He wrote neither. Heminge and Condell wrote the Dedication, and the Address to the Readers they composed in consultation with myself.
Did you not receive money from some one in order to induce you to print the folio?
I did not. I looked to the sale, and the sale only, to recoup myself and my co-adventurers.
Re-examined.—I myself never touched the manuscripts, nor added a line to them. After they were in my
possession, Heminge and Condell never, to my knowledge, altered the manuscripts, nor did any one else.
I could, if necessary, have written a Dedication and the Address to the Readers. I wrote a work entitled “A Hospital for Incurable Fools.” I hope some day such hospital will be founded.
The Shakespeare-Bacon Controversy; A Report of The Trial of an Issue in Westminster Hall, 20 June 1627. Read in the Inner Temple Hall, Thursday, May the 29th, 1902, by William Willis, Treasurer of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, pp. 15-16.
This extract is taken from an account of an imaginary suit in connection with the administration of Shakespeare’s estate, to determine whether the testator was the author of the plays published under the name of William Shakespeare in the folio volume of 1623.