shall have been considered, they cannot, I conceive, but add such strength and support to the

various circumstances which have been mentioned, all tending to show that Lilly alone could have been the

comick writer here alluded to, that I trust I shall not incur the charge of critical temerity, or presumption, in supposing that no doubt whatsoever can hereafter be introduced on this subject.

I am perfectly aware how open and exposed these inquiries are to the petty assaults of shallow buffoons and half-witted scoffers; whose gross ignorance of the manners and customs of our ancestors is such, that they cannot even comprehend why the bequests of an ancient will are noticed, or how any useful information can be derived from circumstances apparently trifling and unimportant; and who, therefore, will be always ready, with the aid of that glimmering of knowledge which they possess, and such barren jests as they can glean from worthless commonplace books, to ridicule disquisitions like the present. But they may be assured that they lose their labour, which, of however little value, might yet be better employed; and, at the same time, their feeble artillery is wholly misdirected; for, if any ridicule belongs to these subjects, it should attach itself to those great authors, who, though their works will live for ever, indulged themselves, sometimes, in conceits^{9 note}

cannot be developed without such investigations. Judicious readers will always justly appreciate and highly approve of disquisitions tending to illustrate the history and writings of the most distinguished poets which England has produced, and the manners and usages of their times, even though such disquisitions should occasionally deviate from more important topicks to the explication of verbal artifices, latent paronomasies, or forgotten anagrams; nor will they

ever receive coarse ribaldry and saucy folly, for wit; or vapid petulance and frothy inanity, for good sense, reason, and argument.

Spenser's object, doubtless, was to recommend his friend to the Queen's favour, and to procure him promotion in the church, which he afterwards obtained.

In like manner, the poet next mentioned is not concealed under the cloud of description, or the mysterious perplexity of a fictitious name; but we are plainly told, that [Samuel] Daniel, a new poet^{8 note}

(whose sonnets to his “scornful” mistress, Delia, appeared in 1592,) had surpassed all his predecessors, and was equal to the most arduous poetical attempts.

The Shepherd of the Ocean, by other parts of this poem, is ascertained to have been Sir Walter Ralegh^{9 note}



















,

at this time in disgrace with the Queen, for having seduced Elizabeth Throckmorton^{1 note}, one of her maids of honour; though he had made the best reparation in his power, by marrying that lady. He had some years before written poem entitled Cynthia, expressly in honour of Elizabeth, of which, having in vain sought for it in many ancient manuscript collections, I fear no copy has been preserved; but Spenser, in the present passage, seems rather to have had in contemplation some passionate poetical effusions of Ralegh, who was now endeavouring to regain the Queen's favour; and, affecting a kind of romantic love for her Majesty, pretended that, while she frowned on him, and excluded him from her presence, life was not worth enjoying.

By Amyntas, the next person introduced, at once a poet himself, and a patron of poets, we may pronounce with certainty, was meant one of the most accomplished noblemen of his time, Ferdinand, the fifth Earl of Derby, and the husband of Alice Spenser, afterwards mentioned under the name of Amarillis^{2 note}

1583. The high eulogy on Amyntas, which is found in the conclusion of one of Nashe's tracts^{3 note}

addressed to the same nobleman, who is represented as the second mystical argument of Spenser's

Redcrosse Knight. Lord Derby perhaps acquired the name given him in the verses under our consideration,

either from his having written an original poem, of which Amyntas was the principal personage^{4 note}, or from his having been thus denominated in some verses written expressly in his praise^{5 note}

having translated either Tasso's Pastoral (Aminta), or Thomas Watson's “sugred Amyntas,” as it is called by a writer of that age; an admired Latin poem, published in 1585^{6 note}.

This nobleman had long in his service a company of comedians, who were known by the appellation of the servants of the Lord Strange (the title which he bore till within a few months of his death), and who

appear to have been held in considerable estimation; being for many years employed to act before the Queen, during the festivity of Christmas^{7 note}. In this company the celebrated actor Edward Alleyn, was the principal performer. The very high praise given to Lord Derby, both by Spenser and Nashe, might incline us to regret the loss of the greater part of his poetical compositions, had not one of his poems, consisting of more than a hundred lines, been preserved^{8 note}, which affords abundant proof that the virtues and accomplishments of this “perfect pattern of right nobilitie,” aided by the respect belonging to his high birth, by his union with a lady to whom Spenser was related, and perhaps by personal obligation^{9 note}, induced him to view this nobleman's poetry with a very favourable eye. Had his judgment not been influenced by this friendly partiality, either Richard Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, or Edward, Earl of Oxford^{1 note}, whose

poetry has much more vigour and elegance than that of Lord Derby, would, perhaps, have been here substituted in his room. But the kindness and gratitude of our poet could find no defect in the poetical effusions of Stanley, Ralegh, Sidney, or his sister, Mary, Countess of Pembroke. In all other respects, however, Lord Derby strictly merited the high eulogy with which he has been honoured. Some of his letters have come down to us, which are written with perspicuity and spirit; and perhaps some more both of his poetry and prose may yet be extant in manuscript, or miscellaneous printed collections, erroneously attributed to others. But his career of literary ^note

and honourable exertions lasted not long; for a short while before these verses were written, this amiable and much respected nobleman died at the age of thirty-seven, in extreme agony, having been poisoned, as there are the strongest grounds for believing, by one of his own servants^{3 note}.

But where, it may be asked, among all these distinguished votaries of the Muses, is Shakspeare found?—He closes the poetical band, obscurely, yet unquestionably shadowed in these lines:

None of the poetical denominations in this list, we have already seen, were adopted capriciously, or are without meaning. In forming the name by which our great poet is here designated, as in some others introduced in his Faery Queen^{5 note}

while he distinguished him by that characteristick epithet which several of his contemporaries have applied to him,—“A gentler shepherd may no where be found,” and alluded to the brandished spear from which his name, so congenial with heroick song, was originally derived^{9 note}

with perfect propriety, be referred to under the denomination of heroick verse. In Richard the Second, the challenge of Bolingbroke and the Duke of Norfolk in the first act, and the contention in the fourth act between the various noble disputants assembled in the lists at Coventry, being conducted with all the forms and pomp of chivalry, furnished, doubtless, a very splendid spectacle; and indeed the whole drama, as well as that of Richard the Third, doth, like its author, “heroically sound.”

Let it not, however, be supposed, that Shakspeare was lightly estimated by Spenser, because his name is last introduced in this list of poetical worthies; for, not to insist on the law of heraldry, by which, in all processions, the last place is considered the most honourable, and always assigned to the person of the greatest dignity, we may observe that Nashe, in an eulogy on his friend George Peele, whom he preferred to all the dramatic writers of the period when it was written (1589), introduces his admired and favourite poet precisely in the same manner, though certainly he intended to represent him as far surpassing all his contemporaries: “And for the last, though not the least of them all^{1 note}

him [Peele] unto all that know him, as the chief supporter of pleasaunce, now living, the Atlas of

poetry, and primus verborum artifex; whose first increase [production], The Arraignment of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit, and manifold variety of invention, wherein, me judice, he goeth a step beyond all that write^{2 note}.” Such having been the usage and phraseology of the time, no inference can be drawn to the disadvantage of Shakspeare, from the last place being allotted to him in this poetical catalogue; which Spenser may have been induced to assign him from his having been the last of the whole band, whose muse had solicited the publick favour. Churchyard and Golding preceded him many years. Gorges, Peele, Lodge, Alabaster, Ralegh, and Lord Derby, had written between 1580 and 1590, and Daniel in 1592. Shakspeare's two poems did not appear till afterwards, the one in 1593, the other in 1594; and the historical tragedies already mentioned, it is highly probable, were then also first produced. In like manner, our poet's Cordelia, though, as the youngest daughter, last interrogated concerning her filial affection,

was unquestionably her fond father's “joy,” and more beloved by him than either of her sisters, who, solely on account of their seniority, had been previously addressed.

For this long, but, I trust not wholly uninteresting, disquisition, no apology is necessary. Every poetical reader, I am confident, will be gratified by an endeavour to “pluck out the heart of this mystery,” to penetrate the thick “veil of words,” under which, for more than two centuries, the characters and productions of so many ingenious men have been concealed; and will feel no less satisfaction than I have done, on discovering, that, though Shakspeare was not the comick writer eulogized by the author of The Tears of the Muses, at a time when his name was scarcely known in the world, he yet, afterwards, was duly appreciated by his illustrious and amiable contemporary; who, in talents and virtues, more nearly resembled Shakspeare than did any writer of that age; and who, we find, at a very early period of our great poet's dramatick life, had a high and just sense of his transcendent merits.

SECTION XV. AN ATTEMPT TO ASCERTAIN THE ORDER IN WHICH THE PLAYS OF SHAKSPEARE WERE WRITTEN^{4 note}.
&lblank; Primusque per avia campi
Usque procul (necdum totas lux moverat umbras),
Nescio quid visu dubium, incertumque moveri,
Corporaque ire videt. Statius.
Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda. Dante.

Every circumstance that relates to those persons whose writings we admire, awakens and interests our curiosity. The time and place of their birth, their education and gradual attainments, the dates of their productions and the reception they severally met with, their habits of life, their private friendships, and even their external form, are all points, which, how little

soever they may have been adverted to by their contemporaries, strongly engage the attention of posterity. Not satisfied with receiving the aggregated wisdom of ages as a free gift, we visit the mansions where our instructors are said to have resided, we contemplate with pleasure the trees under whose shade they once reposed, and wish to see and to converse with those sages, whose labours have added strength to virtue, and efficacy to truth.

Shakspeare, above all writers, since the days of Homer, has excited this curiosity in the highest degree; as perhaps no poet of any nation was ever more idolized by his countrymen. An ardent desire to understand and explain his works, is, to the honour of the present age, so much increased within the last forty years, that more has been done towards their elucidation, during that period^{7 note}, than in a century before. All the ancient copies of his plays, hitherto discovered, have been collated with the most scrupulous accuracy. The meanest books have been carefully examined, only because they were of the age in which he lived, and might happily throw a light on some forgotten custom, or obsolete phraseology: and, this object being still kept in view, the toil of wading through all such reading as was never read has been cheerfully endured, because no labour was thought too great, that might enable us to add one new laurel to the father of our drama. Almost every circumstance that tradition or history has preserved relative

to him or his works, has been investigated, and laid before the publick; and the avidity with which all communications of this kind have been received, sufficiently proves that the time expended in the pursuit has not been wholly misemployed.

However, after the most diligent inquiries, very few particulars have been recovered, respecting his private life or literary history: and while it has been the endeavour of all his editors and commentators to illustrate his obscurities, and to regulate and correct his text, no attempt has been made to trace the progress and order of his plays. Yet surely it is no incurious speculation to mark the gradations^{6 note}

he rose from mediocrity to the summit of excellence; from artless and sometimes uninteresting dialogues, to those unparalleled compositions, which have rendered him the delight and wonder of successive ages.

The materials for ascertaining the order in which his plays were written, are indeed so few, that, it is to be feared, nothing very decisive can be produced

on this subject. In the following attempt to trace the progress of his dramatick art, probability alone is pretended to. The silence and inaccuracy of those persons, who, after his death, had the revisal of his papers, will perhaps for ever prevent our attaining to any thing like proof on this head. Little then remains, but to collect into one view, from his several dramas, and from the ancient tracts in which they are mentioned, or alluded to, all the circumstances that can throw any light on this new and curious inquiry. From those circumstances, and from the entries in the books of the Stationers' Company, extracted and published by Mr. Steevens (to whom every admirer of Shakspeare has the highest obligations), it is probable that our author's plays were written nearly in the following succession; which, though it cannot at this day be ascertained to be their true order, may yet be considered as approaching nearer to it, than any which has been observed in the various editions of his works.

Of the twenty-one plays which were not printed in our author's life-time^{7 note}, the majority were, I believe,

late compositions^{8 note}. The following arrangement is in some measure formed on this notion. Two reasons may be assigned, why Shakspeare's late performances were not published till after his death. 1. If we suppose him to have written for the stage during a period of twenty years, those pieces which were produced in the latter part of that period were less likely to pass through the press in his life-time, as the curiosity of the publick had not been so long engaged by them, as by his early compositions. 2. From the time that Shakspeare had the superintendance of a playhouse, that is, from the year 1603^{9 note},

when he and several others obtained a licence from King James to exhibit comedies, tragedies, histories, &c. at the Globe Theatre, and elsewhere, it became strongly his interest to preserve those pieces unpublished, which were composed between that year and the time of his retiring to the country; manuscript plays being then the great support of every theatre. Nor were the plays which he wrote after he became a manager, so likely to get abroad, being confined to his own theatre, as his former productions, which perhaps had been acted on different stages, and of consequence afforded the players at the several houses where they were exhibited, an easy opportunity of making out copies from the separate parts transcribed for their use, and of selling such copies to printers; by which means there is reason to believe that some of them were submitted to the press, without the consent of the author.

The following is the order in which I suppose the plays of Shakspeare to have been written, including, for the sake of the discussion connected with it, the first part of Henry the VI. which I believe to be the composition of another writer.

1. First Part of King Henry VI. 1589 2. Second Part of King Henry VI. 1591 3. Third Part of King Henvy VI. 1591 4. Two Gentlemen of Verona. 1591 5. Comedy of Errors. 1592 6. King Richard the Second. 1593 7. King Richard the Third. 1593 8. Love's Labour's Lost. 1594 9. Merchant of Venice. 1594 10. Midsummer-Night's Dream. 1594 11. Taming of the Shrew. 1596 12. Romeo and Juliet. 1596 13. First Part of King Henry IV. 1597 14. Second Part of King Henry IV. 1599 15. As You Like It. 1599 16. King Henry V. 1599 17. Much Ado About Nothing. 1600 18. Hamlet. 1600 19. Merry Wives of Windsor. 1601 20. Troilus and Cressida. 1602 21. Measure for Measure. 1603 22. Henry VIII. 1603 23. Othello. 1604 24. Lear. 1605 25. All's Well That Ends Well. 1606 26. Macbeth. 1606 27. Julius Cæsar 1607 28. Twelfth Night. 1607 29. Antony and Cleopatra. 1608 30. Cymbeline. 1609 31. Coriolanus. 1610 32. Timon of Athens. 1610

33. Winter's Tale. 1611 34. Tempest. 1611

In what year our author began to write for the stage, or which was his first performance, has not been hitherto ascertained. And indeed we have so few lights to direct our enquiries, that any speculation on this subject may appear an idle expence of time. But the method which has been already marked out, requires that such facts should be mentioned, as may serve in any manner to elucidate these points.

Shakspeare was born on the 23d of April, 1564, and was probably married in, or before, September, 1582, his eldest daughter, Susanna, having been baptized on the 26th of May, 1583. At what time he left Warwickshire, or was first employed in the playhouse, tradition does not inform us. However, as his son Hamnet and his daughter Judith were baptized at Stratford, Feb. 2, 1584–5, we may presume that he had not left the country at that time.

He could not have wanted an easy introduction to the theatre; for Thomas Geene^{1 note}

was his townsman, perhaps his relation, and Michael Drayton was likewise born in Warwickshire; the latter was nearly of his own age, and both were in some degree of reputation soon after the year

1590. If I were to indulge a conjecture, I should name the year 1591, as the era when our author commenced a writer for the stage; at which time he was somewhat more than twenty-seven years old. The reasons that induce me to fix on that period are these. In Webbe's Discourse of English Poetry, published in 1586, we meet with the names of most of the celebrated poets of that time; particularly those of George Whetstone^{2 note} and Anthony Munday^{3 note}

were dramatick writers; but we find no trace of our author, or of any of his works. Three years afterwards, Puttenham printed his Art of English Poesy; and in that work also we look in vain for the name of Shakspeare^{4 note}

Sir Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesie, speaks at some length of the low state of dramatick literature

at the time he composed this treatise; but has not the slightest allusion to Shakspeare, whose plays, had they then appeared, would doubtless have rescued the English stage from the contempt which is thrown upon it by this accomplished writer, and to which it was justly exposed by the wretched compositions of those who preceded our poet. The Defence of Poesie was not published till 1595; but must have been written some years before, as it is referred to by Sir John Harrington, in 1591, in the essay already mentioned. Sir Philip allows no merit to any of our plays, excepting Gorboduck alone: “Our Tragedies and Comedies, not without cause cried out against, obseruing rules neither of honest ciuilitie, nor skilfull Poetrie. Excepting Gorboduck (againe I say of those that I haue seene) which notwithstanding, as it is full of stately speeches, and well sounding phrases, climing to the height of Seneca his stile, and as full of notable moralitie, which it doth most delightfully teach, and so obtaine the verie end of Poesie: Yet in truth, it is verie defectious in the circumstances, which grieues me, because it might not remaine as an exact modell of all Tragedies. For it is faultie both in place and time, the two necessarie companions of all corporall actions. For where the Stage should alway represent but one place; and the vttermost time pre-supposed in it, should be both by Aristotles precept, and common reason, but one day; there is both many dayes and many places, inartificially imagined. But if it be so in Gorboducke, how much more in all the rest?” After ridiculing the extravagance

of the English dramatists, in their total neglect of the unities of time and place, the necessity of which Sidney, as a scholar, strenuously maintains, he proceeds to declaim against their mongrell Tragicomedie, and the low buffoonery in which they indulged: “But I speake to this purpose, that all the end of the comicall part, be not vpon such scornful matters as stir laughter only, but mixe with it that delightfull teaching, which is the end of Poesie. And the great fault euen in that point of laughter, and forbidden plainly by Aristotle, is, that they stir laughter in sinfull things, vvhich are rather execrable then ridiculous: or in miseralbe, which are rather to be pittied then scorned. For what is it to make folkes gape at a wretched begger, and a beggerly Clowne: or against law of hospitalitie, to iest at strangers, because they speak not English so well as we do? What do we learn, since, it is certain, ‘Nil habet infœlix paupertas durius in se, Quam quod ridiculos homines facit.’ But rather a busie louing Courtier, and a heartlesse threatning Thraso; a selfe-wise seeming schoolemaster; a wrie transformed Trauailer: these if we saw walke in stage names, which we play naturally, therein were delightfull laughter, and teaching delightfulnesse, as in the other the Tragedies of Buchanan do iustly bring forth a diuine admiration. But I haue lauished out too many words of this play-matter; I do it, because as they are excelling parts of Poesie, so is there none so much vsed in England, and none can be more pittifully abused; which like an vnmannerly

daughter, shewing a bad education, causeth her mother Poesies honesty to be called in question.” It is impossible to believe that our great poet could be included in this censure.

But whatever grounds we may have for thinking that none of his plays had appeared before 1591, it is certain that Shakspeare had commenced a writer for the stage, and had even excited the jealousy of his contemporaries, before September, 1592. This is now decisively proved by a passage extracted by Mr. Tyrwhitt from Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Witte bought with a Million of Repentance, in which there is an evident allusion to our author's name, as well as to a line in The Second Part of King Henry VI.

This tract was published at the dying request of Robert Greene, a very voluminous writer of that time. The conclusion of it, as Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed, is “an address to his brother poets to dissuade them from writing for the stage, on account of the ill treatment which they were used to receive from the players.” It begins thus: “To those gentlemen his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making playes, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdome to prevent his extremities.” His first address is undoubtedly to Christopher Marlowe, the most popular and admired dramatick poet of that age, previous to the appearance of Shakspeare, “Wonder not,” (says Greene,) “for with thee will I first begin, thou famous gracer of tragedians, that Greene (who hath said with thee, like the foole in

his heart, there is no God), should now give glory unto his greatness; for penetrating is his power, his hand is heavy upon me; &c. Why should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so blinded, that thou should give no glory to the giver?—The brother [f. breather] of this diabolical atheism is dead, and in his life had never the felicitie he aimed at: but as he beganne in craft, lived in feare, and ended in despair. And wilt thou, my friend, be his disciple? —Looke unto me, by him persuaded to that libertie, and thou shalt find it an infernal bondage.”

Greene's next address appears to be made to Thomas Lodge. “With thee I joyne young Juvenall, that byting satirist, that lastly with mee together writ a comedie. Sweet boy, might I advise thee, be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words: inveigh against vaine men, for thou canst do it, no man better, no man so well: thou hast libertie to reprove all, and name none.—Stop shallow water still running, it will rage; tread on a worme, and it will turn; then blame not schollers, who are vexed with sharp and bitter lines, if they reproove too much libertie of reproof.”

George Peele, as Mr. Tyrwhitt has remarked, is next addressed. “And thou no lesse deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferior, driven, as my selfe, to extreame shifts, a little have I to say to thee: and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would sweare by sweet S. George, thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so meane a stay. Base-minded men all three of you, if by my

misery you be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I meane, that speake from our mouths; those anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have bin beholding, is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his tygres heart wrapt in a players hide, supposes hee is as well able to bombaste out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes fac-totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene, in a countrey. O that I might intreat your rare wittes to be employed in more profitable courses; and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your admired inventions.”

This tract appears to have been written by Greene not long before his death; for near the conclusion he says, “Albeit weakness will scarce suffer me to write, yet to my fellow-scollers about this city will I direct these few insuing lines.” He died, according to Dr. Gabriel Harvey's account, on the third of September, 1592^{5 note}.

I have already quoted a very scarce pamphlet entitled Kind Hart's Dreame, written by Henry Chettle, from the preface to which it appears that he was the editor of Green's Groatsworth of Wit, and that it was published between September and December, 1592^{6 note}.

Our poet, we find, was not without reason displeased at the preceding allusion to him. As what Chettle says of him, corresponds with the character which all his contemporaries have given him, and the piece is extremely rare, I shall extract from the address to the Gentlemen Readers, what relates to the subject before us:

“About three months since died M. Robert Greene, leaving many papers in sundry booksellers' hands, among others, his Groatsworth of Wit, in which a letter written to divers play-makers is offensively by one or two of them taken; and because on the dead they cannot be revenged, they wilfully forge in their conceites a living author: and after tossing it to and fro, no remedy but it must light on me. How I have, all the time of my conversing in printing, hindered the bitter inveighing against schollers, it hath been very well known; and how in that I dealt, I can sufficiently prove. With neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them [Marlowe] I care not if I never be. The other [Shakspear], whom at that time I did not so much spare, as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the hate of living writers, and might have used my own discretion, (especially in such a case, the author being dead,) that I did not, I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault; because my selfe have seen his demeanour no less civil than he

excellent in the qualitie he professes: Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honestie, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art. For the first, whose learning I reverence, and at the perusing of Greene's booke, strooke out what then in conscience I thought he in some displeasure writ; or had it been true, yet to publish it was intollerable; him I would wish to use me no worse than I deserve. I had onely in the copy this share: it was il written, as sometime Greene's hand was none of the best; licensed it must bee, ere it could be printed, which could never bee if it cuold not be read. To be brief, I writ it over, and as near as I could followed the copy; onely in that letter I put something out, but in the whole book not a word in: for I protest it was all Greenes, not mine, nor Master Nashes, as some unjustly have affirmed. Neither was he the writer of an Epistle to The Second Part of Gerileon; though by the workman's error T. N. were set to the end: that I confess to be mine, and repent it not.

“Thus, Gentlemen, having noted the private causes that made me nominate myself in print, being as well to purge Master Nashe of what he did not, as to justifie what I did, and withall to confirm what M. Greene did, I beseech you to accept the publick cause, which is both the desire of your delight and common benefit; for though the toye bee shadowed under the title of Kind Harts Dreame, it discovers the false hearts of divers that wake to commit mischief,” &c.

That I am right in supposing the two who took

offence at Greene's pamphlet were Marlowe and Shakspeare, whose names I have inserted in a preceding paragraph in crotchets, appears from the passage itself already quoted; for there was nothing in Greene's exhortation to Lodge and Peele, the other two persons addressed, by which either of them could possibly be offended. Dr. Farmer is of opinion that the second person addressed by Greene is not Lodge, but Nashe, who is often called Juvenal by the writers of that time; but that he was not meant, is decisively proved by the extract from Chettle's pamphlet; for he never would have laboured to vindicate Nashe from being the writer of the Groatsworth of Wit, if any part of it had been professedly addressed to him^{7 note}. Besides, Lodge had written a play in conjunction with Greene, called A Looking-Glass for London and England, and was author of some satirical pieces; but we do not know that Nashe and Greene had ever written in conjunction.

Henry Chettle was himself a dramatick writer, and appears to have become acquainted with Shakspeare, or at least seen him, between Sept. 1592, and the following December. Shakspeare was at this time twenty-eight years old; and then we find from the testimony of this writer his demeanour was no less civil than he excellent in the qualitie he professed. From the subsequent paragraph—“Divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing,

which argues his honestie, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art,—” it may be reasonably presumed, that he had exhibited more than one comedy on the stage before the end of the year 1592; perhaps Love's Labour's Lost in a less perfect state than it now appears in, and A Midsummer-Night's Dream.

In what time soever he became acquainted with the theatre, we may presume that he had not composed his first piece long before it was acted; for being early incumbered with a young family, and not in very affluent circumstances, it is improbable that he should have suffered it to lie in his closet, without endeavouring to derive some profit from it; and in the miserable state of the drama in those days the meanest of his genuine plays must have been a valuable acquisition, and would hardly have been refused by any of our ancient theatres.

In a Dissertation on the Three Parts of King Henry VI. which I have subjoined to those plays, I have mentioned that I do not believe The First Part of King Henry VI. to have been the composition of Shakspeare; or that at most he wrote but one or two scenes in it. It is unnecessary here to repeat the circumstances on which that opinion is founded. Not being Shakspeare's play (as I conceive), at whatever time it might have been first exhibited, it does not interfere with the supposition already stated, that he had not produced any dramatick piece before 1590.

The First Part of King Henry VI. which, I imagine, was formerly known by the name of The Historical Play of King Henry VI. had, I suspect, been

a very popular piece for some years before 1592, and perhaps was first exhibited in 1588 or in 1589. Nashe, in a tract entitled Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devill, which was first published in 1592^{8 note}, expressly mentions one of the characters in it, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who dies in the fourth act of the piece, and who is not, I believe, introduced in any other play of that time. “How” (says he) “would it have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the French^{9 note}

In the Dissertation above referred to, I have endeavoured to prove that this play was written neither by Shakspeare, nor by the author or authors of the other two plays formed on a subsequent period of the reign of Henry the Sixth. By whom it was written, it is now, I fear, impossible to ascertain. It was not entered on the Stationers' books, nor printed, till the year 1623, when it was registered with Shakspeare's

undisputed plays by the editors of the first, folio, and improperly entitled The Third Part of King Henry VI. In one sense it might be called so, for two plays on the subject of that reign had been printed before. But considering the history of that king, and the period of time which the piece comprehends, it ought to have been called, what in fact it is, The First Part of King Henry VI.

At this distance of time it is impossible to ascertain on what principle it was that our author's friends, Heminge and Condell, admitted The First Part of King Henry VI. into their volume: but I suspect they gave it a place as a necessary introduction to the two other parts, and because Shakspeare had made some slight alterations, and written a few lines in it.

Titus Andronicus, as well as The First Part of King Henry VI. may be referred to the year 1589, or to an earlier period; but not being in the present edition admitted into the regular series of our author's dramas, I have not given it a place in the preceding table of his plays. In a note prefixed to that play, which may be found in vol. xxi. p. 258, et seq. I have declared my opinion that Andronicus was not written by Shakspeare, or that at most a very few lines in it were written by him; and have stated the reasons on which that opinion is founded. From Ben Jonson's Induction to Bartholomew Fair, 1614, we learn that this piece had been exhibited on the stage twenty-five or thirty years before, that is, at the lowest computation, in 1589; or, taking a middle period (which is perhaps more just), in 1587. “A booke entitled a Noble Roman History of Titus Andronicus,”

(without any author's name) was entered at Stationer's Hall by John Danter, Feb. 6, 1593–4. This was undoubtedly the play, as it was printed in that year according to Langbaine, who alone appears to have seen the first edition, and acted by the servants of the Earls of Pembroke, Derby, and Sussex. Of this play there was a second edition in quarto in 1600, and a third in 1611, in the title-page of which neither the name of Shakspeare (though he was in the zenith of his reputation), nor of any author, is found, and therefore we may presume that the title-page of the first edition also (like the entry on the Stationers' books) was anonymous. Marlowe's King Edward II. and some other old plays were performed by the servants of the Earl of Pembroke, by whom not one of Shakspeare's undisputed dramas was exhibited.

In a Dissertion annexed to these plays, I have endeavoured to prove that they were not written originally by Shakspeare, but formed by him on two preceding dramas, one of which is entitled The First Part of the Contention of the Two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, &c. and the other The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, &c. My principal object in that Dissertation was, to show from various circumstances that those two old plays which were printed in 1600, were written by some writer or writers who preceded Shakspeare, and moulded by him, with many alterations and additions, into the shape in which they at present appear in his works

under the titles of The Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.; and if I have proved that point, I have obtained my end. I ventured, however, to go somewhat further, and to hazard a conjecture concerning the persons by whom they were composed: but this was not at all material to my principal argument, which, whether my conjectures on that head were well or ill founded, will remain the same.

The passage which has been already quoted from Greene's pamphlet, led me to suspect that the old plays were the production of either him or Peele, or both of them. I too hastily supposed that the words which have been printed in a former page,—“Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers,” &c. as they immediately followed a paragraph addressed to George Peele, were addressed to him particularly; and consequently that the word our meant Peele and Greene, the writer of the pamphlet: but these words manifestly relate equally to the three persons previously addressed, and allude to the theatrical compositions of Marlowe, Lodge, Peele, and Greene; whether we consider the writer to lament in general that players avail themselves of the labours of authors, and derive more profit from them than the authors themselves, or suppose him to allude to some particular dramatick performances, which had been originally composed by himself or one of his friends, and thrown into a new form by some other dramatist, who was also a player. The two old plays therefore on which the Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. were formed, may have been written by any one or more of the authors

above enumerated. Towards the end of the Essay I have produced a passage from the old King John, 1591, from which it appeared to me probable that the two elder dramas, which comprehend the greater part of the reign of King Henry VI. were written by the author of King John, whoever he was; and some circumstances which have lately struck me, confirm an opinion which I formerly hazarded, that Christopher Marlowe was the author of that play. A passage in his historical drama of King Edward II. which Dr. Farmer has pointed out to me since the Dissertation was printed, also inclines me to believe, with him, that Marlowe was the author of one, if not both, of the old dramas on which Shakspeare formed the two plays which in the first folio edition of his works are distinguished by the titles of The Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI.

Two lines in The Third Part of King Henry VI. have been produced as a decisive and incontrovertible proof that these pieces were originally and entirely written by Shakspeare. “Who” (says Mr. Capell,) “sees not the future monster, and acknowledges at the same time the pen that drew it, in these two lines only spoken over a king who lies stabb'd before him, [i. e. before Richard Duke of Gloster,]—
“What, will the aspiring blood of Lancaster
“Sink in the ground? I thought it would have mounted.” let him never pretend to discernment hereafter, in any case of this nature.”

The two lines above quoted are found in The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, &c. on which, according to my hypothesis, Shakspeare's Third

Part of King Henry VI. was formed. If therefore, these lines decisively mark the hand of Shakspeare, the old as well as the new play must have been written by him, and the fabrick which I have built with some labour falls at once to the ground. But let not the reader be alarmed; for if it suffers from no other battery but this, it may last till the “crack of doom.” Marlowe, as Dr. Farmer observes to me, has the very same phraseology in King Edward II.:
“&lblank; scorning that the lowly earth
“Should drink his blood, mounts up to the air.” and in the same play I have lately noticed another line in which we find the very epithet here applied to the pious Lancastrian king:

So much for Mr. Capell's irrefragable proof. It is not the proper business of the present Essay to enter further into this subject. I merely seize this opportunity of saying, that the preceding passages now incline me to think Marlowe the author of The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, &c. and perhaps of the other old drama also, entitled The First Part of the Contention of the Two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster.

Of these plays, the first, as I have mentioned in my Dissertation on the Three Parts, was printed in 1593, and the second in 1594. They were both printed together, anonymously, by Thomas Millington, in quarto, in the year 1600.

A very ingenious friend has suggested to me, that it is not probable that Shakspeare would have ventured

to use the ground-work of another dramatist, and form a new play upon it, in the life-time of the author or authors. I know not how much weight this argument is entitled to. We are certain that Shakspeare did transcribe a whole scene almost verbatim from The old Taming of a Shrew, and incorporate it into his own play on the same subject; and we do not know that the author of the original play was then dead. Supposing, however, this argument to have some weight, it does not tend in the slightest degree to overturn my hypothesis that The Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. were formed on the two preceding dramas, of which I have already given the titles; but merely to show, that I am either mistaken in supposing that they were new-modelled and re-written in 1591, or in my conjecture concerning the authors of the elder pieces on which those of Shakspeare were formed. Greene died in September, 1592, and Marlowe about May, 1593. By assigning our poet's part in these performances to the end of the year 1593 or the beginning of 1594, this objection is done away, whether we suppose Greene to have been the author of one of the elder plays, and Marlowe of the other, or that celebrated writer the author of them both.

Dr. Farmer is of opinion, that Ben Jonson particularly alludes in the following verses to our poet's having followed the steps of Marlowe in the plays now under our consideration, and greatly surpassed his original:

“And tell how much thou did'st our Lily outshine,
“Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe's mighty line.”

From the epithet sporting, which is applied to Kyd, and which is certainly in some measure a quibble on his name, it is manifest that he must have produced some comick piece upon the scene, as well as the two tragedies of his composition which are now extant, Cornelia, and The Spanish Tragedy. This latter is printed, like many plays of that time, anonymously. Dr. Farmer, with great probability suggests to me, that Kyd might have been the author of The old Taming of a Shrew printed in 1594, on which Shakspeare formed a play with nearly the same title^{1 note}. The praise which Ben Jonson gives to Shakspeare, that he “outshines Marlowe and Kyd,” on this hypothesis, will appear to stand on one and the same foundation; namely on his eclipsing those ancient dramatists by new-modelling their plays, and producing pieces much superior to theirs, on stories which they had already formed into dramas, that, till Shakspeare appeared, satisfied the publick, and were classed among the happiest efforts of dramatick art^{2 note}

This comedy was not entered on the books of the Stationers' Company till 1623, at which time it was

first printed; but is mentioned by Meres in 1598, and bears strong internal marks of an early composition. The comick parts of it are of the same colour with the comick parts of Love's Labour's Lost, the Comedy of Errors, and A Midsummer-Night's Dream; and the serious scenes are eminently distinguished by that elegant and pastoral simplicity which might be expected from the early effusions of such a mind as Shakspeare's, when employed in describing the effects of love. In this piece also, as in The Comedy of Errors and Love's Labour's Lost, some alternate verses are found.

Sir William Blackstone concurs with me in opinion on this subject; observing, that “one of the great faults of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is the hastening too abruptly and without preparation to the denouëment, which shows that it was one of Shakspeare's very early performances.”

The following lines in Act I. Sc. III. had formerly induced me to ascribe this play to the year 1595:

Shakspeare, as has been often observed, gives to almost every country the manners of his own: and though the speaker is here a Veronese, the poet, when he wrote the last two lines, was thinking of England; where voyages for the purpose of discovering islands far away were at this time much prosecuted.

In 1595, Sir Walter Raleigh undertook a voyage to the island of Trinidado, from which he made an expedition up the river Oronoque, to discover Guiana. Sir Humphry Gilbert had gone on a similar voyage of discovery the preceding year.

The particular situation of England in 1595 I had supposed might have suggested the line above quoted: “Some to the wars,” &c. In that year it was generally believed that the Spaniards meditated a second invasion of England with a much more powerful and better appointed Armada than that which had been defeated in 1588. Soldiers were levied with great diligence, and placed on the seacoasts, and two great fleets were equipped; one to encounter the enemy in the British seas; the other to sail to the West-Indies, under the command of Hawkins and Drake, to attack the Spaniards in their own territories. About the same time also Elizabeth sent a considerable body of troops to the assistance of King Henry IV. of France, who had entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with the English Queen, and had newly declared war against Spain. Our author, therefore, we see, had abundant reason for both the lines before us:

Among the marks of love, Speed in this play (Act II. Sc. I.) enumerates the walking alone, “like one that had the pestilence.” In the year 1593 there had been a great plague, which carried off near eleven thousand persons in London. Shakspeare was

undoubtedly there at that time, and his own recollection might, I thought, have furnished him with this image. But since my former edition, I have been convinced that these circumstances by no means establish the date I had assigned to this play. When Lord Essex went in 1591 with 4000 men to assist Henry IV. of France, we learn from Sir Robert Carey's Memoirs, p. 59, that he was attended by many volunteers; and several voyages of discovery were undertaken about that very time by Raleigh, Cavendish, and others. There was a considerable plague in London in 1583.

Valentinus, putting himself at the head of a band of outlaws in this piece, has been supposed to be copied from Sydney's Arcadia, where Pylades heads the Helots. The first edition of the Arcadia was in 1590.

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona there are two allusions to the story of Hero and Leander, which I suspect Shakspeare had read recently before he composed this play. Marlowe's poem on that subject was entered at Stationers' Hall, Sept. 18, 1593, and I believe was published in that or the following year, though I have met with no copy earlier than that printed in quarto in 1598. Though that should have been the first edition, Shakspeare might yet have read this poem before the author's death in 1593: for Marlowe's fame was deservedly so high, that a piece left by him for publication was probably handed about in manuscript among his theatrical acquaintances antecedently to its being issued from the press.

In the following lines of this play,
“Why, Phaeton, (for thou art Merops' son,)
“Wilt thou aspire to guide the heavenly car,
“And with thy daring folly burn the world?” the poet, as Mr. Steevens has observed, might have been furnished with his mythology by the old play of King John, in two parts, 4to. 1591:

Mr. Boaden justly observes to me that this comedy in various places contains the germ of other plays which Shakspeare afterwards wrote; and this circumstance adds considerable support to the notion that this was one of his earliest productions.

The only note of time that occurs in this play is found in the following passage:

In what part of her body stands—France?

In her forehead, arm'd and reverted, making war against the hair.”

I have no doubt that an equivoque was here intended, and that, beside the obvious sense, an allusion was intended to King Henry IV. the heir of France^{7 note}, concerning whose succession to the throne there was a civil war in that country, from August

1589, when his father was assassinated, for several years. Henry, after struggling long against the power and force of the League, extricated himself from all his difficulties by embracing the Roman Catholick religion at St. Denis, on Sunday the 25th of July, 1593, and was crowned King of France in Feb. 1594; I therefore imagine this play was written before that period. In 1591 Lord Essex was sent with 4000 troops to the French King's assistance, and his brother Walter was killed before Rouen in Normandy. From that time till Henry was peaceably settled on the throne, many bodies of troops were sent by Queen Elizabeth to his aid: so that his situation must then have been a matter of notoriety, and a subject of conversation in England.

This play was neither entered on the Stationers' books, nor printed till 1623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598, and exhibits internal proofs of having been one of Shakspeare's earliest productions. I formerly supposed that it could not have been written till 1596; because the translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, from which the plot appears to have been taken, was not published till 1595. But on a more attentive examination of that translation, I find that Shakspeare might have seen it before publication; for from the printer's advertisement to the reader, it appears that, for some time before, it had been handed about in MS. among the translator's friends. The piece was entered at Stationers' Hall, June 10, 1594; and as the author had translated all the comedies of Plautus, it may be presumed that the whole work had been the employment of some years:

and this might have been one of the earliest translated. Shakspeare must also have read some other account of the same story not yet discovered; for how otherwise could he have got the names of Erraticus and Surreptus, which do not occur in the translation of Plautus? There the brothers are called Menæchmus Sosicles, and Menæchmus the traveller.

The alternate rhymes that are found in this play, as well as in A Midsummer-Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet, are a further proof that these pieces were among our author's earliest productions. We are told by himself that Venus and Adonis was “the first heir of his invention.” The Rape of Lucrece probably followed soon afterwards. When he turned his thoughts to the stage, the measure which he had used in those poems, naturally presented itself to him in his first dramatick essays: I mean in those plays which were written originally by himself. In those which were grounded, like the Henries, on the preceding productions of other men, he naturally followed the example before him, and consequently in those pieces no alternate rhymes are found.

The doggrel measure, which, if I recollect right, is employed in none of our author's plays except The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and Love's Labour's Lost, also adds support to the dates assigned to these plays: for these long doggrel verses, as I have observed in a note at the end of the piece now under our consideration, are written in that kind of metre which was usually attributed by the dramatick

poets before his time to some of their inferior characters. He was imperceptibly infected with the prevailing mode, in these his early compositions; but soon learned to “deviate boldly from the common track,” left by preceding writers.

A play with the same title as that before us, was exhibited at Gray's Inn in December, 1594; but I know not whether it was Shakspeare's play, or a translation from Plautus. “After such sports (says the writer of Gesta Grayorum, 1688,) a Comedy of Errors, like to Plautus his Menechmus, was played by the players: so that night was begun and continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors. Whereupon it was ever afterwards called the Night of Errors.” The Registers of Gray's Inn have been examined for the purpose of ascertaining whether the play above mentioned was our author's; but they afford no information on the subject.

From its having been represented, by the players, not by the gentlemen of the inn, I think it probable that it was Shakspeare's piece.

The name of Dowsabel, which is mentioned in this play, occurs likewise in an Eclogue entitled The Shepherd's Garland, by Michael Drayton, printed in 4to. in 1593.

King Richard II. was entered on the Stationers' books, August 29, 1597, and printed in that year.

There had been a former play on this subject, which appears to have been called King Henry IV. in which Richard was deposed, and killed on the

stage. This piece, as Dr. Farmer and Mr. Tyrwhitt have observed, was performed on a publick theatre, at the request of Sir Gilly Merick, and some other followers of Lord Essex, the afternoon before his insurrection: “so earnest was he,” (Merick) says the printed account of his arraignment, “to satisfy his eyes with a sight of that tragedy which he thought soone after his lord should bring from the stage to the state.” “The players told him the play was old, and they should have loss by playing it, because few would come to it; but no play else would serve: and Sir Gilly Merick gave forty shillings to Philips the player to play this, besides whatsoever he could get^{2 note}.”

It may seem strange that this old play should have been represented after Shakspeare's drama on the same subject had been printed: the reason undoubtedly was, that in the old play the deposing King Richard II. made a part of the exhibition: but in the first edition of our author's play, one hundred and fifty-four lines, describing a kind of trial of the king, and his actual deposition in parliament, were omitted: nor was it probably represented on the stage. Merick, Cuffe, and the rest of Essex's train, naturally preferred the play in which his deposition was represented, their plot not aiming at the life of the queen. It is, I know, commonly thought, that the parliament-scene (as it is called), which was first printed in the quarto of 1608, was an addition made by Shakspeare to his play after its first representation:

but it seems to me more probable that it was written with the rest, and suppressed in the printed copy of 1597, from the fear of offending Elizabeth; against whom the Pope had published a bull in the preceding year, exhorting her subjects to take up arms against her. In 1599 Hayward published his History of the First Year of Henry IV. which in fact is nothing more than an history of the deposing Richard II. The displeasure which that book excited at court, sufficiently accounts for the omitted lines not being inserted in the copy of this play which was published in 1602. Hayward was heavily censured in the Star-chamber, and committed to prison. At a subsequent period (1608), when King James was quietly and firmly settled on the throne, and the fear of internal commotion, or foreign invasion, no longer subsisted, neither the author, the managers of the theatre, nor the bookseller, could entertain any apprehension of giving offence to the sovereign: the rejected scene was restored without scruple, and from some playhouse copy probably found its way to the press.

Entered at the Stationers' Hall, July 22, 1598; and mentioned by Meres in that year. Published in 1600.

Among the extracts from Henslowe's MSS. we find the Venesyan Comedy, acted in 1594. This was probably The Merchant of Venice. In Act III. Sc. II. Portia exclaims—

Shakspeare is fond of alluding to events occurring at the time when he wrote, and the coronation of

Henry the Fourth of France, who was crowned at Chartres in the midst of his true subjects in 1594, (Rheims, where that ceremony ought to have taken place, being possessed by the rebels,) seems to have excited great interest in England. The following is an extract from a pamphlet published on that subject, entitled “The Order of Ceremonies observed in the Anointing and Coronation of the Most Christian French King of Navarre, Henry the IIII. of that Name, celebrated in our Lady Church in the Cittie of Chartres, uppon Sonday the 27 of February, 1594. Faithfully translated out of the French Coppie, printed at Roan by Commaundment of the said Lord. By E. A. London, Imprinted by John Windet, and are to be sold by John Flasket, at the great north doore of Paules.”

After describing various parts of this ceremonial, the writer proceeds thus, C 3. verso:

“Then the said Archbishop holding the King by the hand, caused him to sit down, saying,

“This prayer ended, and the king being set in his throne, the said Archbishop took off his mitre, and after great reverence and honour done by him to his Majesty, he kissed him, and then sayd,

“After him all the other peeres kissed him, the peeres ecclesiasticall first beginning, saying thus,

“Then the people gave a great shout, crying God save the King, and immediately the harquebuzes shot off, and after them the great ordinance, and the trumpets, cornets, hautbois, drommes, and other instruments sounded; and the said Lord Archbishop begun, Te Deum laudamus, &c. being accompanied with the organs and other musicke.

“During all this joy and acclamation the herauldes cryed ‘a largesse;’ whereuppon were cast foorth a great number of peeces of gold and silver, some money current, others coyned purposely and marked with the kings picture.

“Here we are to note, that so often as the king returned ever so little to the body of the church, the people being in infinite number, cryed God save the king; and the church rung with theyr cries, and with harquebuze shot.”

After describing some other ceremonies, the author then adds:

“Then the king thus arayed in his garments royall, accompanyed with the aforesayd peeres, in like ceremony and order as he came to church, returned to his pallace.

“The people with great acclamation and signes of joy, cryed God save the King; the cannons and small shotte played their parts, the trumpettes, drommes, and other instruments, sounded and played.”

The poetry of this piece, glowing with all the

warmth of a youthful and lively imagination, the many scenes which it contains of almost continual rhyme^{9 note}, the poverty of the fable, and want of discrimination among the higher personages, dispose me to believe that it was one of our author's earliest attempts in comedy^{1 note}

It seems to have been written, while the ridiculous competitions prevalent among the histrionick tribe were strongly impressed by novelty on his mind. He would naturally copy those manners first, with which he was first acquainted. The ambition of a theatrical candidate for applause he has happily ridiculed in Bottom the weaver. But among the more dignified persons of the drama we look in vain for any traits of character. The manners of Hippolita, the Amazon, are undistinguished from those of other females. Theseus, the associate of Hercules, is not engaged in any adventure worthy of his rank or reputation, nor is he in reality an agent throughout the play. Like King Henry VIII. he goes out a Maying. He meets the lovers in perplexity, and makes no effort to promote their happiness; but when supernatural accidents have reconciled them, he joins their company, and concludes his day's entertainment by uttering some miserable puns at an interlude represented by a troop of clowns. Over the fairy part of the drama he cannot be supposed to

have any influence. This part of the fable, indeed (at least as much of it as relates to the quarrels of Oberon and Titania), was not of our author's invention^{2 note}.—Through the whole piece, the more exalted characters are subservient to the interests of those beneath them. We laugh with Bottom and his fellows; but is a single passion agitated by the faint and childish solicitudes of Hermia and Demetrius, of Helena and Lysander, those shadows of each other?—That a drama, of which the principal personages are thus insignificant, and the fable thus meagre and uninteresting, was one of our author's earliest compositions, does not, therefore, seem a very improbable conjecture; nor are the beauties with which it is embellished, inconsistent with this supposition;

for the genius of Shakspeare, even in its minority, could embroider the coarsest materials with the brightest and most lasting colours.

Oberon and Titania had been introduced in a dramatick entertainment exhibited before Queen Elizabeth in 1591, when she was at Elvetham in Hampshire; as appears from A Description of the Queene's Entertainment in Progress at Lord Hartford's, &c. printed in 4to. in 1591. Her majesty, after having been pestered a whole afternoon with speeches in verse from the three Graces, Sylvanus, Wood Nymphs, &c. is at length addressed by the Fairy Queen, who presents her majesty with a chaplet,

A Midsummer-Night's Dream was not entered at Stationers' Hall till Oct. 8, 1600, in which year it was printed; but is mentioned by Meres in 1598.

From the comedy of Doctor Dodipoll, Mr. Steevens has quoted a line, which the author seems to have borrowed from Shakspeare:

So, in A Midsummer-Night's Dream:

Again:

There is no earlier edition of the anonymous play

in which the foregoing lines are found, than that in 1600: but Doctor Dodipowle is mentioned by Nashe, in his preface to Gabriel Harvey's Hunt is up, printed in 1596.

The passage in the fifth Act, which has been thought to allude to the death of Spenser^{5 note}

, is not inconsistent with the early appearance of this comedy, for it might have been inserted between the time of that poet's death, and the year 1600, when the play was published. And indeed, if the allusion was intended, which I do not believe, the passage must have been added in that interval; for A Midsummer-Night's Dream was certainly written before 1598, and Spenser, we are told by Sir James Ware (whose testimony with respect to this controverted point must have great weight), did not die till 1599: “others, (he adds,) have it wrongly, 1598^{6 note}

careful a searcher into antiquity, who lived so near the time, is not likely to have been mistaken in a fact concerning which he appears to have made particular enquiries.

The passage in question, however, in my apprehension, has been misunderstood. It relates, I conceive, not to the death of Spenser, but to the nine Muses lamenting the decay of learning, in that author's poem entitled The Tears of the Muses,

which was published in 1591: and hence probably the words, “late deceas'd in beggary.” This allusion, if I am right in my conjecture, may serve to confirm the early date assigned to A Midsummer-Night's Dream.

This play and The Winter's Tale are the only pieces which I have found reason, since the first edition of this Essay appeared, to attribute to an era widely different from that in which I had originally placed them^{7 note}. I had supposed the piece now under consideration to have been written in the year 1606. On a more attentive perusal of it, and more experience in our author's style and manner, I am persuaded that it was one of his very early productions, and near in point of time to the Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

In the old comedies, antecedent to the time of our author's writing for the stage, (if indeed they deserve that name,) a kind of doggrel measure is often found, which, as I have already observed, Shakspeare adopted in some of those pieces which were undoubtedly among his early compositions; I mean his Errors, and Love's Labour's Lost. This kind of metre being found also in the play before us, adds support to the

supposition that it was one of his early productions. The last four lines of this comedy furnish an example of the measure I allude to:

Another proof of The Taming of the Shrew being an early production arises from the frequent play of words which we find in it, and which Shakspeare has condemned in a subsequent comedy.

Some of the incidents in this comedy are taken from the Supposes of Gascoigne, an author of considerable popularity, when Shakspeare first began to write for the stage.

The old piece entitled The Taming of a Shrew, on which our author's play is founded, was entered on the Stationers' books by Peter Short, May 2, 1594, and probably soon afterwards printed. As it bore nearly the same title with Shakspeare's play (which was not printed till 1623), the hope of getting a sale for it under the shelter of a celebrated name, was probably the inducement to issue it out at that time: and its entry at Stationers' Hall, and publication in 1594^{8 note}, (for from the passage quoted below it must have been published^{9 note},) gives weight to the supposition

that Shakspeare's play was written and first acted in that year. There being no edition of the genuine play in print, the bookseller hoped that the old piece with a similar title might pass on the common reader for Shakspeare's performance. This appears to have been a frequent practice of the booksellers in those days; for Rowley's play of King Henry VIII. I am persuaded, was published in 1605, and 1613, with the same view; as were King Leir and his Three Daughters in 1605, and Lord Sterline's Julius Cæsar in 1607.

In the year 1607 it is highly probable that this comedy of our author's was revived, for in that year Nicholas Ling republished The old Taming of a Shrew, with the same intent, as it should seem, with which that piece had originally been issued out by another bookseller in 1594. In the entry made by Ling in the Stationers' books, January 22, 1606–7, he joined with this old drama two of Shakspeare's genuine plays, Romeo and Juliet, and Love's Labour's Lost, neither of which he ever published, nor does his name appear in the title page of any one of our author's performances; so that those two plays could only have been set down by him, along with the other, with some fraudulent intent.

In the same year also (Nov. 17), our author's genuine play was entered at Stationers' Hall, by J.

Smethwyck^{1 note} (one of the proprietors of the second folio); which circumstance gives additional weight to the supposition that the play was revived in that year. Smethwyck had probably procured a copy of it, and had then thoughts of printing it, though for some reason, now undiscoverable, it was not printed by him till 1631, eight years after it had appeared in the edition by the players in folio.

It should be observed that there is a slight variation between the titles of the anonymous play and Shakspeare's piece; both of which, in consequence of the inaccuracy of Mr. Pope, and his being very superficially acquainted with the phraseology and manner of our early writers, were for a long time unjustly attributed to our poet. The old drama was called The Taming of a Shrew; Shakspeare's comedy, The Taming of the Shrew.

It must not be concealed, however, that The Taming of the Shrew is not enumerated among our author's plays by Meres in 1598; a circumstance which yet is not sufficient to prove that it was not then written: for neither are The Second and Third Parts of King Henry VI. mentioned by him; though those plays had undoubtedly appeared before that year.

I formerly imagined that a line^{2 note} in this comedy

alluded to an old play written by Thomas Heywood, entitled A Woman Kill'd with Kindness, of which the second edition was printed in 1607, and the first probably not before the year 1600; but the other proofs which I have already stated with respect to the date of the play before us, have convinced me that I was mistaken.

It has been already observed, that our author in his early plays appears to have been much addicted to rhyming; a practice from which he gradually departed, though he never wholly deserted it. In this piece more rhymes, I believe, are found, than in any other of his plays, Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer-Night's Dream only excepted. This circumstance, the story on which it is founded, so likely to captivate a young poet, the imperfect form in which it originally appeared, and its very early publication^{3 note}, all incline me to believe that this was one of Shakspeare's first tragedies.

In a former edition of this Essay, I placed the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet in 1595, not adverting to a particular circumstance, which ascertains with great precision that it must have been produced between the 23d of July, 1596, and the 17th of April, 1597; and from that, and other circumstances which I shall presently state, and from the entry in the

Stationers' Registers, printed in a subsequent page^{4 note} (whether that entry relates to a ballad on the same subject, or to the play itself; the former of which, I believe to be the case); it is extremely probable that this tragedy was first acted at the Curtain Theatre in the autumn of 1596; and that it was published early in the following year.

It is observable, that in the title-page of the original quarto copy of 1597, it is said that it had been “often (with great applause) plaid publiquely by the right honourable Lord Hunsdon his servants.” I formerly had not been aware that two noblemen of this family in our author's time, Henry Lord Hunsdon, the father, and George Lord Hunsdon, his son, both filled the office of Lord Chamberlain of the Household to Queen Elizabeth, though not successively. Henry, the father, after holding this station for eleven years, died on the 22d of July, 1596. The company of comedians who were his lordship's servants, among whom Shakspeare, Burbage, Heminge, Condell, and others, were enrolled, during that period, or a considerable part of it, were distinguished by the appellation of “the Lord Chanberlain's men.” Having, however, been appended to him, not as Lord Chamberlain, but as a peer of the realm, on the death of their patron, they naturally fell under the protection of his son and successor in the title, and for some time continued to play under his sanction, like the servants of Lord Derby, Lord

Pembroke, or any other nobleman, who had not enjoyed any official situation in the court of Elizabeth. In August, 1596, the vacant office of Chamberlain was given to William Brooke, the fourth Lord Cobham (of that family), which station he held till he died, on Saturday, the 5th of March, 1596–7^{5 note}; a period of about seven months; and about six weeks afterwards, George Lord Hunsdon was appointed Lord Chamberlain in his room. During the interval between the 22d of July, 1596, and the following April, Shakspeare's company could only be denominated the servants of Lord Hunsdon, as they are properly styled in the original title-page of this play; nor did they recover their more honourable designation, till, on the 17th of April, 1597, the nobleman by whom they were licensed, was advanced to the office which Lord Cobham had held. Hence in the autumn of that year^{6 note}, our poet's King Richard the Second, and King Richard the Third, which I believe were originally acted whilst he and his fellows were under the patronage of Henry the father, and were then exhibiting under that of his son, were, after he had been invested with the same office, properly set forth, “as acted by the right honourable the Lord Chamberlain his servants:” and the very tragedy now under our consideration, when revised and enlarged, was printed in 1599, as acted, not by the Lord Hunsdon's servants (as in the former

edition), but by those of the Lord Chamberlain. These circumstances appear to me to ascertain the date of Romeo and Juliet beyond a doubt.

The words “publiquely acted,” which are found in the title-page of the original edition, show, that this tragedy was performed at a publick, in contradistinction to a private theatre; and a passage in Marston's Satires, which I have already had occasion to notice, informs us, that it was played at the Curtain Theatre, then occupied by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, and the fortunate spot where our author's early dramatick productions were first exhibited.

In Marston's tenth Satire, in which the author portrays the various humours of the time, after a description of Curio, “a capering youth,” who thinks of nothing but dancing, Luscus, a constant haunter of playhouses, is thus introduced:

In the third Act the first and second cause are mentioned: that passage, therefore, was probably written after the publication of Saviolo's Book on Honour and Honourable Quarrels; which appeared in 1594.

From several passages in the fifth Act of this tragedy it is manifest, I think, that Shakspeare had recently read, and remembered, some of the lines in Daniel's Complaint of Rosamond, which, I believe, was printed in 1592^{2 note}: the earliest edition, however, that I have seen of that piece is dated in 1594:

If the following passage in an old comedy already mentioned, entitled Doctor Dopidoll, which had appeared before 1596, be considered as an imitation,

it may add some weight to the supposition that Romeo and Juliet had been exhibited before that year:

In the fifth Act of this tragedy mention is made of the practice of sealing up the doors of those houses in which “the infectious pestilence did reign.” Shakspeare probably had himself seen this practised in the plague which raged in London in 1593.

From a speech of the Nurse in this play, which contains these words—“It is now since the earthquake eleven years,” &c. Mr. Tyrwhitt conjectured, that Romeo and Juliet, or at least part of it, was written in 1591; the novels from which Shakspeare may be supposed to have drawn his story, not mentioning any such circumstance; while on the other hand, there actually was an earthquake in England on the 6th of April, 1580, which he might here have had in view^{3 note}.—It formerly seemed improbable to me that Shakspeare, when he was writing this tragedy, should have adverted, with such precision, to the date of an earthquake which had been felt in his youth. The passage quoted struck me, as only displaying one of those characteristical traits, which

distinguish old people of the lower class; who delight in enumerating a multitude of minute circumstances that have no relation to the business immediately under their consideration^{4 note}, and are particularly fond of computing time from extraordinary events, such as battles, comets, plagues, and earthquakes. This feature of their character our author has in various places strongly marked. Thus (to mention one of many instances), the Grave-digger in Hamlet says that he came to his employment, “of all the days i' the year, that day that the last king o'ercame Fortinbras, —that very day that young Hamlet was born.” —A more attentive perusal, however, of our poet's works, and his frequent allusions to the manners and usages of England, and to the events of his own time, which he has described as taking place wherever his scene happens to lie, have shown me that Mr. Tyrwhitt's conjecture is not so improbable as I once supposed it. Shakspeare might have laid the foundation of this play in 1591, and finished it at a subsequent period. The passage alluded to is in the first Act.

If the earthquake which happened in England in 1580, was in his thoughts, when he composed the first part of this play, and induced him to state the earthquake at Verona as happening on the day on which Juliet was weaned, and eleven years before the

commencement of the piece, it has led him into a contradiction; for, according to the Nurse's account, Juliet was within a fortnight and odd days of completing her fourteenth year; and yet, according to the computation made, she could not well be much more than twelve years old. Whether indeed the English earthquake was, or was not, in his thoughts, the nurse's account is inconsistent and contradictory.

Perhaps Shakspeare was more careful to mark the garrulity, than the precision of the old woman:—or perhaps, he meant this very incorrectness as a trait of her character:—or, without having recourse to either of these suppositions, shall we say, that our author was here, as in some other places, hasty and inattentive? It is certain that there is nothing in which he is less accurate, than the computation of time. Of his negligence in this respect, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, and Othello, furnish remarkable instances.^{5 note}.

This historical play was founded on a former drama, entitled The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England, with the Discoverie of King Richard Cordelion's base Son, vulgarly named the Bastard Fawconbridge: also the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. As it was (sundry times) publikely acted by the Queenes Majesties Players in the honourable Cittie of London. This piece, which is

in two parts, and was printed at London for Sampson Clarke, 1591, has no author's name in the title-page. On its republication in 1611, the bookseller for whom it was printed, inserted the letters W. Sh. in the title-page; and in order to conceal his fraud, omitted the words—publikely—in the honourable Cittie of London, which he was aware would proclaim this play not to be Shakspeare's King John; the company to which he belonged, having no publick theatre in London: that in Blackfriars being a private playhouse, and the Globe, which was a publick theatre, being situated in Southwark. He also, probably with the same view, omitted the following lines addressed to the Gentlemen Readers, which are prefixed to the first edition of the old play:

Shakespeare's play being then probably often acted, and the other wholly laid aside, the world lately was substituted for the world publickly:—as they were sundry times lately acted,” &c.

Thomas Dewe, for whom a third edition of this old play was printed in 1622, was more daring. The two parts were then published, “as they were

sundry times lately acted;” and the name of William Shakspeare inserted at length. “By the Queen's Majesties players” was wisely omitted, as not being very consistent with the word lately, Elizabeth being then dead nineteen years.

King John is the only one of our poet's uncontested plays that is not entered in the books of the Stationers' Company. It was not printed till 1623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598, unless he mistook the old play in two parts, printed in 1591, for the composition of Shakspeare.

It is observable, that our author's son, Hamnet, died in August, 1596. That a man of such sensibility, and of so amiable a disposition, should have lost his only son, who had attained the age of twelve years, without being greatly affected by it, will not be easily credited. The pathetick lamentations which he has written for Lady Constance on the death of Arthur, may perhaps add some probability to the supposition that this tragedy was written at or soon after that period.

In the first scene of the second Act the following lines are spoken by Chatillon, the French ambassador, on his return from England to King Philip:

“Did never float upon the swelling tide,
“To do offence and scathe to Christendom.”

Dr. Johnson has justly observed, in a note on this play, that many passages in our poet's works evidently show that “he often took advantage of the facts then recent, and the passions then in motion.” Perhaps the description contained in the last six lines was immediately suggested to Shakspeare by the grand fleet which was sent against Spain in 1596. It consisted of eighteen of the largest of the Queen's ships, three of the Lord Admiral's, and above one hundred and twenty merchant-ships and victuallers, under the command of the earls of Nottingham and Essex. The regular land-forces on board amounted to ten thousand; and there was also a large body of voluntaries (as they were then called), under the command of Sir Edward Winkfield. Many of the nobility went on this expedition, which was destined against Cadiz. The fleet sailed from Plymouth on the third of June, 1596; before the end of that month the great Spanish armada was destroyed, and the town of Cadiz was sacked and burned. Here Lord Essex found 1200 pieces of ordnance, and an immense quantity of treasure, stores, ammunition, &c. valued at twenty million of ducats. The victorious commanders of this successful expedition returned to Plymouth, August 8, 1596, four days before the death of our poet's son. Many of our old historians speak of the splendour and magnificence displayed by the noble and gallant adventurers who served in this expedition; and Ben Jonson has particularly

alluded to it in his Silent Woman, written a few years afterwards^{5 note}. To this I suspect two lines already quoted particularly refer:

Dr. Johnson conceived that the following lines in this play—
“And meritorious shall that hand be call'd,
“Canonized, and worshipp'd as a saint,
“That takes away by any secret course
“Thy hateful life&lblank;.” might either refer to the bull published against Queen Elizabeth, or to the canonization of Garnet, Faux, and their accomplices, who, in a Spanish book which he had seen, are registered as saints. If the latter allusion had been intended, then this play, or at least this part of it, must have been written after 1605. But the passage in question is founded on a similar one in the old play, printed in 1591, and therefore no allusion to the gunpowder-plot could have been intended.

A line of The Spanish Tragedy is quoted in King John. That tragedy, I believe, had appeared in or before 1590.

In the first Act of King John, an ancient tragedy, entitled Solyman and Perseda, is alluded to. The earliest edition of that play, now extant, is that of 1599, but it was written, and probably acted, many

years before; for it was entered on the Stationers' books, by Edward Whyte, Nov. 20, 1592.

Marston's Insatiate Countess, which, according to Langbaine, was printed in 1603, contains a passage, which, if it should be considered as an imitation of a similar one in King John, will ascertain this historical drama to have been written at least before that year:

So, in King John:

Marston has in many other places imitated Shakspeare.

A speech spoken by the Bastard in the second Act of this tragedy^{6 note} seems to have been formed on one in an old play entitled The famous History of Captain Thomas Stukely. Captain Stukely was killed in 1578. The drama of which he is the subject, was not printed till 1605, but it is in the black letter, and, I believe, had been exhibited at least fifteen years before.

Of the only other note of time which I have observed in this tragedy, beside those already mentioned, I am unable to make any use. “When I was in France,” says young Arthur,
“Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
“Only for wantonness.”

I have not been able to ascertain when the fashion of being sad and gentlemanlike commenced among our gayer neighbours on the continent. A similar fashion prevailed in England, and is often alluded to by our poet, and his contemporaries. Perhaps he has in this instance attributed to the French a species of affection then only found in England. It is noticed by Lyly in 1592, and Ben Johnson in 1598.

The Second Part of King Henry IV. was entered in the Stationers' books, August 23, 1600, and was printed in that year. It was written, I believe, in 1598. From the epilogue it appears to have been composed before King Henry V. which itself must have been written in or before 1599.

Meres in his Wit's Treasury, which was published in September, 1598, has given a list of our author's plays, and among them is King Henry IV.; but as he does not describe it as a play in two parts, I doubt whether this second part had been exhibited, though it might have been then written. If it was not in his contemplation, it may be presumed to have appeared in the latter part of the year 1598. His words are these: “As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy, among the Latines, so Shakspeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage: for

comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Love's Labour's Wonne, his Midsummer-Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy^{8 note}, his Richard II. Richard III. Henry IV. King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet^{9 note}.”

The following allusion to one of the characters in this play, which is found in Every Man out of his Humour, Act V. Sc. II. first acted in 1599, is an additional authority for supposing The Second Part of King Henry IV. to have been written in 1598:

What's he, gentle Mons. Brisk? Not that gentleman?

No, lady; this is a kinsman to Justice Shallow.”

That this play was not written before the year 1596, is ascertained by the following allusions. In the last Act, Clarence, speaking of his father, says,

These lines appear to have been formed on the following in Daniel's Civil Warres, 1595, b. iii. st. 116:

Daniel's Poem, though not published till 1595, was entered on the Stationers' books, in October, 1594.

The distich, with which Pistol consoles himself, Si fortuna me tormenta, &c. had, I believe, appeared in an old collection of tales, and apophthegms, entitled Wits, Fits, and Fancies, which was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1595, and probably printed in that year. Sir Richard Hawkins, as Dr. Farmer has observed, “in his voyage to the South Sea in 1593, throws out the same jingling distich on the loss of his pinnace.” But no account of that voyage was published before 1598.

In the last Act of this play the young king thus addresses his brothers:

It is highly probable, as is observed in a note on that passage, that Shakspeare had here in contemplation the cruelty practised by the Turkish emperor, Mahomet, who after the death of his father, Amurath the Third, in Feb. 1596^{1 note}, invited his unsuspecting brothers to a feast, and caused them all to be strangled.

Mr. Pope thought that this historical drama was

one of our author's latest compositions; but he was evidently mistaken. King Henry V. was entered on the Stationers' books, Aug. 14, 1600, and printed in the same year. It was written after the Second Part of King Henry IV. being promised in the epilogue of that play; and while the Earl of Essex was in Ireland^{3 note}. Lord Essex went to Ireland April 15, 1599, and returned to London on the 28th of September in the same year. So that this play (unless the passage relative to him was inserted after the piece was finished) must have been composed between April and September, 1599. Supposing that passage a subsequent insertion, the play was probably not written long before; for it is not mentioned by Meres in 1598.

The prologue to Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour^{4 note}


seems clearly to allude to this play; and, if it had been written at the same time with the piece itself, might induce us, notwithstanding the silence of Meres, to place King Henry V. a year or two earlier; for Every Man in his Humour is said to have been acted in 1598. But the prologue which now appears before it, was not written till after 1601, when the play was printed without the prologue, which first appeared in the folio edition of Jonson's Works, published in 1616^{5 note}. It is certain, that, not

long after the year 1600, a coolness^{6 note}

his almost idolatrous affection, produced on his part, from that time to the death of our author, and for many years afterwards, much clumsy sarcasm, and many malevolent reflections^{7 note}

On this play, Mr. Pope has the following note, Act I. Sc. I.:

“This first scene was added since the edition of 1608, which is much short of the present editions,

wherein the speeches are generally enlarged, and raised; several whole scenes besides, and the choruses also, were since added by Shakspeare.”

Dr. Warburton also positively asserts, that this first scene was written after the accession of King

James I.; and the subsequent editors agree, that several additions were made by the author to King Henry V. after it was originally composed. But there is, I believe, no good ground for these assertions. It is true, that no perfect edition of this play was published before that in folio, in 1623; but it does not follow from thence, that the scenes which then first appeared in print, and all the choruses, were added by Shakspeare, as Mr. Pope supposes, after 1608. We know, indeed, the contrary to be true; for the Chorus to the fifth Act must have been written in 1599.

The fair inference to be drawn from the imperfect and mutilated copies of this play, published in 1600, 1602, and 1608, is, not that the whole play, as we now have it, did not then exist, but that those copies were surreptitious; and that the editor in 1600, not being able to publish the whole, published what he could.

I have not, indeed, met with any evidence (except in three plays) that the several scenes which are found in the folio of 1623, and are not in the preceding quartos, were added by the second labour of the author.—The last chorus of King Henry V. already mentioned, affords a striking proof that this was not always the case. The two copies of The Second Part of King Henry IV. printed in the same year (1600), furnish another. In one of these, the whole first scene of Act III. is wanting; not because it was then unwritten (for it is found in the other copy published in that year), but because the editor was not possessed of it. That what have been called additions

by the author, were not really such, may be also collected from another circumstance; that in some of the quartos where these supposed additions are wanting, references and replies are found to the passages omitted^{8 note}.

I do not, however, mean to say, that Shakspeare never made any alterations in his plays. We have reason to believe that Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, were revised and augmented by the author; and a second revisal, or temporary topicks, might have suggested, in a course of years, some additions and alterations in some other of his pieces. But with respect to the entire scenes that are wanting in some of the early editions (particularly those of King Henry V. King Richard II. and The Second Part of King Henry IV.), I suppose the omissions to have arisen from the imperfection of the copies; and instead of saying that “the first scene of King Henry V. was added by the author after the publication of the quarto in 1600,” all that we can pronounce with certainty is, that this scene is not found in the quarto of 1600.

This comedy was not printed till 1623, and the

caveat or memorandum^{9 note} in the second volume of the books of the Stationers' Company, relative to the three plays of As You Like It, Henry V. and Much Ado About Nothing, has no date except Aug. 4. But immediately above that caveat there is an entry, dated May 27, 1600,—and the entry immediately following it, is dated Jan. 23, 1603. We may therefore presume that this caveat was entered between those two periods; more especially, as the dates scattered over the pages where this entry is found, are, except in one instance, in a regular series from 1596 to 1615. This will appear more clearly by exhibiting the entry exactly as it stands in the book:

27 May, 1600.

4. Aug.

23 Jan. 1603.

It is extremely probable that this 4th of August was of the year 1600; which standing a little higher on the paper, the Clerk of the Stationers' Company might have thought unnecessary to be repeated. All the plays which were entered with As You Like It,

and are here said to be staied, were printed in the year 1600 or 1601. The stay or injunction against the printing appears to have been very speedily taken off; for in ten days afterwards, on the 14th of August, 1600, King Henry V. was entered, and published in the same year. So, Much Ado about Nothing was entered August 23, 1600, and printed also in that year: and Every Man in his Humour was published in 1601.

Shakspeare, it is said, played the part of Adam in As You Like It. As he was not eminent on the stage, it is probable that he ceased to act some years before he retired to the country. His appearance, however, in this comedy, is not inconsistent with the date here assigned; for we know that he performed a part in Jonson's Sejanus in 1603.

A passage in this comedy furnishes an additional proof of its not having been written before the year 1596, nor after the year 1603. “I will weep for nothing,” says Rosalind, “like Diana in the fountain.” Stowe, in his Survey of London, 1598, informs us, that in the year 1598, at the east side of the Cross in Cheapside was set up “a curious wrought tabernacle of gray marble, and in the same an alabaster image of Diana, and water conveyed from the Thames, prilling from her naked breast.” To this the passage above cited certainly alludes. in his second edition of the same work, printed in 1603, he informs, the reader, that the water flowed in this manner for a time, but that the statue was then decayed. It was, we see, in order in 1598, and continued so without doubt for a year afterwards, that

is, till 1599, when As You Like It appears to have been written.

In this comedy a line of Marlowe's Hero and Leander is quoted. That poem was published in 1598, and probably before.

22. King Henry VIII. 1603.

This play was probably written, as Dr. Johnson and Mr. Steevens observe, partly before the death of Queen Elizabeth, which happened on the 24th of March, 1602–3. The elogium on King James, which is blended with the panegyrick on Elizabeth, in the last scene, was evidently a subsequent insertion, after the accession of the Scottish monarch to the throne: for Shakspeare was too well acquainted with courts, to compliment, in the life-time of Queen Elizabeth, her presumptive successor, of whom history informs us she was not a little jealous. That the prediction concerning King James was added after the death of the Queen, is still more clearly evinced, as Dr. Johnson has remarked, by the aukward manner in which it is connected with the foregoing and subsequent lines.

The following lines in that prediction may serve to ascertain the time when the compliment was introduced:

Though Virginia was discovered in 1584, the

first colony sent out went there in 1606. In that year the king granted two letters patent for planting that country, one to the city of London, the other to the cities of Bristol, Exeter, and Plymouth. The colony sent from London, settled in Virginia; that from the other cities, in New England; the capital of which was built in the following year, and called James town. In 1606 also a scheme was adopted for the plantation of Ulster in Ireland^{2 note}. I suspect, therefore, that the panegyrick on the king was introduced either in that year, or in 1612, when a lottery was granted expressly for the establishment of English Colonies in Virginia.

It may be objected, that if this play was written after the accession of King James, the author could not introduce a panegyrick on him, without making Queen Elizabeth the vehicle of it, she being the object immediately presented to the audience in the last Act of King Henry VIII.: and that, therefore, the praises so profusely lavished on her, do not prove this play to have been written in her life-time; on the contrary, that the concluding lines of her character seem to imply that she was dead, when it was composed. The objection certainly has weight; but, I apprehend, the following observations afford a sufficient answer to it.

1. It is more likely that Shakspeare should have written a play, the chief subject of which is, the disgrace of Queen Catharine, the aggrandizement of Anne Boleyn, and the birth of her daughter, in the

life-time of that daughter, than after her death: at a time when the subject must have been highly pleasing at court, rather than at a period when it must have been less interesting.

Queen Catharine, it is true, is represented as an amiable character, but still she is eclipsed; and the greater her merit, the higher was the compliment to the mother of Elizabeth, to whose superior beauty she was obliged to give way.

2. If King Henry VIII. had been written in the time of King James I. the author, instead of expatiating so largely in the last scene, in praise of the Queen, which he could not think would be acceptable to her successor, who hated her memory^{3 note}, would probably have made him the principal figure in the prophecy, and thrown her into the back-ground as much as possible.

3. Were James I. Shakspeare's chief object in the original construction of the last Act of this play, he would probably have given a very short character of Elizabeth, and have dwelt on that of James, with whose praise he would have concluded, in order to make the stronger impression on the audience, instead of returning again to Queen Elizabeth, in a very aukward and abrupt manner, after her character seemed to be quite finished: an aukwardness that can only be accounted for, by supposing the panegyrick on King James an after-production^{4 note}

4. If the Queen had been dead when our author began to write this play, he would have been acquainted with the particular circumstances attending her death, the situation of the kingdom at that time, and of foreign states, &c. and as Archbishop Cranmer is supposed to have had the gift of prophecy, Shakspeare, probably, would have made him mention some of those circumstances. Whereas the prediction, as it stands at present, is quite general, and such as might, without any hazard of error, have been pronounced in the life-time of her Majesty; for the

principal facts that it foretells, are, that she should die aged, and a virgin. Of the former, supposing this prediction to have been written in 1602, the author was sufficiently secure; for she was then near seventy years old. The latter may perhaps be thought too delicate a subject, to have been mentioned while she was yet living. But we may presume, it was far from being an ungrateful topick; for very early after her accession to the throne, she appears to have been proud of her maiden character; declaring that she was wedded to her people, and that she desired no other inscription on her tomb, than—“Here lyeth Elizabeth, who reigned and died a virgin^{5 note}.” Besides, if Shakspeare knew, as probably most people at that time did, that she became very solicitous about the reputation of virginity, when her title to it was at least equivocal, this would be an additional inducement to him to compliment her on that head.

5. Granting that the latter part of the panegyrick on Elizabeth implies that she was dead when it was composed, it would not prove that this play was written in the time of King James; for these latter lines in praise of the Queen, as well as the whole of the compliment to the King, might have been added after his accession to the throne, in order to bring the speaker back to the object immediately before him, the infant Elizabeth. And this Mr. Theobald conjectured to have been the case. I do not, however, see any necessity for this supposition; as there is nothing, in my apprehension, contained in any of

the lines in praise of the Queen, inconsistent with the notion of the whole of the panegyrick on her having been composed in her life-time.

In further confirmation of what has been here advanced to show that this play was partly written while Queen Elizabeth was yet alive, it may be observed (to use the words of an anonymous writer^{6 note}), that “Shakspeare has cast the disagreeable parts of her father's character as much into shade as possible; that he has represented him as greatly displeased with the grievances of his subjects, and ordering them to be relieved; tender and obliging [in the early part of the play] to his queen, grateful to the cardinal, and in the case of Cranmer, capable of distinguishing and rewarding true merit.”—“He has exerted (adds the same author) an equal degree of complaisance, by the amiable lights in which he has shown the mother of Elizabeth. Anne Bullen is represented as affected with the most tender concern for the sufferings of her mistress, queen Catharine; receiving the honour the king confers on her, by making her marchioness of Pembroke, with a graceful humility; and more anxious to conceal her advancement from the queen, lest it should aggravate her sorrows, than solicitous to penetrate into the meaning of so extraordinary a favour, or of indulging herself in the flattering prospect of future royalty.”

It is unnecessary to quote particular passages in support of these assertions; but the following lines, which are spoken of Anne Boleyn by the Lord Chamberlain, appear to me so evidently calculated for the

ear of Elizabeth (to whom such incense was by no means displeasing), that I cannot forbear to transcribe them:

Again:

Our author had produced so many plays in the preceding years, that it is not likely that King Henry VIII. was written before 1603. It might perhaps with equal propriety be ascribed to 1602, and it is not easy to determine in which of those years it was composed; but it is extremely probable that it was written in one of them. It was not printed till 1623.

A poem, called The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal, which was entered on the books of the Stationers' Company, and published, in the year 1599, perhaps suggested this subject to Shakspeare.

He had also certainly read Churchyard's Legend of Cardinal Wolsey, printed in The Mirrour for Magistrates, 1587.

“Have we some strange Indian with the great tool come to court, the women so besiege us,” says the Porter in the last Act of this play. This note

of time may perhaps hereafter serve to ascertain the date of this piece, though I cannot avail myself of it, not having been able to discover to what circumstance Shakspeare here alludes.

Rowley's King Henry VIII. was published in 1605, probably with a view that it also might be confounded with Shakspeare's drama; and both it and Lord Cromwell were re-printed with the same fraudulent intention in 1613, in which year our author's play was revived with great splendour.

The Globe play-house, we are told by the continuator of Stowe's Chronicle, was burnt down, on St. Peter's day, in the year 1613, while the play of King Henry VIII. was exhibiting. Sir Henry Wotton (as Mr. Tyrwhitt has observed) says, in one of his letters, that this accident happened during the exhibition of a new play, called All is True; which, however, appears both from Sir Henry's minute description of the piece, and from the account given by Stowe's continuator, to have been our author's play of King Henry VIII. If indeed Sir H. Wotton was accurate in calling it a new play, all the foregoing reasoning on this subject would be at once overthrown: and this piece, instead of being ascribed to 1603, should have been placed ten years later. But I strongly suspect that the only novelty attending this play, in the year 1613, was its title, decorations, and perhaps the prologue and epilogue. The Elector Palatine was in London in that year; and it appears from the MS. register of Lord Harrington, treasurer of the chambers to King James I. that many of our author's plays were then

exhibited for the entertainment of him and the princess Elizabeth. By the same register we learn, that the titles of many of them were changed^{7 note} in that year. Princes are fond of opportunities to display their magnificence before strangers of distinction; and James, who on his arrival here must have been dazzled by a splendour foreign to the poverty of his native kingdom, might have been peculiarly ambitious to exhibit before his son-in-law the mimick pomp of an English coronation^{8 note}. King Henry VIII. therefore, after having lain by for some years unacted, on account of the costliness of the exhibition, might have been revived in 1613, under the title of All is True, with new decorations, and a new prologue and epilogue. Mr. Tyrwhitt observes, that the prologue has two or three direct references to this title; a circumstance which authorizes us to conclude, almost with certainty, that it was an occasional production, written some years after the composition of the play. King Henry VIII. not being then printed, the fallacy of calling it a new play on its revival was not easily detected.

Dr. Johnson long since suspected, from the contemptuous manner in which “the noise of targets, and the fellow in a long motley coat,” or in other words, most of our author's plays are spoken of, in this prologue, that it was not the composition of Shakspeare, but written after his departure from the stage, on some accidental revival of King Henry VIII. by Ben Jonson, whose style, it seemed to him to resemble^{9 note}

thinks he sees something of Jonson's hand here and there in the dialogue also. After our author's retirement to the country, Johnson was perhaps employed to give a novelty to the piece by a new title and prologue, and to furnish the managers of the Globe with

a description of the coronation ceremony, and of those other decorations, with which, from his connection with Inigo Jones, and his attendance at court, he was peculiarly conversant.

The piece appears to have been revived with some degree of splendour; for Sir Henry Wotton gives a very pompous account of the representation. The unlucky accident that happened to the house during the exhibition, was occasioned by discharging some small pieces, called chambers, on King Henry's arrival at Cardinal Wolsey's gate at Whitehall, one of which, being injudiciously managed, set fire to the thatched roof of the theatre^{1 note}

The play, thus revived and new-named, was probably called in the bills of that time, a new play; which might have led Sir Henry Wotton to describe it as such. And thus his account may be reconciled with that of the other contemporary writers, as well as with those arguments which have been here urged in support of the early date of King Henry VIII. Every thing has been fully stated on each side of the question. The reader must judge.

Mr. Roderick, in his notes on our author (appended to Mr. Edwards's Canons of Criticism), takes notice of some peculiarities in the metre of the play before us, viz. “that there are many more verses in it than in any other, which end with a redundant syllable,” —“very near two to one,”—and that the “cæsuræ or pauses of the verse are full as remarkable.” The

redundancy, &c. observed by this critick, Mr. Steevens thinks “was rather the effect of chance, than of design in the author; and might have arisen either from the negligence of Shakspeare, who in this play has borrowed whole scenes and speeches from Holinshed, whose words he was probably in too much haste to compress into versification strictly regular and harmonious; or from the interpolations of Ben Jonson, whose hand Dr. Farmer thinks he occasionally perceives in the dialogue.”

Whether Mr. Roderick's position be well founded, is hardly worth a contest; but the peculiarities which he has animadverted on (if such there be), add probability to the conjecture that this piece underwent some alterations, after it had passed out of the hands of Shakspeare^{1 note}.

26. Macbeth, 1606.

Since this essay was originally written, I have observed some notes of time in the tragedy of Macbeth, that appear to me strongly to confirm the date which I have assigned to it. They occur in the Porter's speech after the murder of Duncan. The speaker, whom Shakspeare, for the sake of indulging a vein of humour and honest satire, has here represented as the Porter of Hell^{6 note}


, on hearing a violent knocking at the palace gate, exclaims, “Who's there, in the name of Belzebub?—Here's a farmer, that hang'd himself on the expectation of plenty. Come in time: have napkins enough about you: here you'll sweat.”

The price of corn was then, as it is now, the great criterion of plenty or scarcity. That in the summer and autumn of the year 1606, there was a prospect of plenty of corn, appears from the audit-book of the college of Eton; for the price of wheat in the market of Windsor in that year, was lower than it was for thirteen years afterwards, being thirty-three shillings the quarter^{7 note}. In the preceding year (1605) it was

two shillings a quarter dearer: and in the subsequent year (1607), three shillings a quarter dearer. In the year 1608, wheat was sold at Windsor market for fifty-six shillings and eight pence a quarter;

and in 1609, for fifty shillings. In 1606 barley and malt were cheaper than the preceding year, and considerably cheaper than in the two years subsequent.

The following words assigned to the Porter afford a still stronger confirmation of the date of this tragedy: “Knock, knock: Who's there, i' the other Devil's name? 'Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales, against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake; yet could not equivocate to heaven.—O come in, equivocator.”

Dr. Warburton long since observed that by “an equivocator” was here meant “a Jesuit;” an order (he adds) “so troublesome to the state in Queen Elizabeth and King James the First's time; the inventors of the execrable doctrine of equivocation.”

If the allusion were only thus general, this passage would avail us little in settling the time when Macbeth was written; but it was unquestionably much more particular and personal: and, without doubt, had a direct reference to the doctrine of equivocation avowed and maintained by Henry Garnet, superior of the order of the Jesuits in England, on his trial for the Gunpowder Treason, on the 28th of March, 1606, and to his detestable perjury on that occasion, or, as our author describes it, “to his swearing in both the scales against either scale,” that is, flatly and directly contradicting himself on his oath.

This trial, at which King James himself was present incognito, from the flagitiousness of the crime, and the celebrity and ability of Garnet, doubtless attracted very general notice; and the allusion

to his gross equivocation and perjury thus recent, and probably the common topick of discourse, must have been instantly understood, and loudly applauded. “A true and perfect Relation of the whole Proceedings” against him and his confederates, which was published by authority in 1606, gave to the proceedings still greater notoriety.

In a letter written by Mr. John Chamberlain to Mr. Winwood, April 5, 1606, after mentioning that Garnet was arraigned at Guildhall the 28th of last month for high treason, and stating some of the evidence, he adds, “But how far these men are to be believed on their protestations and oaths, my Lord Salisbury [one of the commissioners on Garnet's trial] made known by two notable instances; having first shewed that by reason of their impudent slanders and reports we are driven to another course than they do [pursue] in other countrys by way of torture: for if they dye in prison, they give out that we have starved or tortured them to death; if they kill themselves, we make them away: so that we are feign to flatter and pamper them, and get out matters by fair means as we can. So that by the cunning of his keeper, Garnet being brought into a fool's paradise, had diverse conferences with Hall, his fellow priest, in the Tower, which were overheard by spialls set on purpose. With which being charged, he stiffly denyed it; but being still urged, and some light given him that they had notice of it, he persisted still, with protestation upon his soul and salvation, that there had passed no such interlocution: till at last, being confronted with Hall, he was driven

to confess. And being now asked in this audience, how he could solve this lewd perjurie, he answered, “that, so long as he thought they had no proof, he was not bound to accuse himself; but when he saw they had proof, he stood not long in it.’ And then fell into a large discourse defending equivocation, with many weak and frivolous distinctions.

“The other example was of Francis Tresham; who in his confession having accused Garnet, and now drawing to his end in the Tower, his wife was permitted to have access to him; by whose means, (as is thought), not four hours before his death, he wrote a letter to my lord of Salisbury, contradicting whatsoever he had said of Garnet; protesting before God, to whom he was now going, and upon his soul and salvation, that he had accused him falsely, and that he had not seen him these sixteen years last past. Whereas it was manifestly proved, both by Garnet himself, Mrs. Vaux, and others, that he had been with him in three several places this last year; and once not many days before the blow should have been given. And [Garnet] being now asked what he knew of this man, he smilingly answered, that he thought he meant to equivocate^{8 note}.”

A few extracts from Garnet's Trial, printed by authority, will still more clearly show, that the perjury and equivocation of the Jesuit were here particularly alluded to by Shakspeare.

In stating the case, Sir Edward Coke, the Attorney-General, observed, that “Catesby, fearing

that any of those whom he had or should take into confederacy, being touched in conscience with the horrour of so damnable a fact, might give it over, and endanger the discovery of the plot, seeks to Garnet (as being the superior of the Jesuits, and therefore of high estimation and authority amongst all those of the Romish religion) to have his judgment and resolution in conscience concerning the lawfulness of the fact, that thereby he might be able to give satisfaction to any who should, in that behalf, make doubt or scruple to go forward in that treason. And therefore Catesby, coming to Garnet, propoundeth to him the case, and asketh, whether ‘for the good and promotion of the catholick cause against hereticks,’ [or, as the poet terms it, ‘for God's sake,’] ‘the necessity of time and occasion so requiring, it be lawful or not, amongst many nocents to destroy and take away some innocents also;’ to this question Garnet advisedly and resolvedly answered, that if the advantage were greater to the Catholick part, by taking away some innocents, together with many nocents, then doubtless it should be lawful to kill and destroy them all.”

Again:

“Then were the two witnesses called for; both of them persons of good estimation, that over-heard the interlocution between Garnet and Hall the Jesuit; viz. Mr. Fauset, a man learned and a justice of peace, and Mr. Lockerson: but Mr. Fauset, being not present, was sent for to appear; and, in the mean while, Mr. Lockerson, who being deposed before Garnet, delivered, upon his oath, that they heard

Garnet say to Hall, ‘They will charge me with my prayer for the good success of the great action, in the beginning of the Parliament, and with the verses which I added to the end of my prayer:

“‘It is true, indeed (said Garnet), that I prayed for the good success of that great action; but I will tell them that I meant it in respect of some sharper laws, which I feared they would then make against Catholicks; and that answer will serve well enough.’”

Again:

“Garnet having protested, upon his trial, that ‘When Father Greenwell made him acquainted with the whole plot, and all the particulars of it, he was very much distempered, and could never sleep quietly afterwards, but sometimes prayed to God that it should not take effect; the Earl of Salisbury replied, that ‘he should do well to speak clearly of his devotion in that point; for otherwise he must put him to remember that he had confessed to the Lords that he had offered sacrifice to God for stay of that plot, unless it were for the good of the Catholick cause; and in no other fashion (said his lordship) was this state beholding to you for your masses and oblations.’”

In stating one of the points alluded to by Chamberlain in his Letter to Secretary Winwood, Lord Salisbury reminded Garnet, “after the interlocution between him and Hall, when he was called before all

the lords, and was asked, not what he said, but whether Hall and he had conference together (desiring him not to equivocate), how stiffly he denied it upon his soul, retracting it with so many detestable execrations as the Earl said, it wounded their hearts to hear him; and yet as soon as Hall had confessed it, he grew ashamed, cried the lords mercy, and said he had offended, if equivocation did not help him.”

Here certainly we have abundant proofs of “an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God's sake, and yet could not equivocate to heaven.”

If these observations should be acknowledged to be just, and yet it should be maintained that in strict reasoning they only prove that the tragedy of Macbeth was written subsequently to the trial of Garnet, it may be remarked, that allusions and references of this kind are generally made while the facts are yet recent in the minds of the writer and the audience, and before their impression has been weakened by subsequent events. When, therefore, we advert to the other circumstances which have induced me to refer this tragedy to the year 1606, this allusion, aided and supported as it is by their concurring circumstances, appears to me to furnish a strong confirmation of the date which has been assigned to it.

The third circumstance mentioned by the Porter is that of “an English tailor stealing out of a French hose;” the humour of which, as Dr. Warburton has rightly remarked, consists in this, that the French hose

being [then] very short and strait, a tailor must be master of his trade who could steal any thing from them.” From a passage in our author's Henry V. and from other proofs, we know, that about the year 1597 the French hose were very large and lusty; but, doubtless, between that year and 1600 they had adopted the fashion here alluded to; and we know, as I have elsewhere observed, that French fashions were very quickly adopted in England. Some are (says a writer in 1604) so inconstant in their attire, that the variety of their garments pregnantly proveth the fickleness of their heade. . . . . And surely the Frenchmen and Englishmen, of all nations are (not without good cause) noted and condemned of this lightness; the one for invention, the other for imitating. In other thinges we thinke them our inferiours, and here we make them our maisters: and some I have heard very contemptuously say, that scarcely a new forme of breeches appeared in the French Kings kitchen, but presently they were translated into the Court of England^{9 note}.” From the following passage in The Black Year, by Anthony Nixon, 4to. 1606, it may be presumed that this new mode of dress had been then adopted in England:

“Gentlemen this year shall be much wronged by their taylors, for their consciences are now much larger then ever they were; for where [whereas]

they were wont to steale but half a yeard of brood cloth in making up a payre of breeches, now they do largely nicke their customers in the lace too; and take more than enough, for the new fashions sake, besides their old ones.” The words printed in italics, I am aware, may relate only to the lace; but I rather think that the meaning is, that whereas, formerly, tailors used to steal half a yard of cloth in making a pair of breeches, but now they cheat in the lace also; and steal more than enough of the cloth for the sake of making the breeches close and tight, agreeably to the new fashion. In a preceding passage, the writer repeats Wright's words already quoted, without any acknowledgement, “This year many,” &c.

Guthrie asserts in his History of Scotland, that King James, “to prove how thoroughly he was emancipated from the tutelage of his clergy, desired Queen Elizabeth in the year 1599 to send him a company of English comedians. She complied, and James gave them a licence to act in his capital and in his court. I have great reason to think (adds the historian), that the immortal Shakspeare was of the number^{2 note}. But his drama, which finds access at this day to the most insensible hearts, had no charms in the eyes of the presbyterian clergy. They threatened excommunication to all who attended the playhouse. Many forebore to attend the theatrical exhibitions.

James considered the insolent interposition of the clergy as a fresh attack upon his prerogative, and ordered those who had been most active, to retract their menaces, which they unwillingly did; and we are told that the playhouse was then greatly crouded.”

A more correct statement of this anecdote of theatrical history will be found in the History of the Stage, vol. iii.; but it is certain, that James, after his accession to the English throne, was a great encourager of theatrical exhibitions. From 1604 to 1608 he devoted himself entirely to hunting, masques, plays, tiltings, &c. In 1605 he visited Oxford. From a book entitled Rex Platonicus, cited by Dr. Farmer, we learn, that on entering the city the king was addressed by three students of St. John's College, who alternately accosted his majesty, reciting some Latin verses, founded on the prediction of the weird sisters relative to Banquo and Macbeth^{4 note}.

Dr. Farmer is of opinion, that this performance preceded Shakspeare's play; a supposition which is strengthened by the silence of the author of Rex Platonicus, who, if Macbeth had then appeared on the stage, would probably have mentioned something of it. It should be likewise remembered, that there subsisted at that time, a spirit of opposition and rivalship between the regular players and the academicks of the two universities; the latter of whom frequently acted plays both in Latin and English, and seem to have piqued themselves on the

superiority of their exhibitions to those of the established theatres^{5 note}

In the following July (1606) the King of Denmark came to England on a visit to his sister, Queen Anne, and on the third of August was installed a knight of the garter. “There is nothing to be heard at court,” (says Drummond of Hawthornden in a letter dated that day), “but sounding of trumpets, hautboys, musick, revellings, and comedies.” Perhaps during this visit Macbeth was first exhibited.

This tragedy contains an allusion to the union of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, under one sovereign, and also to the cure of the king's evil by the royal touch^{6 note}. A ritual for the healing of that distemper was established early

in this reign; but in what year that pretended power was assumed by King James I. is uncertain.

Macbeth was not entered on the Stationers' books, nor printed, till 1623.

In the tragedy of Cæsar and Pompey, or Cæsar's Revenge, are these lines:

If the author of that play, which was published in 1607, should be thought to have had Macbeth's soliloquy in view (which is not unlikely), this circumstance may add some degree of probability to the supposition that this tragedy had appeared before that year:

At the time when Macbeth is supposed to have been written, the subject, it is probable, was considered as a topick the most likely to conciliate the favour of the court. In the additions to Warner's Albion's England, which were first printed in 1606, the story of “The Three Fairies or Weird Elves,” as he calls them, is shortly told, and King James's descent from Banquo carefully deduced.

Ben Jonson, a few years afterwards, paid his court to his majesty by his Masque of Queens^{7 note}, presented at Whitehall, Feb. 12, 1609; in which he has given

a minute detail of all the magick rites that are by recorded King James in his book of Dæmonologie, or by any other author ancient or modern.

In the former editions of this Essay, the play entitled The Witch, and written by Thomas Middleton, has been represented as preceding Macbeth. That piece had long been unnoticed in manuscript, till it was discovered, in the year 1779, by the late Mr. Steevens, in the collection of the late Thomas Pearson, Esq. On the first discovery, both he and I were exceedingly struck by the songs introduced in this piece; of which it was obvious, at the first view, that D'Avenant had availed himself in the alterations and additions made to this play after the Restoration. Mr. Steevens, having perused the manuscript before it fell into my hands, wrote the note inserted below^{8 note}

it here holds in this Essay, and which, from respect to him, I yet suffer it to retain; but I am now

clearly of opinion that I too hastily acquiesced in his notion concerning the priority of that play to

Macbeth, and that the Witch was not written till some years afterwards, probably not till about the year

1613. The grounds of this opinion I shall now lay before the reader.

Thinking it proper, on the present occasion, to read this piece over a second time with the greatest

attention, I discovered that it contained the following notes of time, which, though perhaps no one of them furnishes a decisive proof of what I have stated, yet, when combined together, afford, in my opinion, a sufficient ground for attributing this play to the period I have mentioned.

The first passage that deserves our notice is the following, in the first scene. The speaker is Florida, a courtesan:

I am aware that perfumed gloves and jerkins were much in fashion, even in the time of Queen Elizabeth; and continued to be so in the time of James the First; but I very much doubt whether there was any established trade of this kind, so as to give a specifick and distinct denomination to the vender of perfumery, early in the reign of James, though about the middle of his reign, such perfumers may have been common enough. In 1603, Don Juan de Taxis, the Spanish Ambassador, brought in his train to London a perfumer^{9 note}, which he scarcely would have done, had such a trade been established in London.

The second passage that I shall take notice of is also in the same scene:

After the conference at Hampton Court, in 1604, the dramatick writers much more frequently introduced strokes at the Puritans than they did before; and particularly about 1607 and 1608, and for some years afterwards. This speech, therefore, seems rather to point to the period to which I attribute the Witch,

than to the reign of Elizabeth, or the first year of King James.

In the same scene, the same speaker says—

The country house here alluded to was at Brentford; and in the plays written in 1607, and for some years afterwards, there are frequent allusions to the practice of carrying women of the town thither. I have not observed such allusions in the plays of an earlier period.

In the second scene of the same act, Hecate speaking of Stradling says,

In the time of Elizabeth doubtless instances enough may be found of the dates of houses being placed on some part of the building: but as it is well known that a great accession of wealth was poured into England after the peace with Spain, it may be presumed that this circumstance gave rise to many new buildings in every county of England, as we

have decisive proofs it did to an immense addition to London between the King's accession and the middle of his reign. The numerous buildings that were erected in various parts of the country towards the middle of his reign, with their anno domini duly affixed, were then more likely to attract the poet's observation; and consequently this circumstance also leads to a later date than has been assigned to this piece. With respect to the five pound picture I have reason to believe that this was the ordinary price of a portrait about the year 1612 or 1613; but whether it was not also the price about the accession of James, I have no means of determining. If it was, it supplies no aid to my hypothesis. In October, 1612, Robert Peake, picture maker, who was afterwards knighted, received on the Council's warrant twenty pounds for painting three several pictures, at the command and for the use of the Duke of York, afterwards Charles I. We may presume that this was a liberal payment, and that five pounds was then the price paid by persons in a less elevated station than the king's son.^{1 note} Cornelius Jansen's price at that time for a head, or, as the painters call it, a three quarters cloth, was five broad pieces. Mr. Walpole has stated that Jansen came into England about the year 1618; but this is a mistake; for I have a portrait painted by him, dated 1611, which had belonged for more than a century to a family that lived at Chelsea.

In the last scene of the fourth act we find these lines:

It is extremely difficult to ascertain the precise period when horse-races were generally and publickly established, with known and fixed prizes for the victor. It has already been observed, that probably from a very early period private horse-races, or matches for wagers, were common; and we know from Camden, that in 1594, or before, publick annual races were established in Yorkshire, in which a small gold bell was allotted to the winning horse. But I doubt much whether this practice prevailed in any other county, or at least in any county in the neighbourhood of London, before the middle of King James's time. Markham, who in 1606 republished his treatise on horsemanship, which had appeared in 1599, has in each edition a chapter on the running horse; but he speaks only of private matches; and I cannot find any allusion in either edition to a publick or established horse-race, or to what was afterwards called a bell course, from the small bell which has been already mentioned as the usual prize of the victor in the infancy of this amusement. That no such publick establishment existed any where but in the North, may be inferred also (as has been already observed) from the silence of a writer in 1609. But in 1612 certainly there appears to have been publick horse-races at Croydon, in Surrey, near enough to London to attract the

notice of the writers of the day; and accordingly Dekker, in 1613, gave to one of his numerous pamphlets the title of A Wonderful Strange Horse Race.

Having found no notice of any publick horse-race that was likely to attract the notice of a London dramatick poet before that at Croydon in 1612, I incline therefore to think that the allusion in Middleton's play to this amusement was made about that time; being more likely to have been suggested by a well known and established practice, the theme of general conversation, than by either the private matches of individuals, or the more publick exhibitions in the remote county of York, which, however celebrated or well attended in that district, probably were wholly unknown to the greater part of the inhabitants of London. If it shall hereafter be discovered that public races were established at Croydon soon after the accession of King James to the English throne, or on Enfield Chase (both which places have been already mentioned as being early celebrated for this kind of sport), the passage which we have here considered, can have no weight in the decision of this question.

The next passage which demands our notice is one that appears to me to point to a later period than has hitherto been assigned to this play.

In Act II. Sc. I. Francisca, alluding to her being with child, says,

It is certain that some voyages of discovery had been made to the East Indies, and that some little trade was carried on from England thither, in the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and accordingly, Shakspeare, in or about the year 1601, makes Falstaff say, while he is exulting in the prospects of his success with the merry wives of Windsor, “I will be 'cheater to them both, and they shall be an Exchequer to me; they shall be my East and West Indies, and I will trade to them both.”.

It has already been mentioned that Queen Elizabeth's charter was granted to the East India Company on the last day of December, 1601. Between that time and the year 1605 there were but three adventures to the East Indies; one consisting of four ships, which sailed in 1602; in 1604 three ships were fitted out, and in 1605 three more: in 1607 two ships sailed; and in 1609, one: but all these were foreign built, and purchased abroad, by the company. At length, in 1610, having previously received from King James an enlargement of their charter, they built a large ship of 1200 tons, which was named the Trade's Increase, by King James, who dined on board the new-built vessel when she was named. The commander of this ship was Sir Henry Middleton, perhaps a relation of the poet; and he sailed in spring 1611; but he never returned. Now in the infant state of that trade between the years 1601 and 1605, during which period so very few ships went from England to the East Indies, it appears to me extremely unlikely that the writer of the Witch should have been attentive to

the circumstance of these vessels being furnished with the due store of powdered or salted provisions for their voyage; though afterwards the notorious fact of a great ship being for the first time built at home for this trade, and of its being honoured by the king's dining on board her the day she was named, would naturally attract his attention, more especially as the person who had the command of this vessel, was his namesake, if not his relation. This observation, therefore, stands nearly on the same ground with that just now made. It is not asserted that the poet could not possibly have had any experience of an East India ship being furnished with salted provisions for her voyage, between the year 1601 and 1605; but that at a more advanced period, and particularly in 1612 or 1613, after the publick notice had recently been attracted by the ceremonial which has been mentioned, such a circumstance was more likely to present itself to his mind. But there are other arguments, drawn from a re-perusal of this play, which have added to my conviction that this play was not produced till several years after our author's tragedy, probably not before 1613.

The paragraph most material for our consideration is that which Middleton himself has prefixed to his play: “The tragi-coomodie called the Witch, long since acted by his Ma^ties. Servants at the Blackfriers.”

On the words long since, Mr. Steevens much relied; but if we turn to the preface to the second edition of this author's comedy, called A Mad World my Masters, by the bookseller who published it, we shall see how short a portion of time was understood

in those days by the term long since; for in this preface, published in 1640, he tells us that the author was long since dead: now he was certainly living in 1627; and therefore supposing even that he died in that year, it appears that a period of thirteen years was considered sufficient to justify such an expression as Middleton has used concerning his tragi-comedy. If his play was performed in 1613 or 1614, and this recovered copy addressed to Mr. Holmes in 1626 or 1627, this interval, we see, would warrant such a description as he has given of this piece, which is very material in our present inquiry; for Middleton wrote the Widow with Fletcher and Massinger doubtless after 1613; hence, and from the vogue of Fletcher, he might catch his manner. The metre of the Witch strongly resembles that of Fletcher. He adds, that it was played by his Majesty's servants at the Blackfriars. There is good reason to believe that the house in Blackfriars did not become the established theatre of the king's servants till the year 1613; when the Globe being burnt down, they were obliged to find another playhouse.

From that period to the suppression of the theatres in 1641, this theatre was their great place of scenical representation; for though about the year 1620, or soon afterwards, the Globe appears to have been repaired, very few plays only were occasionally acted; and it at length became devoted to prize fighting, and other low exhibitions. On the contrary, before the fire (from 1603 to 1613), we have not a single play extant which is said to have been performed by the king's servants at Blackfriars. In the patent in

1603, and the paper signed by Mr. Tylney in 1604, no mention is made of this theatre: and King Lear is expressly mentioned as being acted by the King's Company at the Globe, their usual theatre. Possibly it may be said that this very word imports that sometimes they exhibited elsewhere even during the period I have mentioned. Perhaps they might, but I believe very rarely: and if ever in this period they acted at the Blackfriars, they must have hired the house for the night; for during this while this house appears to have been possessed by the Children of the Revels and the Children of the Chapel; for in this period we find no less than twenty-five new plays represented there by these children; so that during this period it appears to have been the established theatre of the Children of the Revels and of the King's Chapel, and not of his Majesty's own servants.

Some obscurity has been thrown on this subject by the title pages of different editions of our old plays. Thus, for example, Beaumont and Fletcher's King and No King, which was one of their early plays, was originally represented at the Globe, and is so described in the first edition in 1619. But in a subsequent edition at a later period, the editor in 1625, knowing how often it had been acted at Blackfriars, (where probably it was revived in 1619, when the play was first published), substitutes these words: “Acted at the B. F. by his Maj. Servants;” and the Dramatic Dictionaries tell us, in consequence, that this play was acted at these two theatres, and so undoubtedly it was, but not at the same period. This

observation I shall presently apply to some of Middleton's plays.

Middleton has left us eighteen plays of his own composition. He appears to have begun to write for the stage soon after the year 1600; and between that year and 1608, he produced seven plays, Blurt Master Constable, The Phœnix, Michaelmas Term, A Trick to Catch the Old One, A Mad World my Masters, The Family of Love, and Your Five Gallants. —Now every one of these, his early plays, were performed by children; the first four by the Children of Pauls, at their own usual place of exhibition; the other two by the Children of the Revels at Blackfriars; where, as I have already mentioned, they usually performed from the accession of King James to the year 1613. After that year, two of those plays, A Mad World my Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One, were revived by the King's Servants at Blackfriars; and in consequence, in the editions of these plays, the one in 1616, the other in 1640, they are truly said to have been performed at Blackfriars, and no other theatre is mentioned, that being then the favourite and fashionable house; and the others quite passed away and forgotten. The same things as I have mentioned above, happened with respect to King and No King and several other plays.

To pursue Middleton further, on examining the title-pages and history of his other plays produced after 1608 (though we have less concern with them, because if the Witch preceded Macbeth, it must have been produced before 1606), we shall find that he

had very little connection with the Blackfriars Company. His Chaste Maid of Cheapside was performed at the Swan in Southwark, by Prince Charles's Servants between 1613 and 1620; his Roaring Girl (written in conjunction with Dekker), at the Fortune, by Alleyn's Company in or before 1611; his Changeling, at Salisbury Court, in or before 1623; his Fair Quarrel, in or before 1622, at the Fortune; his Spanish Gipsey, between 1617 and 1623, at the Phœnix, in Drury Lane. I have now accounted for thirteen of his plays out of eighteen, none of which were produced originally by the King's Servants. Of the other five, the Mayor of Queenborough should seem to have been originally acted in 1602, by Alleyn's Company. The Game at Chess was acted at the Globe by the King's Servants in 1625; and the other four, Any Thing for a Quiet Life, No Wit Like a Woman's, More Dissemblers beside Women, and Women beware Women, being published long after his death, it is reasonable to suppose were acted at a late period, I mean between 1613 and 1625, rather at some other theatre than the Blackfriars; though, if it should turn out that they were every one performed there, it would not at all affect the present argument^{2 note}.

From all these premises, I think it reasonable to conclude, as Middleton's early plays were performed by the Children of the Chapel or the Children of Pauls,

and, as we are told by the author himself, that his piece was performed by the King's Servants at the Blackfriars, that play must have been produced after 1613, when they first became possessed of that theatre; and if so, it can have no claim to contest precedence with Macbeth, which unquestionably was acted in 1606.

Other pieces of equal curiosity with this play, may, perhaps, be hereafter discovered; for the names of several ancient plays are preserved, which are not known to have been ever printed. Thus we hear of Valentine and Orson, plaied by her Majesties players, —The tragedy of Ninus and Semiramis,—Titirus and Galathea,—Godfrey of Bulloigne,—The Cradle of Securitie,—Hit the Naile o' the Head,—Sir Thomas More, (Harl. MS. 7,368,)—The Isle of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe,—The comedy of Fidele and Fortunatus,—The famous tragedy of The Destruction of Jerusalem, by Dr. Legge,—The Freeman's Honour, by William Smith,—Mahomet and Irene, the Faire Greek,—The Play of the Cards,—Cardenio, —The Knaves,—The Knot of Fools,—Raymond Duke of Lyons,—The Nobleman, by Cyril Tourneur, —[the last five, acted in the year 1613,] The Honoured Loves,—The Parliament of Love,—and Nonsuch, a comedy; all by William Rowley:—The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, by the author of The Return from Parnassus:—Believe as you List, by Massinger:—The Pirate, by Davenport:—Rosania or Love's Victory, a comedy by Shirley (some of whose plays were extant in MS. in Langbaine's time): —The Twins, a tragedy, acted in 1613:—Tancredo,

a tragedy, by Sir Henry Wotton:—Demetrius and Marsina, or the imperial Impostor and unhappy Heroine, a tragedy,—The Tyrant, a tragedy,—The Queen of Corsica,—The Bugbears,—The Second Maid's Tragedy,—Timon, a comedy:—Catiline's Conspiracy, a tragedy,—and Captain Mario, a comedy, both by Stephen Gosson:—The True Historie of George Scanderbeg, as played by the right hon. the Earl of Oxenforde's servants,—Jane Shore,— The Bold Beauchamps,—The Second Part of Sir John Oldcastle,—The General,—The Toy,—The Tell-Tale^{3 note}, a comedy,—The Woman's Plot,—The Woman's too hard for Him, [both acted at court in 1621,]—The Love-sick Maid, [acted at court in 1629,]—Fulgius and Lucrelle,—The Fool Transformed, a comedy,—The History of Lewis the Eleventh, King of France, a tragi-comedy,—The Chaste Woman against her Will, a comedy,—The Tooth-Drawer, a comedy,—Honour in the End, a comedy,—The History of Don Quixote, or the Knight of the ill-favoured Countenance, a comedy,— The Fair Spanish Captive, a tragi-comedy,—The Tragedy of Heildebrand,—Love yields to Honour,— The Noble Friend, &c. &c. Soon after the Restoration, one Kirkman, a bookseller, printed many dramatick pieces that had remained unpublished for more than sixty years: and in an advertisement

subjoined to “A true, perfect, and exact catalogue of all the comedies, tragedies, &c. that were ever yet printed and published, till this present year, 1671,” he says, that although there were, at that time, but eight hundred and six plays in print, yet many more had been written and acted, and that “he himself had some quantity in manuscript.”—The resemblance between Macbeth and this newly discovered piece by Middleton, naturally suggests a wish, that if any of the unpublished plays, above enumerated, be yet in being, (beside The Second Maid's Tragedy, The Tell-Tale, Timon, and Sir Thomas More, which are well known to be extant), their possessors would condescend to examine them with attention; as hence, perhaps, new lights might be thrown on others of our author's plays.

It has been already suggested, that it is probable our author, about the time of his composing Cymbeline and Macbeth, devoted some part of his leisure to the reading of the lives of Cæsar and Antony in North's translation of Plutarch. In the play before us there are two passages which countenance that conjecture. “Under him,” says Macbeth,

The allusion here is to a passage in the Life of Antony; where Shakspeare also found an account of “the insane root that takes the reason prisoner,” which he has introduced in Macbeth.

A passage in the 8th book of Daniel's Civil Wars seems to have been formed on one in this tragedy^{4 note}.

The seventh and eighth books of Daniel's poem were first printed in 1609.

31. Coriolanus, 1610. 32. Timon of Athens, 1610.

These two plays were neither entered in the books of the Stationers' Company, nor printed, till 1623. Shakspeare, in the course of somewhat more than twenty years, having produced thirty-four or thirty-five dramas, we may presume that he was not idle any one year of that time. Most of his other plays have been attributed, on plausible grounds at least, to former years. As we have no proof to ascertain when the two plays under our consideration were written, it seems reasonable to ascribe them to that period. to which we are not led by any particular circumstance to attribute any other of his works; at which, it is supposed, he had not ceased to write; which yet, unless these pieces were then composed, must, for aught that now appears, have been unemployed. When once he had availed himself of North's Plutarch, and had thrown any one of the lives into a dramatick form, he probably found it so easy as to induce him to proceed, till he had exhausted all the subjects which he imagined that book would afford. Hence the four plays of Julius Cæsar, Antony and Cleopatra, Timon, and Coriolanus, are supposed to have been written in succession. At the time he was writing Cymbeline and Macbeth there is reason to believe he began to study Plutarch with a particular view to the use he might make of it on the stage^{8 note}. The Lives of Cæsar and Antony are nearly connected with each other, and furnished

him with the fables of two plays: and in the latter of these lives he found the subject of a third, Timon of Athens.

SECTION XVI.

[It is with deep regret, in which the reader, I have no doubt, will participate, that here that portion of

the Life of Shakspeare which Mr. Malone had prepared for the press is brought to a close; and consequently

it has devolved upon me to arrange, as well as I am able, those particulars which I have been able to collect from his papers, and to incorporate them with those facts and statements which have hitherto been appended to the life of the poet by Mr. Rowe. Wherever it is possible, I shall give Mr. Malone's

memoranda in his own words. That they are not more numerous, is much to be lamented; but, from the scattered state in which his papers were kept, a number of curious matters of research, are, I fear, irrecoverably lost. Among these is the account he seems to have promised of Shakspeare's brother Edmund, of whom I find no mention but the register of his burial, which Mr. Chalmers has already laid before the publick in his Additions to the History of the Stage. It is, at the same time, a subject of congratulation, that he had proceeded thus far; and has shown, by an examination of the legendary tales which have so long been current respecting Shakspeare's early years, that they are wholly groundless; and that the greatest genius which his country has produced, maintained, from his youth upwards, that respectability of character which unquestionably belonged to him in after life.]

After the discussion which has already been gone through respecting the probable order in which those dramas which were entirely written by Shakspeare were produced, it becomes necessary to mention two others, which have been admitted into the collection of his works, from a notion that they received some improvements from his pen—Pericles, and Titus Andronicus. Respecting the first, there appears to have been no doubt entertained by the numerous criticks who have delivered their opinions on this drama, that the hand of our great poet is clearly discernible in many parts of it, while the remainder is altogether unworthy of his genius. Mr. Malone was, at one period, indeed, inclined to attribute the

whole to him, but was subsequently convinced of his error, and acknowledged it with that candour and love of truth by which he was invariably influenced. Titus Andronicus is also still suffered to retain its place, from the same notion, that Shakspeare had mingled a few brilliant passages of his own with the baser matter of which it is generally formed. Of this, which I cannot but think a very questionable theory, the reader is left to form his own judgment. Five other plays have been printed under his name, in the folio 1664, which have not the slightest claim to such a distinction—Locrine, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cromwell, The London Prodigal, The Puritan. A sixth, The Yorkshire Tragedy, was pronounced by Mr. Steevens, when it was republished by Mr. Malone, in his Supplement, to have been a hasty performance by Shakspeare. This opinion he seems, however, to have silently abandoned; and it has since been deservedly consigned to the same neglect with the rest. If internal evidence were not sufficient to prove that dramas so utterly worthless had been absurdly ascribed to so great a name, we are furnished by the Henslowe MSS., which the reader will find in the third volume, with satisfactory information respecting one of them, namely, Sir John Oldcastle, from which it appears that it was the production of four writers—Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway. See vol. iii. p. 329. Some other plays, with about equal pretensions, have also been given to our author—The Arraignment of Paris, The Birth of Merlin, Edward III., Fair Emma, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, and Mucedorus. Of these, The Arraignment of Paris is known to have been written

by George Peele: The Birth of Merlin, by Rowley; although it is said in the title-page, 1662, probably by a fraud of the bookseller, to be the joint production of that dramatist and Shakspeare. Edward the Third was said to be Shakspeare's, by Mr. Capell, confessedly upon no ground but his opinion that no one else, at that period, could have written it. It is found in that gentleman's Prolusions, 1760. Fair Emma rests upon no authority whatever. The Merry Devil of Edmonton was entered on the Stationers' books, by H. Mosely, about the time of the Restoration, as Shakspeare's; but there is a former entry, in 1608, in which it is said to be written by T. B. whom Mr. Malone conjectures to have been Tony or Antony Brewer. Mucedorus, he thinks, was the production of Robert Greene. Shakspeare has also been supposed to have had a share in two other dramas, in which, if we should adopt that notion, he was associated with two highly distinguished contemporaries. He is said to have assisted Jonson in Sejanus; and Fletcher, in The Two Noble Kinsmen. His connection with Jonson rests only on tradition; for, although that poet has mentioned a coadjutor, he has not recorded his name; and Mr. Gifford is disposed to question whether Shakspeare was the person to whom he has alluded; and as the passages supplied by this nameless friend were omitted when this piece was published, we have no opportunity of judging from internal evidence. A very considerable difference of opinion has prevailed with regard to The Two Noble Kinsmen. Mr. Steevens's sentiments on this subject are given at large in a note at the conclusion of Pericles, where it is incidentally introduced; and

if the reader wishes for a further discussion of the question, it will be found in Mr. Weber's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. If I might venture to mingle in a contest which has called forth some very distinguished names, on either side, I should have no hesitation in expressing my disbelief of Shakspeare's co-operation. I can see no such similarity of style, as some criticks have thought they discovered; and the madness of the Jailor's daughter, which has been compared with that of Ophelia, would alone be sufficient to convince me that two such different representations of frenzy could not have proceeded from the same pen. Shakspeare's madness could no more be equalled than his magick. Fletcher seems to have had little notion of a deranged mind, except that of making a female talk obscenely. Mr. Weber thinks the description of the death of Arcite decidedly in Shakspeare's manner. I should be sorry to admit this observation to be just. The opening of this speech appears to me to be deplorably frigid:
“&lblank; List then, your cousin,
“Mounted, upon a steed that Emily
“Did first bestow on him, a black one, owing
“Not a hair worth of white, which some will say
“Weakens his price, and many will not buy
“His goodness with this note: which superstition
“Here finds allowance; on this horse is Arcite,
“Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins
“Did rather tell than trample; for the horse
“Would make his length a mile if't pleased his rider
“To put pride in him. As he thus went courting
“The flinty pavement, dancing as 'twere to the musick
“His own hoofs made (for, as they say, from iron
“Came musick's origin), what envious flint,

“Cold as old Saturn, and, like him, possess'd
“With fire malevolent, darted a spark,
“Or what fierce sulphur else, to this end made,
“I comment not,” &c. Surely in this there is nothing Shakspearian. If Dr. Donne had undertaken to write a tragedy, he could not have introduced into it any thing more thoroughly unsuited to a description of this nature than the whimsical parenthesis about the origin of musick.

But the poetry of Shakspeare was by no means confined to the drama. There are other productions of his muse, which, notwithstanding the contemptuous manner in which they are spoken of by Mr. Steevens, were the subjects of high admiration among his contemporaries. A collection of his sonnets was published at so late a period as 1609; but they are mentioned by Meres, in 1598, and bear evident marks of being early compositions. The time at which they were written cannot be accurately ascertained; and the question as to their date must materially depend upon the judgment which the reader may form as to the topicks which they were meant to embrace, and the circumstances by which they were suggested. Of these, a discussion will be found in the twentieth volume of this work, where they are carefully reprinted, with all the illustrations which his commentators could supply. The Lover's Complaint was appended to our author's sonnets in 1609; and The Passionate Pilgrim was printed with his name, by William Jaggard, in 1599. Two other poems remain to be mentioned, which were unquestionably

of an early date: his Venus and Adonis which was first committed to the press in 1593, and his Rape of Lucrece, which was published in the following year. The intrinsick merit of these poems, of which the first long retained its popularity among youthful readers; and the second, which, as we are informed by Gabriel Harvey, was estimated so highly by persons of a graver description, that it was placed in the same rank with Hamlet; would be sufficient to recommend them to our attention: but they derive an additional interest from being dedicated to our poet's amiable patron, Lord Southampton, in the only prose compositions of Shakspeare not in a dramatick form, which have come down to us. Of this accomplished nobleman, a short memoir is given in the twentieth volume of this edition; but those particulars which more immediately relate to his connection with the poet, are reserved for this place. Lord Southampton's attachment to theatrical entertainments is strongly pointed out by a letter from Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert Sidney, dated in the latter part of the year 1599, which is preserved in the Sidney Papers, vol. ii. p. 132: “My Lord Southampton, and Lord Rutland, came not to the court [at Nonsuch]. The one doth but very seldom. They pass away the time in London merely in going to plaies every day.” A cricumstance in his personal history may have given him this bias, and may also have been the means of introducing Shakspeare to his acquaintance. His mother, the Countess Dowager Southampton, was married, probably before 1580, to a second husband, Sir Thomas Heneage, who had long been Treasurer of the

Chambers to the Queen, an office by which he was, in some sort, connected with the stage; all the payments made to the several companies of comedians then in being, for plays exhibited at court, belonging to his department. It is not an improbable supposition that Shakspeare, even then being distinguished for the decorum and propriety of his conduct and manners, may have been deputed by his company to wait upon the treasurer, and receive his commands. Lord Southampton would, of course, be a frequent visiter at his mother's, and would thus have an opportunity of being thrown in the way of the young ingenious, but modest and unassuming poet. This circumstance, combined with the high character which the Earl had acquired, even at that early age, might have induced Shakspeare to solicit his patronage for the first heir of his invention, the poem of Venus and Adonis, which was published in the year 1593, when he himself was only twenty-nine, and his patron had not yet attained his twentieth year.

Even at so early an age, the Earl of Southampton was distinguished for his love of literature and his patronage of literary men. His liberality to the votaries of the muses is celebrated by Barnaby Barnes^{1 note} in a sonnet addressed to him in the very year when Shakspeare's first poem appeared, in which he

expresses a hope that his verses “if graced by that heavenly countenance which gives light to the muses,” may be able to resist the malignant shafts of envy. About the same time, the ingenious Thomas Nash, then rising into reputation as a novellist and a satirical writer, has dedicated to him one of his tracts^{2 note}; and not long afterwards he is mentioned with respect by Camden and Jervais Markham, the latter of whom, in a sonnet prefixed to his poem on the death of Sir Richard Grenville, alludes to the high character he had already acquired as a patron of poets; and if I mistake not, to the countenance he had shown to the productions of Shakspeare^{3 note}

. But the most honourable testimony to his merit, is given by Shakspeare himself in the two Dedications which I have already mentioned; in both of which we find evident marks of that ingenuous modesty, for which our great poet throughout his life was eminently distinguished. That Shakspeare partook of this nobleman's bounty, there can be no reason to doubt; and if we could give credit to a story which comes down to us, resting, as it is said, upon the authority of Sir William D'Avenant, he was at one time the object of unexampled