He shakes his head, dragging his fingers through his hair. The playwright thinks him a madman.
Recalling his research, he gropes in his memory for the names of plays. "If you are the poet William Shakespeare -- he who wrote of his English monarchs, Henry the Fourth and Richard the Second, who wrote the tales of Romeo and Juliet and the history of Julius Caesar, who wrote Love's Labours Lost and ... and the Comedy of Errors -- " he can't remember any more from his glance through Holmes's bookshelf -- "if you are he, then also you are credited with writing the history of the Moor of Venice. Your claims to fiction can hardly bear much weight if you are the same William Shakespeare who wrote the tale of Caesar and his murder."
He shakes his head. "I know who I am, and what I am. I am a man of flesh who lived a man's life. If you are so unfortunate as to share a namesake with the man responsible for telling the world my history, then I have accused you wrongly. Are you, then, not that poet?"