Page:Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians.djvu/20

 which offered Shakespeare fame and fortune. His intellectual capacity, and the amiability with which he turned to account his versatile powers [up to that time, be it noted, all that is related of Shakspere was that he had been a poacher and a butcher's apprentice] were probably soon recognised, and thenceforth his promotion was assured." This is quite affecting—this lively non-conjectural Barnardo-like interest Shakspere's friends in Stratford must have taken in the "homeless lad," who, according to Sir Theodore Martin and Mrs. Stopes, fled from Stratford after his deer-stealing exploits with the manuscript of Venus and Adonis "in his pocket." Can Shaksperean "faith" such as this find its parallel in any item of the Baconian creed? Then a few years afterwards "the homeless lad" produces his first play. Love's Labour's Lost, "so learned, so academic, so scholastic in expression and allusion, that it is unfit for popular representation."

Next we have the following personal history: "It was probably in 1596 that Shakespeare returned to his native town &hellip; thenceforth the poet's relations with Stratford were uninterrupted. &hellip; Until the close of his professional career he paid the town 'at least an annual visit." There is no evidence whatever to show that Shakspere ever visited Stratford from the time he left it (date unknown) to the time he returned to it (date unknown). It is not even known that he was at the