William Shakespeare as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after "Volpone", although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in "As You Like It", and the Chorus in "Henry V", though scholars doubt the sources of
The Trusty Servant hands and about his person, the whole signifying a most valuable character." Strictly speaking, the Trusty Servant is not a hircocervus, which is a combination of a goat and a stag: Coxe is using the term loosely to mean a composite animal in general. The painting of "The Trusty Servant" had a didactic function: it is accompanied by allegorical verses that associate the servant's various animal parts with distinctive virtues that the students of Winchester College were meant to follow. The Latin verses have been translated into English as: <poem> A trusty servant's picture would you see, This figure well