Chapter XII: Part II: , ch. vi., p. 32, note.)

A selection of his poems, edited by Lamb, is printed in
Bohn's Standard Library. But by far the most careful account
of Greene's career, as connected with "William Shakespeare,
is to be found in "The School of Shakespeare," by Richard
Simpson, London: Chatto & Windus, 1878, Vol. II., p. 339.

He does not seem to have approved of William Shakespeare's borrowing his plumes; but the impression that he was a monster of debauchery and drunkenness is derived wholly from his own posthumous work, "The Confessions of Robert Greene," etc., London, 1592, which lays the black paint on so thickly that it should have put the critics on their guard. Greene was probably no worse than his kind. Henry Chettle edited Greene, and personally deprecated some of its hard sayings as to Shakespeare, on account of his (Shakespeare's) being a clever, civil sort of fellow, and of "his facetious grace in writing;" but more particularly, no doubt, because "divers of worship" had taken him up, and he (Chettle) did not wish to appear as approving slander of a reigning favorite. Heminges and Condell were men of straw, whose names are signed to the preface to the "first folio," who otherwise bear no testimony one way or the other, but whose book, as will be demonstrated further on, is an unwilling witness against its purported author. And Ben Jonson, who brings up the rear of this precious seven, has been already disposed of. That theory must be pretty soundly grounded in truth, against which there is nothing but rhetoric to hurl, and, in our opinion, it would be entirely safe--if not for the Baconians, for the anti-Shakespeareans, at least--to rest their case on the arguments for the other side. And we believe the more {253}thoughtful among Shakespeareans are beginning to recognize it, and coming to comprehend that, if they are to keep their Shakespeare they must re-write their "Biographies;" spend less time in proving him to have been an epitome of the moral virtues--beyond the temptation of deer stealing, beer drinking, and skylarking, etc.--and devote more attention to his opportunities for acquiring the lore and technical knowledge his alleged pages so accurately handle. Especially has Mr. Halliwell Phillips, in his little book (in which he binds himself to cite no dates or authorities subsequent to 1616), * impressed us as endeavoring to meet this emergency. But we find that he has not met it. He has, indeed, developed many details of curious interest--as that John Shakespeare was, in April, 1552, fined twelve pence for throwing muck into the street in front of his house; and that he was several times a candidate for high bailiff of Stratford (or mayor, as the office was afterward called) before finally arriving at that dignity in 1568; that July 15, 1613, there was heard at Worcester Assizes a curious lawsuit, brought by Dr. John Hall, Shakespeare's son-in-law, against a neighbor for slandering his wife (Susannah Shakespeare), which suit appears to have been "fixed" in some way before coming to trial.

* Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. Brighton. Printed
for the Author's friends, 1881. We should add to our list of
hooks Mr. O. Follet's two able pamphlets on the Baconian
theory. Sandusky, Ohio, 1880.

Mr. Phillips brings much learning to prove that William may have been "pre-contracted" to Anne Hathaway--that his death may have been from malarial fever {254}rather than inebriation--which have nothing at all to do with the question or the practical difficulties cited by the anti-Shakespeareans, one way or the other. But as to those practical difficulties, he brings no light and has no word to say.

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