ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE From the bust at the Garrick Club. Frontispiece By Courtesy of the Garrick Club and the A FACSIMILE OF PAGE 57 OF THE THORPE PAGE 16 HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 26 From the painting at Welbeck Abbey. (Photo by Walker & Boutall.) "THE COWARD CONQUEST OF A WRETCHE'S KNIFE " From the painting by Rembrandt. ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX From an old wood-cut print. SIR WILLIAM D'AVENANT From an engraving by W. H. Worthington, after NICHOLAS ROWE. PAGE 94 98 After the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller. UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA CHAPTER I SIR SHAKESPEARE AND HIS EARLY POEMS HENRY IRVING, the actor, was once re proached by an eminent Baconian, for that, being a man so lettered, he had not studied the case of Bacon versus Shakespeare. Irving replied: "But I have read Shakespeare. In a modified form, the same might be said in the present case, for while, during the last five years, I have been engaged in the study of Shakespeariana of all kinds, and consequently have not been able to avoid Bacon, any claim which I may have to write on this subject is based on a constant reading of the works popularly attributed to William Shakespeare of Stratford, and particularly on a lifelong interest in his sonnets. The amateur reader, unwilling to wade through some fifty tomes of controversy over their author, their inspirer, or their "begetter," and led to suppose that these poems are too obscure to be appre |