on of a play in manuscript being
of great importance to the actors, and the famous first folio did not
appear till seven years after his death.

The canon of Shakespere's plays, like everything else connected with him,
has been the subject of endless discussion. There is no reasonable doubt
that in his earlier days (the first printed play among those ordinarily
assigned to him, _Romeo and Juliet_, dates from 1597) he had taken part in
dramatic work which is now mostly anonymous or assigned to other men, and
there is also no doubt that there may be passages in the accepted plays
which he owed to others. But my own deliberate judgment is that no
important and highly probable ascription of extant work to Shakespere can
be made outside the canon as usually printed, with the doubtful exception
of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_; and I do not believe that in the plays usually
accepted, any very important or characteristic portion is not Shakespere's.
As for Shakespere-Bacon theories, and that kind of folly, they are scarcely
worthy even of mention. Nor among the numerous other controversies and
errors on the subject shall I meddle with more than one--the constantly
repeated assertion that England long misunderstood or neglected Shakespere,
and that foreign aid, chiefly German (though some include Voltaire!), was
required to make her discover him. A very short way is possible with this
absurdity. It would be difficult to name any men more representative of
cultivated literary opinion and accomplishment in the six generations
(taking a generation at the third of a century) which passed between
Shakespere's death and the battle of Waterloo (since when English
admiration of Shakespere will hardly be denied), than Ben Jonson, John
Milton, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. Their lives overlapped each other considerably, so that no
period is left uncovered. They were all typical men of letters, each of his
own time, and four at least of them were literary dictators. Now, Ben
Jonson's estimate of Shakespere in prose and verse is on record in more
places than one, and is as authentic as the silly stories of his envy are
mythical. If Milton, to his eternal disgrace, flung, for party purposes,
the study of Shakespere as a reproach in his dead king's face, he had
himself long before put on record his admiration for him, and his own
study is patent to every critical reader of his works. Dryden, but a year
or