Shakespeare's case, {190a} the market, in her own day and in the
eighteenth century, was flooded with "mock-originals," not even
derived (in any case known to me) from genuine and authentic
contemporary works.

One thing is certain about the Stratford bust. Baconians will
believe that Dugdale's man correctly represented the bust as it was
in his time; and that the actual bust is of 1748, in spite of proofs
of Dugdale's man's fantastic inaccuracy; in spite of the evidence of
style; and in spite of documentary evidence that "the original
monument" was not to be destroyed and replaced by the actual
monument, but was merely "repaired and beautified" (painted afresh)
by a local painter.



CHAPTER X: "THE TRADITIONAL SHAKSPERE"



In perusing the copious arguments of the Anti-Shakesperean but Non-
Baconian Mr. Greenwood, I am often tempted, in Socratic phrase, to
address him thus: Best of men, let me implore you, first, to keep in
memory these statements on which you have most eloquently and
abundantly insisted, namely, that society in Stratford was not only
not literary, but was illiterate. Next pardon me for asking you to
remember that the late sixteenth and the early seventeenth century
did not resemble our fortunate age. Some people read Shakespeare's,
Beaumont's, and Fletcher's plays. This exercise is now very rarely
practised. But nobody cared to chronicle literary gossip about the