tannica: if, say they, this piece could be written by our poet, it would be absolutely decisive in the dispute about his learning; for many quotations appear in it from the Greek and Latin classicks.

The concurring circumstances of the name, and the misdemeanor, which is supposed to be the old story of deer-stealing, seem fairly to challenge our poet for the author: but they hesitate.-His claim may appear to be confuted by the date 1581, when Shakspere was only seventeen, and the long experience which the writer talks of.-But I will not keep the reader in suspense: the book was not written by Shakspeae.

Strype, in his Annals, calls the author SOME learned man, and this gave me the first suspicion. I knew very well, that honest John (to use the language of Sir Thomas Bodley) did not waste his time with such baggage books as plays and poems; yet I must suppose, that he had heard of the name of Shakspere. After a while I met with the original edition. Here in the title-page, and at the end of the dedication, appear only the initials, W. S. gent. and presently I was informed by Anthony Wood, that the book in question was written, not by William Shakspere, but by William Stafford, gentleman *; which at once accounted for the misdemeanor in the dedication. For Stafford had

Fasti, 2d Edit. V. I. 208.-It will be seen on turning to the former edition, that the latter part of the paragraph belongs to another Stafford.-I have since observed, that Wood is not the first who hath given us the true author of the pamphlet.

been concerned at that time, and was indeed afterward, as Camden and the other annalists inform us, with some of the conspirators against Elizabeth; which he properly calls his unduetiful behaviour.

I hope by this time, that any one open to conviction may be nearly satisfied; and I will promise to give on this head very little more trouble.

The justly celebrated Mr. Warton hath favoured us, in his Life of Dr. Bathurst, with some hearsay particulars concerning Shakspere from the papers of Aubrey, which had been in the hands of Wood; and I ought not to suppress them, as the last seems to make against my doctrine. They came originally, I find, on consulting the MS. from one Mr. Beeston: and I am sure Mr. Warton, whom I have the honour to call my friend, and an associate in the question, will be in no pain about their credit.

"William Shakspere's father was a butcher-while he was a boy. he exercised his father's trade; but, when he killed a calf, he would do it in a high style, and make a speech. This William being inclined naturally to poetry and acting, came to London, I guess, about eighteen, and was an actor in one of the play-houses, and did act exceedingly well. He began early to make essays in dramatique poetry.-The humour of the Constable in the Midsummer-Night's Dream he happened to take at Crendon * in Bucks. I think,

This place is not met with in Spelman's Villare, or in Adams's Index; nor in the first and the last performance of

I think, I have been told, that he left near three hundred pounds to a sister. He understood Latin pretty well, FOR he had been in his younger years a School-Master in the country.

I will be short in my animadversions; and take them in their order.

The account of the trade of the family is not only contrary to all other tradition, but, as it may seem, to the instrument from the Herald's office, so frequently reprinted. Shakspere most certainly went to London, and commenced actor through necessity, not natural inclination.-Nor have we any reason to suppose, that he did act exceedingly well. Rowe tells us, from the information of Betterton, who was inquisitive. into this point, and had very early opportunities of inquiry from Sir W. Davenant, that he was no extraordinary actor; and that the top of his performance Iwas the Ghost in his own Hamlet. Yet this chef d'œuvre did not please: I will give you an original stroke at it. Dr. Lodge, who was for ever pestering the town with pamphlets, published in the year 1596, Wits Miserie, and the Worlds Madnesse, discovering the Devils incarnat of this Age, 4to. One of these devils is Hate-virtue, or Sorrow for another man's good successe, who, says the doctor, is "a foule lubber, and looks as

this sort, Speed's Tables, and Whatley's Gazetteer: perhaps, however, it may be meant under the name of Crandon; but the inquiry is of no importance.—It should, I think, be written Credendon; though better antiquaries than Aubrey have acquiesced in the vulgar corruption.

pale

Fale as the vizard of the Ghost, which cried so misera. bly at the theatre, like an oister-wife, Hamlet revenge *." Thus you see Mr. Holt's supposed proof, in the appendix to the late edition, that Hamlet was written after 1597, or perhaps 1602, will by no means hold good; whatever might be the case of the particular passage on which it is founded.

*To this observation of Dr. Farmer it may be added, that the play of Hamlet was better known by this scene, than by any other. In Decker's Satiromastix the following passage occurs:

Asinius.

"Would I were hang'd, if I can tell you any names but captain and Tucca.”

Tucca.

"No, fye; my name's Hamlet Revenge: thou hast been at Paris-Garden, hast thou not?"

Again, in Westward Hoe, by Decker and Webster, 1607.

"Let these husbands play mad Hamlet, and cry revenge!' STEEVENS. Dr. Farmer's observation may be further confirmed by the following passage in an anonymous play, called A Warning for faire Women, 1599. We also learn from it the

usual dress of the stage ghosts of that time.

"Lapt in some foule sheet, or a leathern pilch, "Comes screaming like a pigge half stickt,

"And cries vindi&ta-revenge, revenge."

The leathern pilch, I suppose, was a theatrical substitute

for armour.

MALONE.

Nor

Nor does it appear, that Shakspere did begin early to make essays in dramatique poetry: the Arraignment of Paris, 1584, which hath so often been ascribed to him on the credit of Kirkman and Winstanley *, was written by George Peele; and Shakspere is not met with, even as an assistant, till at least seven years afterward +.-Nash, in his epistle to the gentlemen students of both universities, prefixed to Greene's Arcadia, 4to. black letter, recommends his friend, Peele, as the chiefe supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetrie, and primus verborum artifex: whose first increase, the Arraignment of Paris, might plead to their opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit and manifold varietie of invention ."

In

* These people, who were the Curlls of the last age, ascribe likewise to our author those miserable performances, Mucedorus, and The Merry Devil of Edmonton.

+ Mr. Pope asserts "The troublesome Raigne of King John," in two parts, 1611, to have been written by Shakspere and Rowley: which edition is a mere copy of ano ther in black letter, 1591. But I find his assertion is some

what to be doubted: for the old edition hath no name of author at all; and that of 1611, the initials only, W. Sh. in the title-page.

Peele seems to have been taken into the patronage of the Earl of Northumberland about 1593, to whom he dedicates, in that year, "The Honour of the Garter, a poem gratulatorie—the Firstling consecrated to his noble name.” -"He was esteemed," says Anthony Wood, "a most noted

poet,