You don't really believe that
"Bacon wrote Shakespeare"?'
"Of course I don't, Arthur,--as you very well know. I picked out the first
line of 'Annabel Lee' by arranging the necessary groupings among the odd
mixture of black and red letters he exhibited, and told him I didn't
believe that Bacon wrote Shakespeare--nor that Shakespeare did either. 'Who
did, then?' he naturally asked. I told him that I would grant, at the start
and for a few seasons, a group of young noblemen and young gentlemen; but
that some one of them (supposing there to have been more than that one)
soon distanced all the rest and presently became the edifice before which
the manager from Stratford was only the facade. He--this 'someone'--was a
noble and a man of wide reach both in his natural endowments and in his
acquired culture. But he couldn't dip openly into the London cesspool; he
had his own quality to safeguard against the contamination of a new and
none too highly-regarded trade. 'I don't care for your shillings,' he said
to Shaxper, 'nor for the printed plays afterward; but I do value your front
and your footing and the services they can render me on my way to self-
expression.
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