e impalpable garments and coverings of
our lives. Certainly we may believe that the two characters that fill
these two thousand lines of poetry did not live and move so far apart
as were the busy actor at a theatre and the courted and adventurous
peer of England.

If the friend to whom the Sonnets were addressed was Shakespeare, and
if the author of the Sonnets and of the accredited Shakespearean plays
was some "pale, wasted," and unknown student who sold his labors and
his genius to another, we may perhaps see how they would have had
frequent interviews and hours of labor, and how Shakespeare might have
had all the relations to the poet, which the Sonnets imply of the
poet's friend. But if Shakespeare, then well advanced both to fame and
fortune, was the poet it is very difficult to imagine any one person
who could have borne to him all the relations which the Sonnets
indicate--patron or benefactor and familiar associate and companion; a
rival and successor in the favors of his mistress, and a loved or at
least cherished friend.

While I present the view that some unknown student wrote, and
Shakespeare adopted and published, the Shakespearean plays, I do not
deny to Shakespeare a part, perhaps a large part, in their production.
As I have said, there are many plays attributed to Shakespeare, some
or the greater portions of which are distinctively of a lower class
than the greater plays or the Sonnets. The theory of collaboration
affects at least six plays commonly classed as Shakespearean, and
perhaps others classed as doubtful plays. Why is not the situation
satisfied if we ascribe to Shakespeare a capacity equal to the
composition of _Titus Andronicus_? That is a play which seems to have
been attractive from its plot and the character of its incidents. In
it, however, there are but few lines that seem to be from the same
author as the Sonnets and the greater of the recognized Shakespearean
plays. The remainder of the play has no poetic merit which raises it
far above the rustic poetry which is handed down by tradition as
Shakespeare's. And if we give the unknown student all credit for
authorship of the finer poetry of the greater dramas, may we not still
assume that Shakespeare labored with him, assisting in moulding into
form adapted to the stage the poetry that burst from his friend with
volcanic force; or that he perhaps sometimes suggested the side lights
and sudden transitions which appear so often,--for instan