The personal fascination of "so worthy a friend and fellow as was our
Shakespeare" bred in all his fellow-workers an affectionate pride in
their intimacy.
Such men were the parents of the greater part of the surviving oral
tradition of Shakespeare, and no better parentage could be wished for.
To the first accessible traditions of proved oral currency after
Shakespeare's death, the two fellow-actors who called the great First
Folio into existence pledged their credit in writing only seven years
after his death. They printed in the preliminary pages of that volume
these three statements of common fame, viz., that to Shakespeare and
his plays in his lifetime was invariably extended the fullest favour
of the court and its leading officers; that death deprived him of the
opportunity he had long contemplated of preparing his literary work
for the press; and that he wrote with so rapidly flowing a pen that
his manuscript was never defaced by alteration or erasure.
Shakespeare's extraordinary rapidity of composition was an especially
frequent topic of contemporary debate. Ben Jonson, the most intimate
personal friend of Shakespeare outside the circle of working actors,
wrote how "the players" would "often mention" to him the poet's
fluency, and how he was in the habit of arguing that Shakespeare's
work would have been the better had he devoted more time to its
correction.
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