Cuthbert Burbage, in 1635 or 1636, did not remind
the Earl of what the Earl knew very well, that the
Folio had been dedicated, in 1623, to him and his
brother, by Will’s friends, Heminge and Condell,
as they had been patrons of the late William Shakspere
and admirers of his plays. The terms of this
dedication are to be cited in the text, later.
We all now would have reminded the Earl
of what he very well knew. Cuthbert did not.
The intelligence of Cuthbert Burbage may be gauged
by anyone who will read pp. 481-484 in William Shakespeare,
His Family and Friends, by the late Mr. Charles Elton,
Q.C., of White Staunton. Cuthbert was a puzzle-pated
old boy. The silence as to Will’s authorship
on the part of this muddle-headed old Cuthbert, in
1635-36, cannot outweigh the explicit and positive
public testimony to his authorship, signed by his
friends and fellow-actors in 1623.
Men believe what they may; but I prefer positive evidence
for the affirmative to negative evidence from silence,
the silence of Cuthbert Burbage.
One may read through Mr. Greenwood’s three books
and note the engaging varieties of his views; they
vary as suits his argument; but he is unaware of it,
or can justify his varyings. Thus, in 1610, one
John Davies wrote rhymes in which he speaks of “our
English Terence, Mr. Will Shakespeare”; “good
Will.” In his period patriotic English
critics called a comic dramatist “the English
Terence,” or “the English Plautus,”
precisely as American critics used to call Mr. Bryant
“the American Wordsworth,” or Cooper “the
American Scott”; and as Scots called the Rev.
Mr. Thomson “the Scottish Turner.”
Somewhere, I believe, exists “the Belgian Shakespeare.”
Following this practice, Davies had to call Will either
“our English Terence,” or “our English
Plautus.” Aristophanes would not have been
generally recognised; and Will was no more like one
of these ancient authors than another. Thus
Davies was apt to choose either Plautus or Terence;
it was even betting which he selected. But he
chanced to choose Terence; and this is “curious,”
and suggests suspicions to Mr. Greenwood—and
the Baconians. They are so very full of suspicions!
It does not suit the Baconians, or Mr. Greenwood,
to find contemporary recognition of Will as an author.
{0i} Consequently, Mr. Greenwood finds Davies’s
“curious, and at first sight, inappropriate
comparison of ‘Shake-speare’ to Terence
worthy of remark, for Terence is the very author whose
name is alleged to have been used as a mask-name,
or nom de plume, for the writings of great men who
wished to keep the fact of their authorship concealed.”
Now Davies felt bound to bring in some Roman
parallel to Shakespeare; and had only the choice of
Terence or Plautus. Meres (1598) used Plautus;
Davies used Terence. Mr. Greenwood {0j} shows
us that Plautus would not do. “Could he”
(Shakespeare) “write only of courtesans and
cocottes, and not of ladies highly born, cultured,
and refined? . . . "
