"The gifted W. Shaxpur honored this office with a call last Thursday. He was smiling all over. It is a boy, and weighs ten pounds. Thanks, Willie, for the cigar; it was a daisy."—The Tidings, July 9th, 1587.
"The fireworks on Squire Shakespere's lawn last Fourth of July night were the finest ever witnessed in the county. They were brought up from London by the Squire's son William, the famous poet."—Ibid.
"If you want to make Bill Shaxpeare hopping mad, just ask him how much venison is a pound. All joking aside, Willie is the leading poet of the age."—The Tidings, July 16th, 1587.
Two years later the following references were made by Wilwhite to the dramatic prodigy:
"We would acknowledge the receipt (from Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, the well-known publishers) of a volume entitled, 'The First Part of King Henry the Sixt,' the same being a dramatic poem by Willie Shaxper, formerly of this town. Critique of the work is deferred."—April 23d, 1589.
"Our London exchanges agree that Willie Shaksper's new play is the greatest thing of the season. We knew that Willie would get there sooner or later. There are no flies on him."—April 23d, 1589.
"The Thespian Amateur association of the Congregational church will give a performance of 'King Henry Sixt' in the town hall next Thursday evening. Reuben Bobbin, our talented tinsmith, enacting the rôle of his majesty. This play, being written by one of our townsmen and the greatest poet of the age; should be patronized by all. Ice-cream will be served inter actes."—November 6th, 1589.
"We print elsewhere to-day an excerpt from the Sadler's Wells Daily Blowpipe, critically examining into the literary work of W. Shakspeyr, late of this village. The conclusion reached by our discriminating and able exchange is that Mr. Shackspeere is without question a mighty genius. We have said so all along, and we have known him ten years. Now that the Metropolitan press indorses us, we wonder what will the doddering dotard of the Avon Palladium have to say for his festering and flyblown self."—December 14th, 1589.
In 1592 the Palladium reprinted an opinion given by Robert Greene: "Here is an upstart crow," said Greene of Shakespeare, "beautified with our feathers, that supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the rest of you, and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only shake-scene in the country." Another contemporaneous critic said of the scene between Brutus and Cassius in "Julius Caesar": "They are put there to play the bully and the buffoon, to show their activity of face and muscles. They are to play a prize, a trial of skill and hugging and swaggering, like two drunken Hectors, for a two-penny reckoning." Shakespeare's contemporaries—or, at least, many of them—sought to belittle his work in this wise. Why, even in later years so acute a critic as John Dennis declared that "his lines are utterly void of celestial fire," and Shaftesbury spoke of his "rude, unpolished style and antiquated phrase and wit."
In the year 1600, having written his chef d'oeuvre, the poet retired to Stratford for a brief period of rest.