There exists no contemporary letter from anyone to anyone, referring to the Stratford actor as being a poet or as being in any way connected with literature. But from the Court Records we learn that;
In 1600 Shakespeare brought action against John Clayton in London for £7 and got judgment in his favour. He also sued Philip Rogers of Stratford for two shillings loaned.
In 1604 he sued Philip Rogers for several bushels of malt sold to him at various times between March 27th and the end of May of that year, amounting in all to the value of £1. 15s. 10d. The poet a dealer in malt?
In 1608 he prosecuted John Addenbroke to recover a debt of £6 and sued his surety Horneby.
Halliwell-Phillipps tells us that "The precepts as appears from memoranda in the originals, were issued by the poet's solicitor Thomas Greene who was then residing under some unknown conditions[3] at New Place."
Referring to these sordid stories, Richard Grant White, that strong believer in the Stratford man, says in his "Life and genius of William Shakespeare," p. 156 "The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of imprisoning him and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting himself and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's life which it requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice of the time and country to enable us to contemplate with equanimity—satisfaction is impossible."
"The biographer of Shakespeare must record these facts because the literary antiquaries have unearthed and brought them forward as new particulars of the life of Shakespeare. We hunger and receive these husks; we open our mouths for food and we break our teeth against these stones."
Yes! The world has broken its teeth too long upon these stones to continue to mistake them for bread. And as the accomplished scholar and poetess the late Miss Anna Swanwick once declared to the writer, she knew nothing of the Bacon and Shakespeare controversy, but Mr. Sidney Lee's "Life of Shakespeare" had convinced her that his man never wrote the plays. And that is just what everybody else is saying at Eton, at Oxford, at Cambridge, in the Navy, in the Army, and pretty generally among unprejudiced people everywhere, who are satisfied, as is Mark Twain, that the most learned of works could not have been written by the most unlearned of men.
Yes! It does matter that the "Greatest Birth of Time" should no longer be considered to have been the work of the unlettered rustic of Stratford; and the hour has at last come when it should be universally known that this mighty work was written by the man who had taken all knowledge for his province, the man who said "I have, though in a despised weed [that is under a Pseudonym] procured the good of all men"; the man who left his "name and memory to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages."