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
History of the Shakespeare authorship question (no relation). She discussed her theories with British scholars and writers. In 1856 she wrote an article in "Putnam's Monthly" in which she insisted that Shakespeare of Stratford would not have been capable of writing such plays, and that they must have expressed the ideas of an unspecified great thinker. In September 1856 William Henry Smith wrote a letter which was subsequently published in a pamphlet, "Was Lord Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays?: a letter to Lord Ellesmere" (1856), expressing his view that Francis Bacon himself had written the works. In the preface to a subsequent book, "Bacon and