AN INQUIRY TOUCHING PLAYERS, PLAYHOUSES, AND PLAY-WRITERS IN THE DAYS OF ELIZABETH. BY WILLIAM HENRY SMITH, ESQ. TO WHICH IS APPENDED AN ABSTRACT OF A MS. RESPECTING TOBIE MATTHEW. LONDON: 36, SOHO SQUARE. M.DCCC.LVII. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I.-Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . II.—A Brief History of Shakespeare . .... 2 III.-Bacon and Shakespeare. ....... 3 IV.-Wit and Poetic Faculty of Bacon and Shakespeare . · · · · · · · · · · 13 V.—Bacon's Powers of Mind, in Youth and VI.—Evidence in Favour of Shakespeare ... 25 VII.—Parallel Passages, and Peculiar Phrases, in VIII.—Players . . . . . . . . . . . . XI.- Athenæum and other Objectors answered . . 90 XII.-Popular Errors respecting Lord Southampton XIII.—Tate, Kemble, &c., their Knowledge of XIV.-An Epitome of what has gone before . . . 143 APPENDIX.—A Brief Description of a curious MS., entitled TO HIS READERS AND REVIEWERS. By the Scotch Review, which bears the outward semblance of Buchanan, we have been reviled as a “ Caviller” and a “Smith.” The editor might have reflected that our names and lineaments we inherit, whilst our words and actions are our own. If his pages were as full of wisdom as ours are free from cavil, the visage without his book, would not be regarded as a mask, whose brains we vainly seek within ; and the Review might yet hope to attain a fame coextensive with our namema name which some wise, and many worthy men, have borne--which, though not unique, is perfectly genteel—and which has, of late years, become such a |