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Nicholas Rowe: Some Account Of The Life &c. Of Mr. William Shakespear
by
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. A poor full-page engraving of the Stratford monument faces this statement in Rowe’s edition.
He had three daughters. Rowe is in error. Shakespeare had two daughters, and a son named Hamnet. Susannah was the elder daughter.
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.
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.