191. Peter le Loier. "M. Bayle hath delineated the singular character of our fantastical author. His work was originally translated by one Zacharie Jones. My edit. is in 4to, 1605, with an anonymous Dedication to the King: the Devonshire story was therefore well known in the time of Shakespeare.—The passage from Scaliger is likewise to be met with in The Optick Glasse of Humors, written, I believe, by T. Wombwell; and in several other places" (Farmer). Reed quotes a manuscript note by Farmer on the statement that it was written by Wombwell: "So I imagined from a note of Mr. Baker's, but I have since seen a copy in the library of Canterbury Cathedral, printed 1607, and ascribed to T. Walkington of St. John's, Cambridge."

He was a man, etc. Henry VIII., iv. 2. 33.

192. Holingshed. Farmer's quotations from Holinshed are not literatim. Indisputably the passage, etc. (to the end of the quotation from Skelton), added in the second edition.

Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548) was freely used by Holinshed, but there is a passage in Henry VIII. which shows that the dramatist knew Hall's chronicle at first hand.

193. Skelton. "His Poems are printed with the title of Pithy, Pleasaunt, and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate," etc. Farmer then explains with his usual learning Skelton's title of “ poet laureate."

Upton. Critical Observations, p. 47, n.

Pierce Plowman. This reference was added in the second edition. On the other hand, the following reference, which was given in the first edition after the quotation from Hieronymo, was omitted: "And in Dekker's Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of the humourous Poet, Sir Rees ap Vaughan swears in the same manner.'

Hieronymo, ii. 2. 87, 91-93 (Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. Boas, p. 24). Garrick. "Mr. Johnson's edit., vol. viii., p. 171" (Farmer). The following three pages, from "a Gentleman" (foot of p. 193) to the end of the Latin quotation at the top of p. 197, were added in the second edition.

194. Upton. Critical Observations, p. 300.

This villain here. 2 Henry VI., iv. I. 106.

Grimald's "Three Bookes of Duties, tourned out of Latin into English" appeared in 1555. "I have met with a writer who tells us that a translation of the Offices was printed by Caxton in the year 1481: but such a book never existed. It is a mistake for Tullius of Old Age, printed with the Boke of Frendshipe, by John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester. I believe the former was translated by William Wyrcestre, alias Botoner " (Farmer).

There is no bar. Henry V., i. 2. 35.

Y

195. It hath lately been repeated, etc. p. 50; cf. p. xxi, p. 21.

In the Critical Review, xxiii.,

Guthrie, William (1708-1770), whose reports to the Gentleman's Magazine were revised by Johnson. He wrote histories of England (4 vols., 1744, etc.), the World (12 vols., 1764, etc.), and Scotland (10 vols., 1767). His Essay upon English Tragedy had appeared in 1747. See note, p. 101.

196. All hail, Macbeth. 1. iii. 48-50.

Macbeth. The probable date of Macbeth is 1606.

Wake, Sir Isaac (1580-1632). The Rex Platonicus, celebrating the visit of James I. to Oxford in 1605, appeared in 1607.

197. Grey. Notes on Shakespeare, p. vii. ; cf. vol. ii., p. 289, etc. Whalley. Enquiry, p. v.

a very curious and intelligent gentleman. Capell: see below. It hath indeed been said, etc. In the Critical Review, xxiii., p. 50. Accordingly the following passage (to "Mr. Lort," foot of p. 199) was added in the second edition.

Saxo Grammaticus. "Falsitatis enim (Hamlethus) alienus haberi cupidus, ita astutiam veriloquio permiscebat, ut nec dictis veracitas deesset, nec acuminis modus verorum judicio proderetur' This is quoted, as it had been before, in Mr. Guthrie's Essay on Tragedy, with a small variation from the Original. See edit. fol. 1644, p. 50" (Farmer). The quotation was given in the Critical Review, xxiii., p. 50.

198. The Hystorie of Hamblet. It is now known that Shakespeare's 'original' was the early play of Hamlet, which was probably written by Thomas Kyd, towards the end of 1587. See Works of Kyd, ed. Boas, Introduction, iv.

Though Farmer disproves Shakespeare's use of Saxo Grammaticus, he errs in the importance he gives to the Hystorie of Hamblet. No English. "translation from the French of Belleforest" appears to have been issued before 1608.

Duke of Newcastle, Thomas Pelham-Holles (1693-1768), first Lord of the Treasury, 1754, Lord Privy Seal, 1765-66, Chancellor of Cambridge University from 1748.

199. Painter. See above, p. 178.

Tom Rawlinson (1681-1725), satirised as Tom Folio' by Addison in the Tatler, No. 158.

Colman, George, the elder (1732-1794), brought out the Comedies of Terence translated into familiar blank verse in 1765. He replied to Farmer's Essay, the merit of which he admitted, in the appendix to a later edition. Farmer's answer is given in the letter which Steevens printed as an appendix to an appendix to his edition of Johnson's Shakespeare,

1773, viii., App. ii., note on Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. In a long footnote in the Essay, Farmer replies also to an argument advanced by Bonnell Thornton (1724-1768), Colman's associate in the Connoisseur, in his translation of the Trinummus, 1767.

200. Redime te captum. Eunuchus, i. 1. 29; Taming of the Shrew, i. 1. 167.

translation of the Menaechmi. "It was published in 4to, 1595. The printer of Langbaine, p. 524, hath accidentally given the date 1515, which hath been copied implicitly by Gildon, Theobald, Cooke, and several others. Warner is now almost forgotten, yet the old criticks esteemed him one of our chiefe heroical makers.' Meres informs us that he had heard him termed of the best wits of both our Universities, our English Homer"" (Farmer). See note on p. 9.

Riccoboni, Luigi (1674-1753). See his Réflexions historiques sur les differens théatres de l'Europe, 1738, English translation, 1741, p. 163: "If really that good comedy Plautus was the first that appeared, we must yield to the English the merit of having opened their stage with a good prophane piece, whilst the other nations in Europe began theirs with the most wretched farces."

Hanssach, Hans Sachs (1494-1576).

201. Gascoigne. "His works were first collected under the singular title of A hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie. Gathered partly (by translation) in the fyne outlandish Gardins of Euripides, Ouid, Petrarke, Ariosto, and others and partly by inuention, out of our owne fruitefull Orchardes in Englande: yelding sundrie sweete sauours of tragical, comical, and morall discourses, bothe pleasaunt and profitable to the well smellyng noses of learned Readers.' Black letter, 4to, no date" (Farmer).

"Our authour had this line from Lilly." Johnson, edition of 1765, vol. iii., p. 20.

an unprovoked antagonist. "W. Kenrick's Review of Dr. Johnson's edit. of Shakespeare, 1765, 8vo, p. 105" (Farmer).

We have hitherto supposed. The next three paragraphs were added in the second edition.

202. Gosson. See Arber's reprint, p. 40.

Hearne, Thomas (1678-1735) edited William of Worcester's Annales Rerum Anglicarum in 1728. "I know indeed there is extant a very old poem, in black letter, to which it might have been supposed Sir John Harrington alluded, had he not spoken of the discovery as a new one, and recommended it as worthy the notice of his countrymen : I am persuaded the method in the old bard will not be thought either. At the end of the sixth volume of Leland's Itinerary, we are favoured by Mr. Hearne with a Macaronic poem on a battle at Oxford between the scholars and the townsmen: on a line of which, "Invadunt aulas bycheson cum. forth geminantes," our commentator very wisely and gravely remarks:

"Bycheson, id est, son of a byche, ut e codice Rawlinsoniano edidi. Eo nempe modo quo et olim whorson dixerunt pro son of a whore. Exempla habemus cum alibi tum in libello quodam lepido & antiquo (inter codices Seldenianos in Bibl. Bodl.) qui inscribitur: The Wife lapped in Morel's Skin: or the Taming of a Shrew" (Farmer). Farmer then gives Hearne's quotation of two verses from it, pp. 36 and 42.

202. Pope's list. At the end of vol. vi. of his edition.

Ravenscroft, Edward, in his Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia, 1687, 'To the Reader'; see Ingleby's Centurie of Prayse, p. 404.

203. The Epistles, says one, of Paris and Helen. Sewell, Preface to Pope's Shakespeare, vol. vii., 1725, p. 10.

it may be concluded, says another. Whalley, Enquiry, p. 79.

Jaggard. "It may seem little matter of wonder that the name of Shakespeare should be borrowed for the benefit of the bookseller; and by the way, as probably for a play as a poem: but modern criticks may be surprised perhaps at the complaint of John Hall, that "certayne chapters of the Proverbes, translated by him into English metre, 1550, had before been untruely entituled to be the doyngs of Mayster Thomas Sternhold” (Farmer).

204. Biographica Britannica, 1763, vol. vi. Farmer has a note at this passage correcting a remark in the life of Spenser and showing by a quotation from Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, that the Faerie Queene was left unfinished,—not that part of it had been lost.

205. Anthony Wood. "Fasti, 2d Edit., v. 1. 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 (Farmer). Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 378. But Stafford's authorship of this pamphlet has now been disproved: see the English Historical Review, vi. 284-305.

Warton, Thomas. Life of Ralph Bathurst, 2 vols., 1761.

Aubrey. See Brief Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, 1898, vol. ii., pp. 225-227. For Beeston, see vol. i., pp. 96-7.

Crendon. "It was observed in the former edition that this place is not met with in Spelman's Villare, or in Adams's Index; nor, it might have been added, in the first and the last performance of 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; tho' better antiquaries than Aubrey have acquiesced in the vulgar corruption" (Farmer). But Crendon is only a misprint for Grendon.

206. Rowe tells us.

Hamlet revenge.

See p. 4.

Steevens and Malone "confirm" Farmer's observation by references to Dekker's Satiromastix, 1602, and an anonymous

play called A Warning for Faire Women, 1599. Farmer is again out in his chronology.

Holt. See above, p. 190. Johnson's edition of Shakespeare, vol. viii., Appendix, note on viii. 194.

Kirkman, Francis, bookseller, published his Exact Catalogue of all the English Stage Plays in 1671.

Winstanley, William (1628-1698), compiler of Lives of the most famous English Poets, 1687. "These people, who were the Curls of the last age, ascribe likewise to our author those miserable performances Mucidorous and the Merry Devil of Edmonton" (Farmer).

seven years afterward. "Mr. Pope asserts 'The troublesome Raigne of King John,' in two parts, 1611, to have been written by Shakespeare and Rowley which edition is a mere copy of another in black letter, 1591. But I find his assertion is somewhat 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" (Farmer).

Nash. This reference was added in the second edition. See Arber's reprint of Greene's Menaphon, p. 17, or Gregory Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, i. 307, etc.

"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, 1579; but when or where he died, I cannot tell, for so it is, and always hath been, that most Poets die poor, and consequently obscurely, and a hard matter it is to trace them to their graves. Claruit, 1599.' Ath. Oxon., vol. i., p. 300.-We had lately in a periodical pamphlet, called The Theatrical Review, a very curious letter, under the name of George Peele, to one Master Henrie Marle, relative to a dispute between Shakespeare and Alleyn, which was compromised by Ben. Jonson. I never longed for thy companye more than last night; we were all verie merrie at the Globe, when Ned Alleyn did not scruple to affyrme pleasauntly to thy friende Will, that he had stolen hys speeche about the excellencie of acting in Hamlet hys tragedye, from conversaytions manifold, whych had passed between them, and opinions gyven by Alleyn touchyng that subjecte. Shakespeare did not take this talk in good sorte; but Jonson did put an end to the stryfe wyth wittielie saying, thys affaire needeth no contentione; you stole it from Ned no doubte: do not marvel: haue you not seene hym acte tymes out of number?'-This is pretended to be printed from the original MS. dated 1600; which agrees well enough with Wood's Claruit but unluckily Peele was dead at least two years before. 'As Anacreon died by the pot,' says Meres, 'so George Peele by the pox,' Wit's Treasury, 1598, p. 286" (Farmer).

Constable in Midsummer Night's Dream. Much Ado.

Apparently a mistake for