FullReads

The concurring circumstances of the Name and the Misdemeanor, which is supposed to be the old Story of Deer-stealing, seem fairly to challenge our Poet for the Author: but they hesitate.–His claim may appear to be confuted by the date 1581, when Shakespeare was only Seventeen, and the long experience which the Writer talks of.–But I will not keep you in suspense: the book was not written by Shakespeare.

Strype, in his Annals, calls the Author SOME learned Man, and this gave me the first suspicion. I knew very well that honest John (to use the language of Sir Thomas Bodley) did not waste his time with such baggage books as Plays and Poems ; yet I must suppose that he had heard of the name of Shakespeare. After a while I met with the original Edition. Here in the Title-page, and at the end of the Dedication, appear only the Initials, W. S. Gent., and presently I was informed by Anthony Wood, that the book in question was written, not by William Shakespeare, but by William Stafford, Gentleman: which at once accounted for the Misdemeanour in the Dedication. For Stafford had been concerned at that time, and was indeed afterward, as Camden and the other Annalists inform us, with some of the conspirators against Elizabeth; which he properly calls his unduetifull behaviour.

I hope by this time that any One open to conviction may be nearly satisfied; and I will promise to give you on this head very little more trouble.

The justly celebrated Mr. Warton hath favoured us, in his Life of Dr. Bathurst, with some hearsay particulars concerning Shakespeare from the papers of Aubrey, which had been in the hands of Wood; and I ought not to suppress them, as the last seems to make against my doctrine. They came originally, I find, on consulting the MS., from one Mr. Beeston: and I am sure Mr. Warton, whom I have the honour to call my Friend, and an Associate in the question, will be in no pain about their credit.

“William Shakespeare’s Father was a Butcher,–while he was a Boy he exercised his Father’s trade, but when he killed a Calf, he would do it in a high stile, and make a speech. This William being inclined naturally to Poetry and Acting, came to London, I guess, about eighteen, and was an Actor in one of the Playhouses, and did act exceedingly well. He began early to make Essays in dramatique Poetry.–The humour of the Constable in the Midsummer Night’s Dream he happened to take at Crendon in Bucks.–I think I have been told that he left near three hundred pounds to a Sister.– He understood Latin pretty well, FOR he had been in his younger yeares a Schoolmaster in the Country.
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I will be short in my animadversions; and take them in their order.

The account of the Trade of the Family is not only contrary to all other Tradition, but, as it may seem, to the instrument from the Herald’s office, so frequently reprinted.–Shakespeare most certainly went to London, and commenced Actor thro’ necessity, not natural inclination.–Nor have we any reason to suppose that he did act exceedingly well. Rowe tells us from the information of Betterton, who was inquisitive into this point, and had very early opportunities of Inquiry from Sir W. Davenant, that he was no extraordinary Actor ; and that the top of his performance was the Ghost in his own Hamlet. Yet this Chef d’Oeuvre did not please: I will give you an original stroke at it. Dr. Lodge, who was for ever pestering the town with Pamphlets, published in the year 1596 Wits miserie, and the Worlds madnesse, discovering the Devils incarnat of this Age. 4to. One of these Devils is Hate-virtue, or Sorrow for another mans good successe, who, says the Doctor, is ” a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the Visard of the Ghost, which cried so miserably at the Theatre, like an Oister-wife, Hamlet revenge.” Thus you see Mr. Holt’s supposed proof, in the Appendix to the late Edition, that Hamlet was written after 1597, or perhaps 1602, will by no means hold good; whatever might be the case of the particular passage on which it is founded.