ce, in the
grave scene in _Hamlet_ or the nurse's part in _Romeo and Juliet_?[43]
And if some great unknown was the sole author and Shakespeare was the
publisher and was to take part in the representation of these plays,
may we not still, however they lodged, find ample occasion for the
waiting hours of the poet, which would be entirely unexplained if the
person addressed was the Earl of Southampton or some other member of
the nobility?

Such a view explains very much which is otherwise inexplicable. If
into that series of publications came the genius of the unknown author
of the Sonnets, touching some of the plays like stray sunbeams, and as
the work progressed absorbing and filling all their framework,--it
must yet be assumed that he did not labor without recompense. And so
we may believe that Shakespeare from friend became patron, and that
this employment, coming as the poet was passing to life's "steepy
night," gave him the means and the leisure for those dreams of lovers,
of captains and of kings, so visioned on his brain that he wrote of
them as of persons real and living. So regarding the author of the
Sonnets, we appreciate his jealousy, when (as perhaps in _Henry
VIII._) another and almost equal poet was employed, and may understand
how he could blame his false mistress and yet forgive his friend. His
poetry and the opportunity and leisure for its enjoyment was his real
mistress, like the love of Andromache for Hector displacing and
absorbing all other loves.

* * * * *

If the Sonnets were written by Shakespeare, who the friend and patron
so intimately related to the poet and his work was, is a riddle still
unsolved; but if they were written by some unknown poet, the obvious
and reasonable inference is that they were addressed to
Shakespeare.[44]

It may be asked why I would leave anything as the work of Shakespeare,
if I deny to him the authorship of the greater plays. My answer is
this: I believe he did not write the Sonnets; and if the Sonnets are
the work of another, I think it fairly follows that the great dramas,
considered as mere poetry, are so clearly in the same class as the
Sonnets, that we must ascribe the authorship of the greater
Shakespearean dramas to the same great unknown.

When it is once agreed that any considerable portions of the plays
credited to Shakespeare are from different authors, almost the entire
force of the argument resting on report or traditi