Note v:1 — Biography

This Biography was written before the appearance of Mr. Acheson's volume, Shakespeare and the Rival Poet. Without endorsing all his arguments or conclusions, I hold that Mr. Acheson has proved that Shakespeare in a number of his Sonnets refers to these earlier poems of Chapman's. He has thus brought almost conclusive evidence in support of Minto's identification of Shakespeare's rival with Chapman—a conjecture with which I, in 1896, expressed strong sympathy in my Shakspere and his Predecessors.