of theatres, retaining no title or interest in them. However the poet
of the Shakespearean plays may have anticipated the verdict of
posterity, the plays bear most abundant evidence that they were
written to be acted, to entertain and please, and to bring patrons and
profit to the theatres which were in the London of three hundred years
ago.

Boucicault was the publisher and accredited author of one hundred and
thirty plays. But no one would deem it improbable that in them is the
work of another, or of many other dramatists.

I submit that the argument from probabilities is without force against
the clear and unambiguous statements of the Sonnets quoted in this
chapter.

Footnotes:

[22] _Ovid's Metamorphoses_, xv., 871-9.

[23] Horace, Book III., Ode XXX.

CHAPTER IV

OF THE CHARACTER OF SHAKESPEARE AS RELATED TO THE CHARACTER OF THE
AUTHOR OF THE SONNETS

The Sonnets certainly reveal their author in an attitude of appeal,
more or less open and direct, for the love or favor of his friend. No
fervor of compliment or protestation of affection allows him to forget
or conceal this purpose. When, as is indicated by Sonnets LXXVII. to
XC., he feared that his friend was transferring his favor or patronage
to another poet, his anxiety became acute, and in that group he
compared not only his poetry, but his flattery and commendation with
that of his rival. In Sonnets XXXII. to XXXVII., portraying his grief
at his friend's unkindness, he hastens to forgive; and, as already
stated, in Sonnets XL. to XLIII. and CXXVII. to CLII., chiding his
friend for having accepted the love of his mistress, he crowns him
with poetic garlands of compliment and adulation. Smitten on one
cheek, not only does he turn the other, but he bestows kisses and
caresses on the hand that gave the blow.

All we know of the character of Shakespeare indicates that he was
neither meek and complacent, nor quick and eager in forgiving; but
that his character in those aspects was quite the reverse of the
character of the author of the Sonnets.

Mr. Lee states the effect or result of the various traditions as to
Shakespeare's poaching experiences, and his resentment of the
treatment he had received, as follows[24]:

'And his [Shakespeare's] sporting experiences passed at times
beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, according to a
_credible_[25] tradition, was the immediate cause of his long
severance from his na