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 works. He believed that Derby was the principal figure behind the Shakespeare plays and was the sole author of the sonnets and narrative poems. He concludes that "William Stanley was William Shakespeare". As early as 1820 it had been suggested that, because of their "habitual resemblance of style", Shakespeare had in fact written the works of the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, but it was not until 1895 that this theory was reversed, and Marlowe himself proposed as the most likely author of the Shakespeare canon, with a serious case for this being made by Wilbur G. Zeigler in the