It occurred to me that the will of John Combe might possibly throw some light on this matter, and an examination of it some years ago furnished me with such evidence as renders it highly improbable that it should have been written by Shakspeare.

That he had any quarrel with our author, or that Shakspeare had by any act stung him so severely that Mr. Combe never forgave him, appears equally void of foundation; for by his will he bequeaths "to Mr. William Shakspere Five Pounds." MALONE.

P. 12. —where a monument is placed in the wall.] He is represented under an arch, in a sitting posture, a cushion spread before him, with a pen in his right hand, and his left rested on a scroll of paper. The following Latin distich is engraved under the cushion :

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem,

Terra tegit, populus mæret, Olympus habet.

THEOBALD.

The first syllable in Socratem is here made short, which cannot be allowed. Perhaps we should read Sophoclem. Shakspeare is then appositely compared with a dramatic author among the ancients: but still it should be remembered that the eulogium is lessened while the metre is reformed; and it is well known that some of our early writers of Latin poetry were uncommonly negligent in their prosody, especially in proper names. The thought of this distich, as Mr. Tollet observes, might have been taken from The Faery Queene of Spenser, B. II. c. ix. st. 48, and c. x. st. 3.

To this Latin inscription on Shakspeare should be added the lines which are found underneath it on his monument :

"Stay, passenger, why dost thou go so fast?

"Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plac'd
"Within this monument; Shakspeare, with whom
"Quick nature dy'd; whose name doth deck the tomb
"Far more than cost; since all that he hath writ
"Leaves living art but page to serve his wit."

Obiit Ano. Dni. 1616.

æt. 53, die 23 Apri.

STEEVENS.

It appears from the Verses of Leonard Digges, that our author's monument was erected before the year 1623.

MALONE.

P. 13. Besides his plays in this edition, there are two or three ascribed to him by Mr. Langbaine.] The Birth of Merlin, 1662, written by W. Rowley; the old play of King John, in two parts, 159i, on which Shakspeare formed his King John; and The Arraignment of Paris, 1584, written by George Peele. The editor of the folio, 1664, subjoined to the 36 dramas published in 1623, seven plays, four of which had appeared in Shakspeare's life-time with his name in the title-page, viz. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, 1609, Sir John Oldcastle, 1600, The London Prodigal, 1605, and The Yorkshire Tragedy, 1608; the three others which they inserted, Locrine, 1595, Lord Cromwell, 1602, and The Puritan, 1607, having been printed with the initials W. S. in the title-page, the editor chose to interpret those letters to mean William Shakspeare, and ascribed them also to our poet. I published an edition of these seven pieces some years ago, freed in some measure from the gross errors with which they had been exhibited in ancient copies, that the public might see what they contained; and do not hesitate to declare my firm persuasion that of Locrine, Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, The London Prodigal, and The Puritan, Shakspeare did not write a single line.

How little the booksellers of former times scrupled to affix the names of celebrated writers to the productions of others, even in the life-time of such celebrated authors, may be collected from Heywood's translations from Ovid, which in 1612, while Shakspeare was yet living, were ascribed to him. With the dead they would certainly make still more free. "This book (says Anthony Wood, speaking of a work to which the name of Sir Philip Sydney was prefixed) coming out so late, it is to be inquired whether Sir Philip Sydney's name is not set to it for sale-sake, being a usual thing in these days to set a great name to a book or books, by sharking booksellers, or snivelling writers, to get bread."

MALONE.

P. 13. in a late collection of poems.] Mr. Rowe did not go beyond A Late Collection of Poems, and does not seem to have known that Shakspeare wrote 154 Sonnets, and a poem entitled A Lover's Complaint. MALONE.

P.14. are really tragedies, with a run or mixture of comedy amongst them.] The criticks who renounce tragi-comedy as barbarous, I fear, speak more from notions which they have formed in their closets, than any well-built theory deduced from experience of what pleases or displeases, which ought to be the foundation of all rules.

Even supposing there is no affectation in this refinement, and that those criticks have really tried and purified their

minds till there is no dross remaining, still this can never be the case of a popular audience, to which a dramatic representation is referred.

Dryden in one of his prefaces condemns his own conduct in The Spanish Friar; but, says he, I did not write it to please myself, it was given to the public. Here is an involuntary confession that tragi-comedy is more pleasing to the audience: I would ask then, upon what ground it is condemned?

This ideal excellence of uniformity rests upon a supposition that we are either more refined, or a higher order of beings than we really are there is no provision made for what may be called the animal part of our minds

Though we should acknowledge this passion for variety and contrarieties to be the vice of our nature, it is still a propensity which we all feel, and which he who undertakes to divert us must find provision for.

We are obliged, it is true, in our pursuit after science, or excellence in any art, to keep our minds steadily fixed for a long continuance; it is a task we impose on ourselves: but I do not wish to task myself in my amusements.

If the great object of the theatre is amusement, a dramatic work must possess every means to produce that effect; if it gives instruction by the by, so much its merit is the greater; but that is not its principal object. The ground on which it stands, and which gives it a claim to the protection and encouragement of civilized society, is not because it enforces oral precepts, or gives instruction of any kind; but from the general advantage that it produces, by habituating the mind to find its amusement in intellectual pleasures; weaning it from sensuality, and by degrees filing off, smoothing, and polishing, its rugged corners. Sir J. REYNOLDS.

P. 15. —the same coat of arms which Dugdale, in his Antiquities of that county describes for a family there.] There are two coats, I observe, in Dugdale, where three silver fishes are borne in the name of Lucy; and another coat to the monument of Thomas Lucy, son of Sir William Lucy, in which are quartered in four several divisions, twelve little fishes, three in each division, probably luces. This very coat, indeed, seems alluded to in Shallow's giving the dozen white luces; and in Slender's saying he may quarter. THEOBALD.

P. 15. but though we have seen that play received and acted as a comedy.] In 1701 Lord Lansdown produced his alteration of The Merchant of Venice, at the theatre in Lincoln's-InnFields, under the title of The Few of Venice, and expressly calls it a comedy. Shylock was performed by Mr. Dogget.

REED.

And such was the bad taste of our ancestors that this piece continued to be a stock-play from 1701 to Feb. 14, 1741, when The Merchant of Venice was exhibited for the first time at the theatre in Drury-Lane, and Mr. Macklin made his first appearance in the character of Shylock. MAL.

P. 22. are both concerned in the murder of their husbands,] It does not appear that Hamlet's mother was concerned in the death of her husband. MAL.

P. 24. Many came on horseback to the play,] Plays were at this time performed in the afternoon. "The pollicie of plaies is very necessary, howsoever some shallow-brained censurers (not the deepest searchers into the secrets of government) mightily oppugne them. For whereas the afternoon being the idlest time of the day wherein men that are their own masters (as gentlemen of the court, the innes of the court, and a number of captains and soldiers about London) do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure, and that pleasure they divide (how vertuously it skills not) either in gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a play, is it not better (since of four extreames all the world cannot keepe them but they will choose one) that they should betake them to the least which is plaies?" Nash's Pierce Pennilesse his Supplication to the Devil, 1592. STE.

Ibid. the waiters that held the horses retained the appellation of Shakspeare's boys.] I cannot dismiss this anecdote without observing that it seems to want every mark of probability. Though Shakspeare quitted Stratford on account of a juvenile irregularity, we have no reason to suppose that he had forfeited the protection of his father who was engaged in a lucrative business, or the love of his wife who had already brought him two children, and was herself the daughter of a substantial yeoman. It is unlikely therefore, when he was beyond the reach of his prosecutor, that he should conceal his plan of life, or place of residence, from those who, if he found himself distressed, could not fail to afford him such supplies as would have set him above the necessity of holding horses for subsistence. Mr. Malone has remarked in his Attempt to ascertain the order in which the Plays of Shakspeare were written, that he might have found an easy introduction to the stage; for Thomas Green, a celebrated comedian of that period, was his townsman, and perhaps his relation. The genius of our author prompted him to write poetry; his connection with a player might have given his productions a dramatic turn; or his own sagacity might have taught him that fame was not incompatible with profit, and that the theatre was an avenue

to both. That it was once the general custom to ride on horse-back to the play, I am likewise yet to learn. The most popular of the theatres were on the Bankside; and we are told by the satirical pamphleteers of that time, that the usual mode of conveyance to these places of amusement, was by water, but not a single writer so much as hints at the custom of riding to them, or at the practice of having horses held during the hours of exhibition. Some allusion to this usage, (if it had existed) must, I think, have been discovered in the course of our researches after contemporary fashions. Let it be remembered too, that we receive this tale on no higher authority than that of Cibber's Lives of the Poets, Vol I. p. 130. "Sir William Davenant told it to Mr. Betterton, who communicated it to Mr. Rowe," who, according to Dr. Johnson, related it to Mr. Pope. Mr. Rowe (if this intelligence be authentic) seems to have concurred with me in opinion, as he forebore to introduce a circumstance so incredible into his Life of Shakspeare. As to the book which furnishes the anecdote, not the smallest part of it was the composition of Mr. Cibber, being entirely written by a Mr. Shiells, amanuensis to Dr. Johnson, when his Dictionary was preparing for the press. T. Cibber was in the King's Bench, and accepted of ten guineas from the booksellers for leave to prefix his name to the work; and it was purposely so prefixed as to leave the reader in doubt whether himself or his father was the person designed.

The foregoing anecdote relative to Cibber's Lives, &c. I received from Dr. Johnson. See, however, the Monthly Review, for December, 1781, p. 409. STE.

Mr. Steevens in one particular is certainly mistaken. To the theatre in Blackfriars I have no doubt that many gentlemen rode in the time of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. From the Strand, Holborn, Bishopsgate Street, &c. where many of the nobility lived, they could indeed go no other way than on foot, or on horseback, or in coaches; and coaches till after the death of Elizabeth were extremely rare. Many of the gentry, therefore, certainly went to that playhouse on horseback. See the proofs, in the Essay above referred to.

This, however, will not establish the tradition relative to our author's first employment at the playhouse, which stands on a very slender foundation. MAL.

Mr. Oldys had covered several quires of paper with laborious collections for a regular life of our author. From these I have made the following extracts, which (however trivial) contain the only circumstances that wear the least appearance of novelty or information.