versification unencumbered and rich with compound epithets."

But this play of the Comedy of Errors must have been revised and shaped into a connected and complete play, adapted both to popular audiences and to the Court, by Francis Bacon. I am of that opinion because both Dekker and Porter wrote hastily and carelessly, and the speech of Ægeon in the first scene of the first act contains phrases which could only have originated with the author of the Venus and Adonis.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

HAMLET AND THE WINTER'S TALE CONSIDERED.

"Cudgel thy brains no more about it."

-Hamlet, v, 1.

In the year 1602, a book called "The Revenge of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain's servants," was printed by James Roberts. No copy of this edition has as yet been found. No author's name was affixed to it, so far as the entry in the Stationers' Register shows.

In the following year, 1603, a play called "The tragical history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shake-speare, as it hath been divers times acted by his Highness' servants in the City of London; as also in the two Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere," was printed for Nicholas Ling and John Trundell. Nothing was known as to the time when this play was put upon the stage until the year 1790, when Henslowe's Diary was found. The following entry was discovered therein, at page 35 of Collier's reprint: "9 of June 1594, R'd at Hamlet VIII s." The play of Hamlet, therefore, is traced back to the year 1594. Malone guessed that the play printed by Roberts was composed by Thomas Kyd, but he gave no authority or reason for the conjecture.

A pamphlet of Nash, or rather an epistle of his, prefixed to Greene's Menaphon, printed in 1589, contains the following passage: "It is a common practice now-a-daies amongst a sort of shifting companions, that runne through every arte and thrive by none to leave the trade of Noverint

wherein they were borne and busie themselves with the indevours of art, that could scarcely latinize their neckeverse if they should have neede; yet English Seneca read by candle light yields manyie good sentences, as Bloud is a beggar and so forth; and if you intreate him faire in a frostie morning, he will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say handfulls of tragical speeches." This shows, at the least, that Hamlet had been acted before 1589.

Again, in 1596, Dr. Lodge published a pamphlet called "Wit's Miserie," which calls one of the devils described in it "a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the visard of ye ghost which cried so miserably at ye theator like an oister wife, Hamlet revenge."

Steevens, in his Variorum of 1773, says, "I have seen a copy of Speght's edition of Chaucer, which formerly belonged to Dr. Gabriel Harvey (the antagonist of Nash), who, in his own handwriting, has set down the play as a performance with which he was well acquainted in the year 1598. His words are these: 'The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, but his Lucrece and his tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort, 1598.'"

In 1602 Dekker, in his play of Satiro-mastix, alludes to Hamlet when he makes Tucca say, "No, Fyest, my name's Hamlet's revenge; thou hast been at Paris Garden, hast not?"

Who now was meant by the William Shake-speare of the edition of 1603? If the Venus and Adonis and the Tarquin and Lucrece were written by Francis Bacon, as the examination which I have given to the two poems would seem to show; and if Gabriel Harvey in 1598 was a reliable man and knew who the real author was, then the

disinterested reader would have the right to conclude that Francis Bacon was the author or reviser at least of the play of Hamlet. His opinion would also be strengthened by the allusion of Nash to the person who "left the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born," since Bacon was a lawyer.

And here I might be content to leave the whole matter, were it not that the reader is entitled to all the facts that can be gathered from the text of the play. In examining the text of 1603 and 1623, it would seem that Michael Drayton had a part in the composition, either of the original play or of the revised play. In the 1603 play, in Act 1, Scene 1, Horatio says, "But see the sun in russet mantle clad," and in the 1623 edition he says, "But look, the morn in russet mantle clad"; while Drayton, in Pol. 2, p. 120, says, "Himself, a palmer poor, in homely russet clad." In the second scene, Hamlet says, "Frailty, thy name is woman," repeated in 1623, while Drayton makes Rosamond say to King Henry, "Why on my woman frailty should'st thou lay?" In the same scene Hamlet says, in the play of 1603, "I'll speak to it if hell itself should gap," and Drayton, in Pol. 2, p. 269, says, "Where wounds gap'd wide as hell.”

In the fifth scene of the 1603 play, the Ghost says:

"O, I find thee apt and duller shouldst thou be Than the fat weed which rots itself in ease

On Lethe wharf."

Drayton says, in Heroical Epistles, p. 166:

"Or those black weeds on Lethe bank below."

In the fourth scene of the third act, of 1623, Hamlet says, "And batten on the moor"; while Drayton, in Pol.

3, p. 90, says, "That Somerset may say her battening moors do scorn." The sentence does not occur in the 1603 edition. In the 1623 play (and not appearing in that of 1603) Hamlet says, "The important acting of your dread command," while Drayton, in Pol. 2, p. 121, says, "For this great action fit; by whose most dread command." Hamlet says:

"For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard.'

while in Agincourt, Drayton says:

"The engineer providing the petard
To break the strong portcullis."

In Act 4, Scene 3, the Queen says, "Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay"; while Drayton, in Pol. 3, p. 18, says, "By the enticing strains of his melodious lay." In Act 5, Scene 1, Hamlet says, "Whose phrase of sorrow conjures the wandering stars," while Drayton, in Idea, 43, says, "So doth the plowman gaze the wandering star."

Much difficulty has been experienced by the commentators and critics in interpreting and explaining the word "Esile," as printed in the Folio of 1623. The words are, "Woul't drink up Esile? eat a crocodile." Furness, in the Variorum, Vol. 1, p. 405, says, "With the exception of 'the dram of eale,' no word or phrase of this tragedy has occasioned more discussion than this Esill or Esile, which, as it stands, represents nothing in the heavens above or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, if from the last we exclude the vessels of the Quarto." But I believe that there is no difficulty whatever about