Kempe, William Johnson, Baptiste Goodale, and Robert Armyn, being all of them sharers in the Black Fryers playhouse, have never given cause of displeasure in that they have brought into their plays matters of state and religion, unfit to be handled by them or to be presented before lewd spectators; neither hath any complaint in that kind ever been preferred against them or any of them. Wherefore they trust most humbly in your Lordships' consideration of their former good behaviour, being at all times ready and willing to yield obedience to any command whatsoever your Lordships in your wisdom may think in such case meet, &c. "November, 1589." Here, then, Shakspere, a sharer in the theatre, but with others below him in the list, says, and they all say, that "they have never brought into their plays matters of state and religion." The public mind in 1589-90 was furiously agitated by "matters of state and religion." A controversy was going on which is now known as that of Martin Marprelate, in which the constitution and discipline of the Church were most furiously attacked in a succession of pamphlets; and they were defended with equal violence and scurrility. Isaac Walton says,—“ There was not only one Martin Marprelate, but other venomous books daily printed and dispersed,-books that were so absurd and scurrilous, that the graver divines disdained them an answer." Walton adds,-" And yet these were grown into high esteem with the common people, till Tom Nashe appeared against them all, who was a man of a sharp wit, and the master of a scoffing, satirical, merry pen." Connected with this controversy, there was subsequently a more personal one between Nashe and Gabriel Harvey; but they were each engaged in the Marprelate dispute. Nashe was a writer for the theatre, and so was John Lyly, the author of one of the most remarkable pamphlets produced on this occasion, called, 'Pap with a Hatchet.' Harvey, it must be observed, was the intimate friend of Spenser; and in a pamphlet which he dates from Trinity Hall, November 5, 1589, he thus attacks the author of 'Pap with a Hatchet,' the more celebrated Euphuist, whom Sir Walter Scott's novel has made familiar to us : "I am threatened with a bable, and Martin menaced with a comedy-a fit motion for a jester and a player to try what may be done by employment of his faculty. Bables and comedies are parlous fellows to decipher and discourage men (that is the point) with their witty flouts and learned jerks, enough to lash any man out of countenance. Nay, if you shake the painted scabbard at me, I have done; and all you that tender the preservation of your good names were best to please Pap-Hatchet, and fee Euphues betimes, for fear lest he be moved, or some one of his apes hired, to make a play of you, and then is your credit quite undone for ever and ever. Such is the public reputation of their plays. He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher. Better anger an hundred other than two such that have the stage at commandment, and can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure."* The "bable" is the fool's bauble. We thus see that Har vey, the friend of Spenser, is threatened by one of those who "have the stage at commandment" with having a play made of him. Such plays were made in 1589, and Nashe thus boasts of them in one of his tracts printed in 1589:-" Methought❘ Vetus Comoedia began to prick him at London in the right vein, when he brought forth Divinity with a scratched face, holding of her heart as if she were sick, because Martin would have forced her; but missing of his purpose, he left the print of his nails upon her cheeeks, and poisoned her with a vomit, which he ministered unto her to make her cast up her dignities." Lyly, taking the same side, writes, "Would those comedies might be allowed to be played that are penned, and then I am sure he [Martin Marprelate] would be deciphered, and so perhaps discouraged." Here are the very words which Harvey has repeated,"He must needs be discouraged whom they decipher." Harvey, in a subsequent passage of the same tract, *Pierce's Supererogation.' Reprinted in 'Archaica,' p. 137. refers to this prostitution of the stage to party purposes in very striking words:-"The stately tragedy scorneth the trifling comedy, and the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism.” These circumstances appear to us very remarkable, with reference to the state of the drama about 1590; and we hope that we do not attach any undue importance to them from the consideration that we are now the first to point out their intimate relation with Spenser's 'Tears of the Muses,' and the light which, as it appears to us, that poem thus viewed throws upon the dramatic career of Shakspere. The four stanzas which we have quoted from Spenser are descriptive, as we think, of a period of the drama when it had emerged from the semi-barbarism by which it was characterised, "from the commencement of Shakspere's boyhood, till about the earliest date at which his removal to London can be possibly fixed." This description has nothing in common with those accounts of the drama which have reference to this "semi-barbarism." Nor does the writer of it belong to the school which considered a violation of the unities of time and place as the great defect of the English theatre. Nor does he assert his preference of the classic school over the romantic, by objecting, as Sir Philip Sidney objects, that "plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies mingling kings and clowns." There had been, according to Spenser, a state of the drama that would "Fill with pleasure The listeners' eyes, and ears with melody." Can any comedy be named, if we assume that Shakspere had, in 1590, not written any, which could be celebrated--and by the exquisite versifier of the Fairy Queen'-for its "melody"? Could any also be praised for "That goodly glee Which wont to be the glory of gay wits"? Could the plays before Shakspere be described by the most competent of judges-the most poetical mind of that age next to Shakspere—as abounding in "Fine counterfesance, and unhurtful sport, Delight, and laughter, deck'd in seemly sort" We have not seen such a comedy, except some three or four of Shakspere's, which could have existed before 1590; we do not believe there is such a comedy from any other pen. What, according to the 'Complaint of Thalia,' has banished such comedy? "Unseemly Sorrow," it appears, has been fashionable;-not the proprieties of tragedy, but a Sorrow "With hollow brows and grissly countenance ;" the violent scenes of blood which were offered for the excitement of the multitude, before the tragedy of real art was devised. But this state of the drama is shortly passed over. There is something more defined. By the side of this false tragic sit "ugly Barbarism and brutish Ignorance." These are not the barbarism and ignorance of the old stage ;—they are "Yerept of late Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm." They "now tyrannize;" they now "disguise" the fair scene "with rudeness." This description was published in 1591; it was probably written in 1590. The Muse of Tragedy, Melpomene, had previously described the "rueful spectacles" of "the stage." It was a stage which had no "true tragedy." But it had possessed "Delight, and laughter, deck'd in seemly sort." Now "the trifling comedy flouteth the new ruffianism." The words of Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser agree in this. The bravos that "have the stage at commandment can furnish out vices and devils at their pleasure," says Harvey. This describes the Vetus Comœdia-the old comedy-of which Nashe boasts; and Mr. Collier tells us that the expression Vetus Comoedia shows that such a scurrilous performance as Nashe glories in was "evidently in the nature of an old Moral, not partaking of the improvements which, in 1589, had been introduced into dramatic poetry." Can there be any doubt that Spenser had this state of things in view when he denounced the *Edinburgh Review '-previously quoted. 'Annals of the Stage,' vol. i. p. 274. "Ugly barbarism, Scorning the boldness of such base-born men, And brutish ignorance, ycrept of late Out of dread darkness of the deep abysm"? He denounced it in common with his friend Harvey, who, however he partook of the controversial violence of his time, was a man of learning and eloquence; and to whom only three years before he had addressed a sonnet of which the highest mind in the country might have been proud :— "To the Right Worshipful my singular good Friend M. GABRIEL HARVEY, Doctor of the Laws. Harvey, the happy above happiest men, I read, that, sitting, like a looker-on Of this world's stage, dost note, with critic pen, Ne fawnest for the favour of the great, Of faulty men, which danger to thee threat; And the evil damning evermore to die. For life and death is in thy doomful writing, Dublin, this 18th of July, 1586. Your devoted friend during life, EDMUND SPENSER." But we must return to the Thalia.' The four stanzas which we have quoted are immediately followed by these four others : "All these, and all that else the comic stage With season'd wit and goodly pleasure graced, Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced; And scornful Folly, with Contempt, is crept, Without regard, or due decorum kept; Which dare their follies forth so rashly throw, Than so himself to mockery to sell." Here there is something even stronger than what has preceded doth the Learned's task upon him take." It was the task of "the Learned ” to deal with the high subjects of religious controversy-the "matters of state and religion," with which the stage had meddled. Harvey had previously said, in the tract so often quoted by us, it is "a godly motion, when interluders leave penning their pleasurable plays to become zealous ecclesiastical writers." He calls Lyly more expressly, with reference to this meddling, "the foolmaster of the theatre." In this state of things the acknowledged head of the comic stage was silent for a time : "HE, the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and Truth to imitate, With kindly counter, under mimic shade, Our pleasant WILLY, ah! is dead of late." And the author of the Fairy Queen' adds, "But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen"? 6 Large streams of honey and sweet nectar flow, Which dare their follies forth so madly throw, Than so himself to mockery to sell." The love of personal abuse had driven out real comedy; and there was one who, for a brief season, had left the madness to take its course. We cannot doubt that "HE, the man whom Nature self had made To mock herself, and Truth to imitate," was William Shakspere. Dryden, as we are told by Rowe, always thought that these verses related to Shakspere. Mr. Collier, in his History of Dramatic Poetry,' says of Spenser's "Thalia,-"Had it not been certain that it was written at so early a date, and that Shakspere could not then have exhibited his talents and acquired reputation, we should say at once that it could be meant for no other poet. It reads like a prophetic anticipation, which could not have been fulfilled by Shakspere until several years after it was published." Mr. Collier, when he wrote this, had not discovered the document which proves that Shakspere was a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre at least a year before this poem was published. Spenser, we believe, described a real man, and real facts. He made no "prophetic anticipation;" there had been genuine comedy in existence; the ribaldry had driven it out for a season. The poem has reference to some temporary degradation of the stage; and what this temporary degradation was is most exactly defined by the public documents of the period, and the writings of Harvey, Nashe, and Lyly. The dates of all these proofs correspond with minute exactness. And who then is "our pleasant Willy," according to the opinion of those who would deny to Shakspere the title to the praise of the other great poet of the Elizabethan age? It is John Lyly,—the man whom Spenser's bosom friend was, at the same moment, denouncing as "the foolmaster of the theatre." Mr. Collier, however, dismisses Malone's laboured proofs of this theory in a very summary manner. Lyly did not merit Spenser's high praise, he says; neither did any other dramatic author prior to 1590. We say, advisedly, that there is absolutely no proof that Shakspere had not written 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' amongst his comedies, before 1590: we believe that he alone merited that high praise; that it was meant for him. He had then probably written others of his comedies, which we possess in a revised shape. We have absolute proofs that he had written these four comedies, and five others, before 1600. He had then also written eight histories and three tragedies, according to the same proofs, to which we shall presently advert. The common theory is, tha he began to write for the stage in 1591, he having been, as Mr Collier has shown, a large proprietor in the Blackfriars Theatre in 15$9. We ask that the author of twenty plays, which completely changed the face of the dramatic literature of England, should be supposed to have begun to write a little earlier than the age of twenty-seven; that we should assign some few of those plays to a period antecedent to 1590. We have reason to believe that, up to the close of the sixteenth century, Shakspere was busied as an actor as well as an author. It is something too much to expect, then, even from the fertility of his genius, occupied as he was, that he should have produced twenty plays in nine years; and it is still more unreasonable to believe that the consciousness of power which he must have possessed should not have prompted him to enter the lists with other dramatists, (whose highest productions may, without exaggeration, be stated as every way inferior to his lowest,) until he had gone through a probation of six or seven years' acquaintance with the stage as an humble actor. We cannot reconcile it to probability that he who ceased to be an actor when he was forty should have been contented to have been only an actor till he was twenty-seven. We pertinaciously cling to the belief that Shakspere, by commencing his career as a dramatic writer some four or five years earlier than is generally maintained, may claim, in common with his less illustrious early contemporaries, the praise of being one of the great founders of our dramatic literature, instead of being the mere follower and improver of Marlowe, and Greene, and Peele, and Kyd. We shall think ourselves fortunate if we have made out an additional proof of Shakspere's early excellence from the interpretation we have now given of the 'Thalia' of Spenser. But there is another poem of Spenser, published in 1595, in which Shakspere is mentioned, there can be little doubt, with reference to another variety of his excellence. In 'Colin Clout's come home again" we have a description of the "Shepherds" of "Cynthia's" court-the court of Elizabeth— who are able "her name to glorify." These, with the exception of two, are mentioned under feigned names. Daniel, one of the two, is noticed as "a new shepherd." To whom can this description apply?— "And there, though last not least, is Ætion; A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,' Spenser, it would appear, adopted the same association with the name of Shakspere, whose muse "Doth, like himself, heroically sound." The "pleasant Willy" had now, we think, quitted "Fine counterfesance and unhurtful sport," for "high thoughts' invention." The author of the early plays of Henry VI.' had struck a bolder note in the Richard II.' and 'Richard III.' He had more completely become the poet of the chivalrous times of England. It has been the fashion to hold that Shakspere's first historical plays were only the patchwork in which he joined something of his own to the less finished productions of other poets; and it has been also held that he did this somewhat dishonestly. We have endeavoured to show in the Essay on Henry VI.' that these opinions are without foundation. We abbreviate a passage from that Essay which has more especial reference to Shakspere's personal history and character. It has been maintained that the two plays which form the staple of what we call the Second and Third Parts of 'Henry VI.' were not written by Shakspere, but by Greene or Peele, two contemporary dramatists, or both together. Those two plays were called the First and Second Parts of the 'Contention of the Two Houses of York and Lancaster;' and the second of them was sometimes called "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York.' We have no hesitation in saying, comparing these original plays with Greene's acknowledged productions, that the character of his mind, and his habits of composition, rendered him utterly incapable of producing, not the two Parts of the Contention,' or one Part, but a single sustained scene of either Part. Those who have maintained the contrary opinion have not done so upon any examination of Greene's works, but solely upon their interpretation of a passage in a posthumous pamphlet, in which he unquestionably makes some vague charges against Shakspere. Greene died in 1593. The entire pamphlet of Greene's is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary fragments of autobiography that the vanity or the repentance of a sinful man ever produced. The recital which he makes of his abandoned course of life involves not only a confession of crimes and follies which were common to a very licentious age, but of particular and especial depravities, which even to mention argues as much shamelessness as repentance. The portion, however, which relates to the subject before us stands alone, in conclusion, as a friendly warning out of his own terrible example :-" To those gentlemen, his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and wisdom to prevent his extremities." To three of his quondam acquaintance the dying man addresses himself. To the first, supposed to be Marlowe-"thou famous gracer of tragedians "-he speaks in words as terrible as came from "that warning voice, which he who saw Th' Apocalypse heard cry in heav'n aloud." In exhorting his friend to turn from atheism he ran the risk of consigning him to the stake, for Francis Kett was burnt for his opinions only three years before Greene's death. Marlowe resented this address to him. With his second friend, supposed to be Lodge, his plain speaking is much more tender: “Be advised, and get not many enemies by bitter words." He addresses the third, supposed to be Peele, as one "driven as myself to extreme shifts;" and he adds, "thou art unworthy better hap, sith thou dependest on so mean a stay." What is the stay? "Making plays." The exhortation then proceeds to include the three "gentlemen his quondam acquaintance that spend their wits in making plays."-" Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths; those antics garnished in our colours." Up to this point the meaning is perfectly clear. The puppets, the antics,-by which names of course are meant the players, whom he held, and justly, to derive their chief importance from the labours of the poet, in the words which they uttered and the colours with which they were garnished,—had once cleaved to him like burs. But a change had taken place: "Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been heholding-is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be, both, of them at once forsaken ?" This is a lamentable picture of one whose powers, wasted by dissipation and enfeebled by sickness, were no longer required by those to whom they had once been serviceable. As he was forsaken, so he holds that his friends will be forsaken. And chiefly for what reason? "Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you: and, being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shakescene in a country." There can be no doubt that Shakspere was here pointed at; that the starving man spoke with exceeding bitterness of the successful author; that he affected to despise him as a player; that, if "beautified with our feathers" had a stronger meaning than "garnished with our colours," it conveyed a vague charge of borrowing from other poets; and that he parodied a line from the True Tragedy of Richard the Second,' "his tiger's heart," &c. This is literally every word that can be supposed to apply to Shakspere. Greene proceeds to exhort his friends "to be employed in more profitable courses."-" Let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired inventions."-" Seek you better masters." perfectly clear that these words refer only to the players generally; and, possibly, to the particular company of which Shakspere was a member. As such, and such only, must he take his share in the names which Greene applies to them, of apes,"" rude grooms,"—" buckram gentlemen,""peasants," and "painted monsters." It will be well to give the construction that has been put upon these words, in the form in which the "hypothesis" was first propounded by Malone : 66 It is Third Parts of King Henry VI.,' and having acquired considerable reputation by them, Greene could not conceal the mortification which he felt at his own fame, and that of his associate, both of them old and admired playwrights, being eclipsed by a new upstart writer (for so he calls our great poet), who had then first perhaps attracted the notice of the public by exhibiting two plays, formed upon old dramas written by them, considerably enlarged and improved. He therefore, in direct terms, charges him with having acted like the crow in the fable, beautified himself with their feathers ; in other words, with having acquired fame furtivis coloribus, by new-modelling a work originally produced by them: and wishing to depreciate our author, he very naturally quotes a line from one of the pieces which Shakspeare had thus rewritten, a proceeding which the authors of the original plays considered as an invasion both of their literary property and character. This line, with many others, Shakspeare adopted without any alteration. The very term that Greene uses, to bombast out a blank-verse,'-exactly corresponds with what has been now suggested. This new poet, says he, knows as well as any man how to amplify and swell out a blank-verse. Bumbast was a soft stuff of a loose texture, by which garments were rendered more swelling and protuberant." Thus, then, the starving and forsaken man-rejected by those who had been beholding to him; wanting the very bread of which he had been robbed, in the appropriation of his property by one of those who had rejected him; a man, too, prone to revenge, full of irascibility and self-love-contents himself with calling his plunderer "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers"-" A Johannes factotum ""The only Shake-scene in the country." "He could not conceal his mortification!" It would have been miraculous if he could. And how does he exhibit it? He parodies a line from one of the productions of which he had been so plundered, to carry the point home-to leave no doubt as to the sting of his allusion. But, as has been most justly observed, the epigramı would have wanted its sting if the line parodied had not been that of the very writer attacked. Be this as it may, the dying man, for some cause or other, chose to veil his deep wrongs in a sarcastic allusion. He left the manuscript containing this allusion to be published by a friend; and it was so published. But the matter did not stop here. Chettle, also a player, the editor of the posthumous work, actually apologised to the "upstart crow:"-" I am as sorry as if the original fault had been my fault, because myself hath seen his demeanour no less civil than he excellent in the quality he professes; besides divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing, that approves his art.' This apology was not written by Chettle at some distant period; it came out in the same year with the pamphlet which contained the insult. The terms which he uses-" uprightness of dealing,” and “facetious grace in writing”. -seem as if meant distinctly to refute the vague accusation of "beautified with our feathers." It is perfectly clear that Chettle could not have used these terms if Shakspere had been the wholesale plunderer either of Greene or of any other writer that it is assumed he was by those who deprive him of the authorship of the two Parts of the Contention.' If he had been this plunderer, and if Chettle had basely apologised for a truth uttered by his dying friend, would the matter have rested there? Were there no Peeles, and Marlowes, and Nashes in the world to proclaim the dishonour of the plagiarist and the apologist? No one repeated the calumny, though doubtless some believed it. Probably never yet any great author appeared in the world who was not reputed, in the onset of his career, to be a plagiarist; or any great literary performance, produced by one whose reputation had to be made, that was not held to be written by some one else than the man who did write it :-there was some one behind the curtain-some mysterious assistant-whose possible existence was a consola Examples in our own tion to the envious and the malignant. day are common enough. If Shakspere felt an honest indignation in being attacked in this way as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers," it must have been consoling to have had the greatest of his poetical contemporaries speak at the same period of him as "full of high thoughts' invention." If we have succeeded in establishing a just ground for belief that the "pleasant Willy" of Spenser's 'Thalia' was William Shakspere, we have at once disposed of the assertion that he had attained no reputation previous to 1591. Malone connects the supposed date of Shakspere's commencement as a dramatic writer with the notice of him by some of his contemporaries. He passes over Nashe's "whole Hamlets" in 1589; he maintains that the description of the "gentle spirit," who "Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell Than so himself to mockery to sell," applied not to Shakspere, but to Lyly, who was at that instant most active in "mockery;" but he fixes Shakspere with having begun to write in 1592, because Greene, in 1593, ridicules him as the "only Shake-scene in the country." In an age when there were no newspapers and no reviews, it must be extremely difficult to trace the course of any man, however eminent, by the notices of the writers of his times. An author's fame then was not borne through every quarter of the land in the very hour in which it was won. More than all, the reputation of a dramatic writer could scarcely be known, except to a resident in London, until his works were committed to the press. The first play of Shakspere's which was printed was 'The First Part of the Contention' ('Henry VI.,' Part II.), and that did not appear till 1594. Now, Malone says, "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 and Anthony Munday, who were dramatic writers; but we find no trace of our author, or of any of his works." But Malone does not tell us that in Webbe's Discourse of Poetry' we meet with the following passage :— "I am humbly to desire pardon of the learned company of gentlemen scholars, and students of the Universities and Inns of Court, if I omit their several commendations in this place, which I know a great number of them have worthily deserved, in many rare devices and singular inventions of poetry for neither hath it been my good hap to have seen all which I have heard of, neither is my abiding in such place where I can with facility get knowledge of their works." "Three years afterwards," continues Malone, "Puttenham printed his 'Art of English Poesy;' and in that work also we look in vain for the name of Shakspeare." The book speaks of the one-and-thirty years' space of Elizabeth's reign; and thus puts the date of the writing a year earlier than the printing. But we here look in vain for some other illustrious names besides those of Shakspere. Malone has not told us that the name of Edmund Spenser is not found in Puttenham; nor, what is still more uncandid, that not one of Shakspere's early dramatic contemporaries is mentioned-neither Marlowe, nor Greene, nor Peele, nor Kyd, nor Lyly. The author evidently derives his knowledge of "poets and poesy" from a much earlier period than that in which he publishes. He does not mention Spenser by name but he does" that other gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar.'" The Shepherd's Calendar' of Spenser was published in the year 1579. Malone goes on to argue that the omission of Shakspere's name, or any notice of his works, in Sir John Harrington's Apology of Poetry,' printed in 1591, in which "he takes occasion to speak of the theatre and mentions some of the celebrated dramas of that time," is a proof that none of Shakspere's dramatic compositions had then appeared. The reader will be in a better position to judge of the value of this argument by a reference to the passage of Sir John Harrington: "For tragedies, to omit other famous tragedies: that, that was played at St. John's in Cambridge, of Richard III., Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, Eschylus, Sophocles, Pindarus, Phocylides, and Aristophanes; and the Latin tongue by Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Silius Italicus, Lucanus, Lucretius, Ausonius, and Claudianus; so the English tongue is mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments, by Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Chapman. would move, I think, Phalaris, the tyrant, and terrify all tyrannous-minded men." [This was a Latin play, by Dr. Legge, acted some years before 1588.] "Then for comedies. How full of harmless mirth is our Cambridge 'Pedantius' and the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale'!" [Latin plays again.] "Or, to speak of a London comedy, how much good matter, yea, and matter of state, is there in that comedy called thePlay of the Cards,' in which it is showed how four parasitical knaves robbed the four principal vocations of the realm; videl. the vocation of soldiers, scholars, merchants, and husbandmen. Of which comedy, I cannot forget the saying of a notable wise counsellor that is now dead, who, when some (to sing Placebo) advised that it should be forbidden, | because it was somewhat too plain, and indeed as the old saying is (sooth boord is no boord), yet he would have it allowed, adding it was fit that they which do that they should not, should hear that they would not.” Nothing, it will be seen, can be more exaggerated than Malone's statement, "He takes occasion to speak of the theatre, and mentions some of the celebrated dramas of that time." Does he mention 'Tamburlaine,' or 'Faustus,' or 'The Massacre of Paris,' or 'The Jew of Malta'? As he does not, it may be assumed with equal justice that none of Marlowe's compositions had appeared in 1591; and yet we know that he died in 1593. So of Lyly's ‘Galathea,' 'Alexander and Campaspe,' 'Endymion,' &c. So of Greene's 'Orlando Furioso,' Friar Bacon,' 'James IV.' So of the 'Spanish Tragedy' of Kyd. The truth is, that Harrington in his notice of celebrated dramas was even more antiquated than Puttenham; and his evidence, therefore, in this matter is utterly worthless. But Malone has given his crowning proof that Shakspere had not written before 1591, in the following words : "Sir Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesie,' speaks at some length of the low state of dramatic 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 the 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." There is one slight objection to this argument: Sir Philip Sidney was killed at the battle of Zutphen, in the year 1586; and it would really have been somewhat surprising if the illustrious author of the Defence of Poesy' could have included Shakspere in his account " of the low state of dramatic literature at the time he composed this treatise." If he had done anything in dramatic literature before 1586, he had done little. We have thus gone through all the usual proofs that Shakspere could not have written before 1591,-1593, according to some authorities,—and we leave our readers to judge of their value. If the instances of the mention of Shakspere by his contem. poraries during his lifetime be not numerous, we are compensated by the fulness and explicitness of one notice-that of Francis Meres, in 1598. Short as his notice is, it is by far the most valuable contribution which we possess towards the 'Life' of Shakspere. Meres was a master of arts of Cambridge, and subsequently entered the church. In 1598 he published a book called 'Palladis Tamia, Wit's Treasury.' It is a collection of moral sentences from ancient writers, and it is described by Anthony Wood as "a noted school-book." Prefixed to it is A Comparative Discourse of our English Poets, with the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets.' Nothing can be more decisive than this Comparative Discourse' as to the rank which, in 1598, Shakspere had taken amongst the most eminent of his contemporaries. It has been usual to quote only one passage from this treatise (which is indeed far the most important)-that in which Shakspere's works are recited, but we prefer to quote the whole : "As the Greek tongue is made famous and eloquent by "As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis,' his Lucrece,' his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c. "As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare, among the English, is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his 'Gentlemen of Verona,' his 'Errors,' his 'Love Labours Lost,' his 'Love Labours Won,' his Midsummer's Night Dream,' and his Merchant of Venice;' for tragedy, his Richard II.,'' Richard III.,' 'Henry IV.,' 'King John,' Titus Andronicus,' and his 'Romeo and Juliet.' "As Epius Stolo said that the Muses would speak with Plautus's tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase, if they would speak English. "As these tragic poets flourished in Greece-Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Alexander Ætolus, Achæus Erithriæus, Astydamas Atheniensis, Apollodorus Tarsensis, Nicomachus Phrygius, Thespis Atticus, and Timon Appolloniates; and these among the Latins--Accius, M. Attilius, Pomponius Secundus, and Seneca; so these are our best for tragedy-the Lord Buckhurst, Doctor Leg of Cambridge, Doctor Edes of Oxford, Master Edward Ferris, the author of the Mirror for Magistrates,' Marlow, Peele, Watson, Kid, Shakespeare, Drayton, Chapman, Decker, and Benjamin Jonson. 6 "The best poets for comedy, among the Greeks, are these― Menander, Aristophanes, Eupolis Atheniensis, Alexis Terius, Nicostratus, Amipsias Atheniensis, Anaxandrides Rhodius, Aristonymus, Archippus Atheniensis, and Callias Atheniensis; and among the Latins, Plautus, Terence, Nævius, Sext. Turpilius, Licinius Imbrex, and Virgilius Romanus: so the best for comedy among us be-Edward Earl of Oxford, Doctor Gager of Oxford, Master Rowley (once a rare scholar of learned Pembroke Hall in Cambridge), Mr. Edwards (one of her Majesty's chapel), eloquent and witty John Lilly, Lodge, Gascoyne, Greene, Shakespeare, Thomas Nash, Thomas Heywood, Anthony Mundye (our best plotter), Chapman, Porter, Wilson, Hathway, and Henry Chettle." The praise of Shakspere by Meres is much more detailed than that which he gives to any other writer. In his own peculiar walk, (comedy and tragedy,) he “is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage." The list of Shakspere's plays which Meres gives in 1598 can scarcely be supposed to be a complete one. Previous to 1598 there had been only printed the two Parts of the Contention,' 'Richard III.,' 'Richard II.,' and Romeo and Juliet.' Of the six comedies mentioned by Meres, not one had been published; neither had 'Henry IV.,' 'King John,' nor Titus Andronicus;' but, in 1597, 'Love's Labour's Lost,' and the First Part of Henry IV.,' had been entered in Stationers' Hall. Without the list of Meres, therefore, we could not have absolutely shown that the Two Gentlemen of Verona,' the 'Comedy of Errors,' the All's Well that Ends Well,' (which, we have every reason to think, was designated as 'Love Labours Won,') the 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' the 'Merchant of Venice,' the 'King John,' and the Titus Andronicus,' were written and produced before 1598. The list of Meres omits the original Hamlet' and the "Taming of the Shrew,' which, we have reason to think, were produced before 1598; but, looking at Meres's list alone, how gloriously had Shakspere earned that reputation which he had thus acquired in 1598! He was then thirty-four years of age, but he had produced all his great historical plays, with the exception of 'Henry V.' and 'Henry VIII.' (we include 'Henry VI.' as a matter of course, because it must have preceded |