 Blank Verse, 31 Bame Richard, 78 Burbages, 18, 42 Beaumont Francis, 122, 123, 142, 148, 150, 157, 169, 174 Burns Robert, 48 Burton Robert, 53, 157 Bruno, 79 Bodley Sir Thomas, 94 Betterton, 103 Bright John, 164 Brown Sir Thomas, 156 Brown Richard, 16 Bunyan John, 44, 45 Brown J. M., 54 Camden William, 160 Chapman George, 81, 93, 122, 136, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 154, 155, 163, 174, 175 Chettle Henry, 35, 43, 49, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91 Collier J. P., 25 Cook Dr. James, 101 Coleridge S. T., 47, 144, 145 Cicero, 50, 84 Combe William, 109, 110, 125 Cromwell Oliver, 3 Dryden John, 39, 148, 165, 172 Drummond Sir William, 39, 166, 167, 173, 176 Dearborn, 43 Daniel Samuel, 145, 173 Davis Cushman K., 41 Dowland John, 17 Diggs Leonard, 128 Dance-Scene, 100, 111, 124, 129 Dyce A., 114 Davenant Sir William, 135 Donne, 174 Dekker, 143, 162, 174 Drayton, 150, 153, 174 Elizabeth Queen, 53, 157 Emerson R. W., 114, 130 Fletcher John, 43, 122, 142, 148, 150, 152, 157 Fleay, 70 Ford John, 122 Farmer Dr., 110 Fuller Thomas, 159 Garrick David, 111 Grosart A., 30