FullReads

The Story of the Misanthrope is told in almost every Collection of the time; and particularly in two books, with which Shakespeare was intimately acquainted; the Palace of Pleasure, and the English Plutarch. Indeed from a passage in an old Play, called Jack Drum’s Entertainment, I conjecture that he had before made his appearance on the Stage.

Were this a proper place for such a disquisition, I could give you many cases of this kind. We are sent for instance to Cinthio for the Plot of Measure for Measure, and Shakespeare’s judgement hath been attacked for some deviations from him in the conduct of it: when probably all he knew of the matter was from Madam Isabella in the Heptameron of Whetstone. Ariosto is continually quoted for the Fable of Much ado about Nothing ; but I suspect our Poet to have been satisfied with the Geneura of Turberville. As you like it was certainly borrowed, if we believe Dr. Grey, and Mr. Upton, from the Coke’s Tale of Gamelyn ; which by the way was not printed’till a century afterward: when in truth the old Bard, who was no hunter of MSS., contented himself solely with Lodge’s Rosalynd or Euphues’ Golden Legacye. 4to. 1590. The Story of All’s well that ends well, or, as I suppose it to have been sometimes called, Love’s labour wonne, is originally indeed the property of Boccace, but it came immediately to Shakespeare from Painter’s Giletta of Narbon. Mr. Langbaine could not conceive whence the Story of Pericles could be taken, “not meeting in History with any such Prince of Tyre “; yet his legend may be found at large in old Gower, under the name of Appolynus.

Pericles is one of the Plays omitted in the later Editions, as well as the early Folios, and not improperly; tho’ it was published many years before the death of Shakespeare, with his name in the Title-page. Aulus Gellius informs us that some Plays are ascribed absolutely to Plautus, which he only re-touched and polished ; and this is undoubtedly the case with our Author likewise. The revival of this performance, which Ben Jonson calls stale and mouldy, was probably his earliest attempt in the Drama. I know that another of these discarded pieces, the Yorkshire Tragedy, had been frequently called so; but most certainly it was not written by our Poet at all: nor indeed was it printed in his life-time. The Fact on which it is built was perpetrated no sooner than 1604: much too late for so mean a performance from the hand of Shakespeare.

Sometimes a very little matter detects a forgery. You may remember a Play called the Double Falshood, which Mr. Theobald was desirous of palming upon the world for a posthumous one of Shakespeare: and I see it is classed as such in the last Edition of the Bodleian Catalogue. Mr. Pope himself, after all the strictures of Scriblerus, in a Letter to Aaron Hill, supposes it of that age; but a mistaken accent determines it to have been written since the middle of the last century:

—-This late example
Of base Henriquez, bleeding in me now,
From each good Aspect takes away my trust.

And in another place,

You have an Aspect, Sir, of wondrous wisdom.

The word Aspect, you perceive, is here accented on the first Syllable, which, I am confident, in any sense of it, was never the case in the time of Shakespeare; though it may sometimes appear to be so, when we do not observe a preceding Elision.