6: In spite of Gifford's protest we do not hesitate to maintain that Jonson's Epigram LVI. (_On Poet-Ape_) is directed against Shakspere, and that the poet whom Jonson--in the Epistle XII. (_Forest_) to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland--abuses, is also none else than Shakspere.
8: We can only quote the most striking points, and must leave it to the reader who takes a deeper interest in the subject, to give his own closer attention to the dramas concerning the controversy.
9: _Gentlemen of Verona_; _Comedy of Errors_; _Love's Labour Lost_; _Love's Labour Won_ (probably _All's Well that Ends Well_); _Midsummer Night's Dream_; _Merchant of Venice_. Of Tragedies: _Richard the Second_; _Richard the Third_; _Henry the Fourth_; _King John_; _Titus Andronicus_; _Romeo and Juliet_.
10: As the words that follow seem to contain an allusion to Shakspere's _Hamlet_, it is to be supposed that by the 'melting heir' Jonson points to some protector of the great poet. Whether this be William Herbert, or the Earl of Southampton, we must leave undecided.
12: Jonson probably calls Shakspere an hermaphrodite because, having a wife, he cultivated an intimate friendship at the same time with William Herbert, the later Earl of Pembroke. Jonson's _Epicoene, or The Silent Woman_ (1609) satirises this connection. We are not the first in making this assertion. (See _Sonnets of Shakspere Solved_, by Henry Brown: London, 1876, p. 16.)
In Epicoene a College is described, which is stated to be composed of women. Instead of women, we may boldly assume men to be meant. Truewitt thus describes the new Society:--
'A new foundation, Sir, here in the town, of ladies, that call themselves the Collegiates: an order between courtiers and country madams that live from their husbands, and give entertainment to all the wits and braveries of the time, as they call them: cry down, or up, what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine or rather hermaphroditical authority; and every day gain to their College some new probationer.
_Clerimont_. Who is the president? _Truewitt_. The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.'
Shakspere at that time was in the 'matronly' age of forty-five. We have seen how a 'dislike in a brain' has been expressed in _Hamlet_.