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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 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 Reflexions historiques sur les differens theatres 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.