The question was already being asked in his life-time and no conclusive answer has yet been found. Certainly none will be offered in what follows; perhaps none ever will. Yet in a volume dealing in the main with Shakespeare’s Roman Plays, it is well that the question should be posed and that some of the relevant evidence should at least be glanced at. I shall even dare to suggest a fresh line of approach, which, if followed up, might lead somewhere.

I begin, as everyone must, with Ben Jonson's claim that Shakespeare's plays were worthy to rank with those of the greatest Greek and Latin dramatists, though he had " small Latin and less Greek". It comes, of course, from the fine laudatio which Ben wrote for the First Folio edition of his dead friend's plays. For they were friends, we cannot doubt of that; and though his praise seems today in no way exaggerated, he probably felt a generous glow as he wrote it, felt indeed that he owed it to his "beloved, the author, Mr. William Shakespeare" to pitch it rather higher than the truth. Certainly, in the lines about Shakespeare's art, he attributed qualities to him which he denied in private talk and in notes he left behind him.