on is destroyed;
because report or tradition is about equally satisfied and equally
antagonized by ascribing to him the authorship of either section into
which the admission of dual authorship concedes that they are divided.

That Shakespeare must have had a genius for dramatic work,--though not
necessarily for poetry,--his success as a reputed dramatist and as a
manager, all his history and traditions, very clearly indicate. And
conceding him that, why is not the situation fully satisfied by
considering that he was the lesser, or one of the lesser, rather than
the greater of the collaborators; and that his knowledge of the stage
and his talent for conceiving proper dramatic effects or situations,
made his labors valuable to the greater poet, aiding him to give to
his works a dramatic form and movement which many other great poets
have entirely failed to attain. So considering, the Shakespearean
plays will in some degree still seem to us the work of the gentle
Shakespeare, although in large part the product of the older and more
mature mind, the dreaming and loving recluse and student, who could
say,--

_Your name_ from hence immortal life shall have,
Though _I_, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield _me_ but a common grave,
When _you_ entombed in men's eyes shall lie.

And so believing, may we not still go with reverent feet to that grave
upon the Avon? For there, as I conceive, sleeps he whose sunny graces
won the undying love of the greatest of lovers and of poets, and whose
assistance and support made possible the dreaming hours and days in
which were delivered from his loving friend's overburdened brain the
marvellous and matchless creations of the Shakespearean anthology.

Footnotes:

[33] Sonnets LXXVIII., LXXIX., LXXX., LXXXV., LXXXVI.

[34] Sonnets XCV. and XCVI.

[35] Lee's _Shakespeare_, pp. 377-380.

[36] Lee's _Shakespeare_, p. 406.

[37] It was not until 1596 or 1599 that a coat of arms was granted to
John Shakespeare, the father of William. That appears to have been
granted on the application of the son, and to have been allowed, in
part at least, because his wife, the mother of William, was the
daughter of Robert Arden, gentleman. The grant gave the father the
title of Esquire and not of Gentleman. Lee's _Shakespeare_, pp.
187-190.

[38] Lee's _Shakespeare_, p. 26; Halliwell's _Life of Shakespeare_, p.
133; Grant White's _Introductory Life of Shakespeare_, pp.