Shakespear to write the comedy of the Merry Wives, and to write it in ten day's time," etc. (Original Letters, 1721, i., p. 232).

But

this part of Falstaff. Rowe is here indebted apparently to the account of John Fastolfe in Fuller's Worthies of England (1662). neither in it, nor in the similar passage on Oldcastle in the Church History of Britain (1655, Bk. iv., Cent. xv., p. 168), does Fuller say that the name was altered at the command of the queen, on objection being made by Oldcastle's descendants. This may have been a tradition at Rowe's time, as there was then apparently no printed authority for it, but, as Halliwell-Phillips showed in his Character of Sir John Falstaff, 1841, it is confirmed by a manuscript of about 1625, preserved in the Bodleian. Cf. also Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1886, ii., pp. 351, etc.; Richard James's Iter Lancastrense (Chetham Society, 1845, p. lxv.); and Ingleby's Shakespeare's Centurie of Prayse, 1879, pp. 164-5.

name of Oldcastle. Pope added in a footnote, "See the Epilogue to Henry 4th.'

6. Venus and Adonis. The portion of the sentence following this title was omitted by Pope because it is inaccurate. The Rape of Lucrece also was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The error is alluded to in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725.

Eunuchs. Pope reads "Singers."

The passage dealing with Spenser (p. 6, l. 34, to p. 7, l. 36) was omitted by Pope. But it is interesting to know Dryden's opinion, even though it is probably erroneous. Willy has not yet been identified.

8. After this they were professed friends, etc. This description of Ben Jonson, down to the words "with infinite labour and study could but hardly attain to," was omitted by Pope, for reasons which appear in his Preface. See pp. 54, 55.

Ben was naturally proud and insolent, etc. Rowe here paraphrases and expands Dryden's description in his Discourse concerning Satire of Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare,-"an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric" (ed. W. P. Ker, ii., p. 18).

In a conversation, etc. The authority for this conversation is Dryden, who had recorded it as early as 1668 in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, at the conclusion of the magnificent eulogy of Shakespeare. He had also spoken of it to Charles Gildon, who, in his Reflections on Mr. Rymer's Short View of Tragedy (1694), had given it with greater fulness of detail. Each of the three accounts contains certain particulars lacking in the other two, but they have unmistakably a common source. Dryden probably told the story to Rowe, as he had already told it to Gildon. The chief difficulty is the source, not of Rowe's information, but of Dryden's. As Jonson was present at the discussion, it must have taken place by 1637. It is such a discussion as prompted Suckling's Session of the Poets (1637), wherein Hales and Falkland figure. It cannot

U

be dated "before 1633" (as in Ingleby's Centurie of Prayse, pp. 198-9). The Lord Falkland mentioned in Gildon's account is undoubtedly the second lord, who succeeded in 1633, and died in 1643. Dryden may have got his information from Davenant.

8. Pope condensed the passage thus: "Mr. Hales, who had sat still for some time, told 'em, That if Shakespear had not read the Ancients, he had likewise not stollen anything from 'em; and that if he would produce," etc.

9. Johnson did indeed take a large liberty. The concluding portion of this paragraph from these words is omitted by Pope.

The Menaechmi was translated by "W. W.," probably William Warner. It was licensed in June, 1594, and published in 1595, but, as the preface states, it had been circulated in manuscript before it was printed. The Comedy of Errors, which was acted by 1594, may have been founded on the Historie of Error, which was given at Hampton Court in 1576-7, and probably also at Windsor in 1582-3. Farmer's Essay, p. 200,

This passage dealing with Rymer is omitted by Pope. retains of this paragraph only the first two lines ( . Works") and the last three ("so I will only take," etc.).

See

He

"Shakespear's

Thomas Rymer, the editor of the Fadera, published his Short View of Tragedy in 1693. The criticism of Othello and Julius Caesar contained therein he had promised as early as 1678 in his Tragedies of the Last Age. His "sample of Tragedy," Edgar or the British Monarch, appeared in 1678.

11. Falstaff's Billet-Doux expressions of love in their way, omitted by Pope.

12. The Merchant of Venice was turned into a comedy, with the title the Jew of Venice, by George Granville, Pope's "Granville the polite," afterwards Lord Lansdowne. It was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1701. The part of the Jew was performed by Dogget. Betterton played Bassanio. See Genest's English Stage, ii. 243, etc.

is a little too much (line 13). Pope reads is too much.

Difficile est, etc.

Horace, Ars poetica, 128.

All the world, etc. As you like it, ii. 7. 139.

13. She never told her love, etc. Twelfth Night, ii. 4. 113-118: line 116, "And with a green and yellow melancholy" is omitted.

Pope omits a passage or two in (line 34).

ornament to the Sermons. Cf. Addison, Spectator, No. 61: "The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of punns. The Sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the Tragedies of Shakespear, are full of them."

14. Pope omits former (line 5).

Caliban. Cf. Dryden's Preface to Troilus and Cressida (ed. W. P. Ker., i., p. 219) and the Spectator, Nos. 279 and 419. Johnson criticised the remark in his notes on the Tempest (ed. 1765, i., p. 21).

Note. Ld. Falkland, Lucius Cary (1610-1643), second Viscount Falkland; Ld. C. J. Vaughan, Sir John Vaughan (1603-1674), Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; John Selden (1584-1654), the jurist. Among the particular beauties, etc. This passage, to the end of the quotation from Dryden's Prologue, is omitted by Pope.

16. Dorastus and Faunia, the alternative title of Robert Greene's Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time, 1588.

17. Pope omits tyrannical, cruel, and (line 36).

18. Plutarch. Rowe's statement that Shakespeare 66 copied " his Roman characters from Plutarch is-as it stands-inconsistent with the previous argument as to his want of learning. His use of North's translation was not established till the days of Johnson and Farmer.

André Dacier (1651-1722) was best known in England by his Essay on Satire, which was included in his edition of Horace (1681, etc.), and by his edition of the Poetics of Aristotle (1692). The former was used by Dryden in his Discourse concerning Satire, and appeared in English in 1692 and 1695; the latter was translated in 1705. In 1692 he brought out a prose translation, "with remarks," of the Oedipus and Electra of Sophocles. Rowe's reference is to Dacier's preface to the latter play, pp. 253, 254. Cf. his Poetics, notes to ch. xv., and the Spectator, No. 44.

19. But howsoever, etc. Hamlet, i. 5. 84.

20. Betterton's contemporaries unite in praise of his performance of Hamlet. Downes has an interesting note in his Roscius Anglicanus showing how, in the acting of this part, Betterton benefited by Shakespeare's coaching: "Sir William Davenant (having seen Mr. Taylor, of the Black Fryars Company, act it; who being instructed by the author, Mr. Shakespear) taught Mr. Betterton in every particle of it, gained him esteem and reputation superlative to all other plays" (1789, p. 29). But cf. the Rise and Progress of the English Theatre, appended to Colley Cibber's Apology, 1750, p. 516.

The epilogue for Betterton's 'benefit' in 1709 was written by Rowe. Betterton died in 1710.

Since I had at first resolv'd . . . said of him made good. This second criticism of Rymer is also omitted by Pope.

21. Ten in the hundred, etc. Reed, Steevens, and Malone have proved conclusively, if somewhat laboriously, that these wretched verses are not by Shakespeare. See also Halliwell-Phillips's Outlines, i., p. 326. It may be noted that ten per cent. was the regular rate of interest at this time.

21. as engrav'd in the plate. Stratford monument faces this He had three daughters.

A poor full-page engraving of the statement in Rowe's edition. Rowe is in two daughters, and a son named Hamnet. daughter.

.

error.

error. Shakespeare had Susannah was the elder

22. Pope omits tho' as I friendship and venture to (lines 10-12). Caesar did never wrong, etc. Cf. Julius Caesar, iii. 1. 47, 48, when the lines read:

Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause

Will he be satisfied.

23. Gerard Langbaine in his Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691) ascribes to Shakespeare about forty-six plays, all which except three are bound in one volume in Fol., printed London, 1685' (p. 454). The three plays not printed in the fourth folio are the Birth of Merlin, or the Child has lost his Father, a tragi-comedy, said by Langbaine to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; John King of England his troublesome Reign; and the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. Langbaine thinks that the last two were first writ by our Author, and afterwards revised and reduced into one Play by him that in the Folio being far the better." He mentions also the Arraignment of Paris, but does not ascribe it to Shakespeare, as he has not seen it.

:

66

a late collection of poems,-Poems on Affairs of State, from the year 1620 to the year 1707, vol. iv.

Natura sublimis, etc. Horace, Epistles, ii. 1. 165.

The concluding paragraph is omitted by Pope.

JOHN DENNIS

Tragick Stage.

24. Shakespear . . . Tragick Stage.

Contrast Rymer's Short View,

element." Cf. Dennis's later

p. 156: "Shakespear's genius lay for Comedy and Humour. In Tragedy he appears quite out of his statement, P. 40.

25. the very Original of our English Tragical Harmony. Cf. Dryden, Epistle Dedicatory of the Rival Ladies, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 6, and Bysshe, Art of English Poetry, 1702, p. 36. See Johnson's criticism of this passage, Preface, p. 140.

Such verse we make, etc. Dennis makes these two lines illustrate themselves.

26. Jack-Pudding. See the Spectator, No. 47. The term was very common at this time for a merry wag." It had also the more

special sense of "one attending on a mountebank," as in Etherege's Comical Revenge, iii. 4.

Coriolanus. Contrast Dennis's opinion of Coriolanus in his letter to Steele of 26th March, 1719: "Mr. Dryden has more than once declared to me that there was something in this very tragedy of Coriolanus, as it was writ by Shakespear, that is truly great and truly Roman; and I more than once answered him that it had always been my own opinion."

29. Poetical Justice. Dennis defended the doctrine of poetical justice in the first of the two additional letters published with the letters on Shakespeare. Addison had examined this "ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism" in the Spectator, No. 40 (April 16, 1711). Cf. Pope's account of Dennis's "deplorable frenzy deplorable frenzy" in the Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, x. 459).

30. Natura fieret. Horace, Ars poetica, 408.

a circular poet, i.e. a cyclic poet. This is the only example of this sense of circular in the New English Dictionary.

32. Hector speaking of Aristotle,-Troilus and Cressida, ii. 2. 166; Milo, id. ii. 3. 258; Alexander, Coriolanus v. 4. 23.

Plutarch. Though Dennis is right in his conjecture that Shakespeare used a translation, the absence of any allusion to North's Plutarch would show that he did not know of it. He is in error about Livy. Philemon Holland's translation had appeared in 1600.

33. Offenduntur enim, etc. Ars poetica, 248.

34. Caesar. Cf. the criticism of Julius Caesar in Sewell's preface to the seventh volume of Pope's Shakespeare, 1725.

36. Haec igitur, etc. Cicero, Pro M. Marcello, ix.

38. Julius Caesar. Dennis alludes to the version of Julius Caesar by John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, published in 1722. In the altered form a chorus is introduced between the acts, and the "play begins the day before Caesar's death, and ends within an hour after it." Buckinghamshire wrote also the Tragedy of Marcus Brutus.

39. Dryden, Preface to the Translation of Ovid's Epistles (1680) ad fin. : "That of Enone to Paris is in Mr. Cowley's way of imitation only. I was desired to say that the author, who is of the fair sex, understood not Latin. But if she does not, I am afraid she has given us occasion to be ashamed who do" (Ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 243). The author was Mrs. Behn.

Hudibras, i. 1, 661. But Hudibras has it slightly differently,'Though out of languages in which,' etc.