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 Portrait of Mr. W. H. he did believe it. Samuel Butler accepted some aspects of it, regarding the name "Will Hughes" as a "plausible conjecture". Wilde's story may have been an influence on John Masefield, whose book "Shakespeare and Spiritual Life" (1924) suggests that the Fair Youth was an actor who was delicate and small enough to play parts such as the boy-servant Moth in "Love's Labours Lost" and the sprite Ariel in "The Tempest". He believed that he may even have been a kind of symbol to Shakespeare for his own creative genius. In James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" a character called Mr. Best says