FOOTNOTES
Reading edition
He says that I had represented him as stating that the Unknown genius adopted the name of William Shake-speare or Shakespeare “as a good nom de guerre, without any reference to the fact that there was an actor in existence of the name of William Shakspere, whose name was sometimes written Shakespeare, and without the least idea that the works he published under this pseudonym would be fathered upon the actor . . . ” (My meaning has obviously been too obscurely stated by me.)
Mr. Greenwood next writes that the confusion between the actor, and the unknown taking the name William Shakespeare, “did happen and was intended to happen.”
C’est là le miracle!
How could it happen if the actor were the bookless, ignorant man whom Mr. Greenwood describes? It could not happen: Will must have been unmasked in a day. The fact that a strange plot existed was only too obvious. The Unknown’s secret must have been tracked by the hounds of keenest nose in the packs of rival and jealous authors and of actors. None gives tongue.