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
Characters of Shakespear's Plays he does not always agree with them. Most of the plays now accepted as Shakespeare's, or at least partly by Shakespeare, were also accepted as his by Hazlitt. The two notable exceptions were "Titus Andronicus" and "Pericles, Prince of Tyre". Of the former, Hazlitt nevertheless respected Schlegel's defence of it enough to quote the latter at length. And he allows that some parts of "Pericles" could have been by Shakespeare but more likely were "imitations" of Shakespeare "by some contemporary poet." Hazlitt felt compelled to add to his commentary on the plays some words on Shakespeare's nondramatic poetry, in the