"
"Shakespeare" is frequently charged with being careless of his works and
indifferent to the piracy of his name; but we see by this Sonnet, No.
78, that the real author was not indifferent to the false use of his
pseudonym, though it was, of course, impossible for him to take any
effectual action if he desired to preserve his incognito, his mask, his
pseudonym.
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Sidney Lee and the Stratford Bust.
One word to the Stratfordians. The "Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon"
myth has been shattered and destroyed by the mass of inexactitudes
collected in the supposititious "Life of Shakespeare" by Mr. Sidney Lee,
who has done his best to pulverise what remained of that myth by
recently writing as follows:--
"Most of those who have pressed the question [of Bacon being the real
Shake-speare] on my notice, are men of acknowledged intelligence and
reputation in their own branch of life, both at home and abroad. I
therefore desire as respectfully, but also as emphatically and as
publicly, as I can, to put on record the fact, as one admitting to my
mind of no rational ground for dispute, that there exists every manner
of contemporary evidence to prove that Shakspere, the householder of
Stratford-on-Avon, wrote with his own hand, and exclusively by the light
of his only genius (merely to paraphrase the contemporary inscription on
his tomb in Stratford-on-Avon Church) those dramatic works which form
the supreme achievement in English Literature.
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