The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 377 



speare among the English is the most excellent in 

 both kinds for the stage : for comedy, witness his 

 4 Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his c Love s 

 Labour s Lost, his Love s Labour s Wonne, * his 

 c Midsummer Night s Dream, and his Merchant of 

 Venice ; for tragedy, his 4 Richard II., Richard 

 III., Henry IV., King John, 4 Titus Androni- 

 cus, and his Romeo and Juliet. As Epius Stolo 

 said that the Muses would speak with Plautus s 

 tongue if they would speak Latin, so I say that the 

 Muses would speak with Shakespeare s fine filed 

 phrase if they would speak English.&quot; In other 

 passages Meres mentions Shakespeare s lyrical qual 

 ity, for which he likens him to Pindar and Catullus ; 

 and the glory of his style, for which he places him 

 along with Virgil and Homer. It thus appears that, 

 at the age of thirty-four, this poet from Stratford 

 was already ranked by critical scholars by the side 

 of the greatest names of antiquity. Let me add 

 that the popularity of his plays was making him a 

 somewhat wealthy man, so that he had relieved 

 his father from pecuniary troubles, and had just 

 bought for himself the Great House at Stratford 

 where the last years of his life were spent. His 

 income seems already to have been equivalent to 

 110,000 a year in our modern money. His posi- 



1 The comedy afterward developed into All s Well that Ends 

 Well. 



