leylandandgoding

The most abundant and important testimony identifying Shakespeare as the author of the works attributed to him comes from the poet closest to him in stature, Ben Jonson (1572-1637). 

That Jonson and Shakespeare were known to each other is not in dispute, since Shakespeare's company produced several of Jonson's plays, and Shakespeare is known to have acted in Every Man in His Humour (1598).

However, Shakespeare did not act in Jonson’s sequel Every Man out of His Humour which was published in 1599. In this play, via the character Sogliardo, Jonson satirises Shakespeare’s ongoing application, from 1596, for a coat of arms to include the motto Non sanz droict, (Not without right). The foolish Sogliardo envisions his own bizarre colours as a headless boar, rampant on a silver dish. The character Buffone says: ...he has deciphered him well:  a swine without a head, without brain, wit, anything indeed, ramping to gentility. The wits of the play suggest that a motto be added, Not without mustard.

In the same 1599 play, Jonson is utterly contemptuous of the gleeful, grain-hoarding Sordido, Sogliardo’s country brother and alter ego. Sordido delights in exploiting the poor, and in disguising the real size of his grain-store from the investigators. In 1598, investigations of grain stores, necessitated by recurrent grain shortages, revealed only twelve men in Stratford had larger grain-stores than Shakespeare, with 80 bushels, i.e. 2.4 cubic metres, or 86 cubic feet . We know Shakespeare traded in grain. In 1604, he sued his neighbour, the apothecary, Philip Rogers, who, with a large family (unlike Shakespeare’s) had repaid only 6 shillings from a debt of 40 shillings for grain supplied by Shakespeare. Incidentally, Shakespeare sought an extra 10 shillings in damages.

Whether Jonson is satirising Shakespeare in Sordido is not at all certain.  However, the satire on his book-end brother Sogliardo is explicit.