FullReads

211. Hawkins. Johnson’s Shakespeare, vol. viii., Appendix, note on iv., p. 454. The quotation from Johnson, and the references to Eliot and Du Bartas, were added in the second edition.

Est-il impossible. Henry V., iv. 4. 17.

French Alphabet of De la Mothe. “Lond., 1592, 8vo.” (Farmer).

Orthoepia of John Eliot. “Lond., 1593, 4to. Eliot is almost the only witty grammarian that I have had the fortune to meet with. In his Epistle prefatory to the Gentle Doctors of Gaule, he cries out for persecution, very like Jack in that most poignant of all Satires, the Tale of a Tub, ‘I pray you be readie quicklie to cauill at my booke, I beseech you heartily calumniate my doings with speede, I request you humbly controll my method as soone as you may, I earnestly entreat you hisse at my inventions,’ ” etc. (Farmer).

Sejanus. See Jonson’s “To the Readers”: “Lastly, I would inform you that this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public stage; wherein a second pen had good share: in place of which, I have rather chosen to put weaker, and, no doubt, less pleasing, of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation.” Jonson is supposed to refer here to Shakespeare.

But what if … Capell’s Prolusions, added in the second edition.

Pierce Penilesse, ed. J. P. Collier (Shakespeare Society, 1842), p. 60.

212. Tarlton, Richard (d. 1588),– Jests, drawn into three parts, ed. Halliwell (Shakespeare Society, 1844), pp. 24, 25: Old English Jest Books, ed. W. C. Hazlitt (1864), pp. 218, 219.

Capell. Cf. pp. 197 and 198. He describes Edward III. on the title page of his Prolusions or Select Pieces of Antient Poetry, 1760, as “thought to be writ by Shakespeare.”

Laneham, Robert, who appears in Scott’s Kenilworth. The letter has been reprinted by the Ballad Society (1871), and the New Shakspere Society (1890). Referring to the spelling of the name, Farmer says in a note, “It is indeed of no importance, but I suspect the former to be right, as I find it corrupted afterward to Lanam and Lanum.”

Meres. “This author by a pleasant mistake in some sensible Conjectures on Shakespeare, lately printed at Oxford, is quoted by the name of Maister. Perhaps the title-page was imperfect; it runs thus: ‘Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury. Being the second part of Wits Commonwealth, By Francis Meres Maister of Artes of both Universities.’ I am glad out of gratitude to this man, who hath been of frequent service to me, that I am enabled to perfect Wood’s account of him; from the assistance of our Master’s very accurate list of graduates (which it would do honour to the university to print at the publick expense) and the kind information of a friend from the register of his parish:–He was originally of Pembroke-Hall, B.A. in 1587, and M.A. 1591. About 1602 he became rector of Wing in Rutland; and died there, 1646, in the 81st year of his age” (Farmer). See Ingleby’s Shakspere Allusion-Books or Gregory Smith’s Elizabethan Critical Essays. The reference at the beginning of Farmer’s note is to Tyrwhitt’s Observations and Conjectures upon some passages of Shakespeare, 1766.

the Giant of Rabelais. See As You Like It, iii. 2. 238, and King Lear, iii. 6. 7, 8.