date usually assigned for the arrival of William Shakespeare in London. But, as that date is not quite certain, and as it is not impossible that he may have sent plays to the theatre before that event, nothing more definite can be positively asserted than this, that, as Francis Bacon was by some three years the elder of the two, and had been snugly ensconced in Gray's Inn since 1579, with the aroma of a scholar of Trinity and the airs of the French Court still about him, it is at least more probable, in the first instance, that he should have been the author than the other.

The "Hamlet" has been another of these enigmas. The first certain knowledge that we have of this play is, that it was performed at the Globe as early as 1602, having been entered, in July of that year, upon the Register of the Stationers' Company, as "lately acted by the Lord Chamberlain's Servants." We may safely accept the conclusion of Mr. White,1 that there was an older play of this name by another author, which was upon the stage in London prior to this date. It is mentioned in Henslowe's "Diary" in 1594. It was no doubt this older play that was alluded to, in 1596, by Dr. Lodge, who speaks of the ghost that cried in the theatre, “ Hamlet, revenge!" It is believed by White, Knight, and other critics, to have been the same play that was referred to, in 1589, by Nash, who says, "it is a common practice, now-a-days, amongst a shifting sort of companions that run through every art and thrive by none, to leave the trade of Noverint, whereto they were born, and busy themselves with the endeavours of art,” and that "English Seneca, read by candle-light, afford you whole Hamlets; I should say handfuls of tragical speeches." In the "Hamlet" of Shakespeare, which was printed in 1604, we have these words:

66

.....

will

"Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light for the law of writ, and the liberty: these are the only men." 2

1 White's Shakes., XI. 8-9.

2 Devonshire Hamlets, (Lond. 1860), I. 41; II. 38.

But, as it is very probable that there was some trace of Seneca, also, in the older play of 1589, this allusion, in that of 1602, cannot be taken as any proof of its identity with the other. It is a curious circumstance, however, that, in the year 1593-4, we find Francis Bacon diligently engaged in reading Seneca, Ovid, Virgil, Horace's "Art Poetic," the "Proverbs," and the "Adagia" of Erasmus, and taking notes; and, in 1595–6, he quotes Seneca, thus: "For it is Seneca's rule, multum non multa.” 1 And in several of the earlier plays may be found very distinct traces of this classical reading, in the form of allusions, imitations, and quotations; as for instance, in the "Titus Andronicus," in which the story of Tereus and Philomela is worked into the texture of the tragedy out of Ovid's "Metamorphoses," together with quotations of whole lines of Latin verse out of Horace. In the "Love's Labor's Lost," we have quotations from Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, an irrepressible sprinkling of Latin erudition, with a pretty copious interspersion of sonnets and rhymed verse; and the whole play exhibits unmistakable impressions of the author's late residence at the French Court. In the " Taming of the Shrew," written before 1594, the author has already begun to add to his studies of the poets" that part of philosophy" which treats

"of happiness

By virtue 'specially to be achieved,"

and to mingle Aristotle with Ovid:

"Tranio. Mi perdonate, gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself;

Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue, and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray,

Or so devote to Aristotle's checks,

As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:

Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,

1 Advice to Greville; Life and Letters, by Spedding, II. 23.

And practice rhetoric in your common talk:
Music and poetry use to quicken you;

The mathematics, and the metaphysics,

Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you;

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en; ·
In brief, sir, study what you most affect."

Act 1. Sc. 1.

Lord Campbell,1 assuming that the "Hamlet" alluded to by Nash was the play of Shakespeare, endeavors to draw an argument from Nash's fling at the trade of Noverint (that of the lawyers) in support of the position that William Shakespeare himself was considered as one of those who had abandoned that profession. We know from contemporaneous history that it was not an uncommon thing, in those days, for members of the Inns of Court to be writing for the stage, and it is scarcely to be doubted that there was then in fact a class of persons answering perfectly well to this description of Nash. But the inference, first, that Nash alluded to Shakespeare, and second, that Shakespeare had been a student at law at Stratford, finds little warrant here, or elsewhere, beyond the irresistible evidence, contained in the plays themselves, that their author was a lawyer. No more is it to be inferred that Francis Bacon was the person intended, though he was at that time Reader, and for seven years had been an utter barrister, of Gray's Inn. Whether the play were the same or not, it is plain that Nash supposed it to have been written by a lawyer.

This epistle of Nash had been appended to the "Menaphon" of Robert Greene, who had been employed as a writer for the stage; and Lord Campbell conjectures that the two friends, Nash and Greene, had been superseded by the appearance of a rival in the business, and thence, that this attack was aimed at William Shakespeare, as that other more express libel, which was contained in the "Groat's Worth of Wit," written by this same Greene, and published by Henry Chettle, in 1592, undoubtedly was. In this last, Greene addresses himself to his "Quondam

1 Shakes. Legal Acquirements, 30-36.

acquaintance that spend their wits in making Plays," and says, "Base-minded men, all three of you [Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele?], if by my misery yee bee not warned: for unto none of you (like me) sought these burs to cleave: those Puppets (I mean) that speake from our mouths, those Anticks garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whome they all have bin beholding, is it not like that you, to whom they all have bin beholding, shall (were yee in that case that I am now) be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygres heart, wrapt in a players hyde, supposes hee is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his owne conceyt, the only Shake-scene in a countrey. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wittes to bee imployed in more profitable courses, and let these apes imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaynte them with your admyred inventions."1 This passage would seem to carry a direct insinuation that William Shakespeare, a mere actor, antic, and ape, was undertaking to shine in borrowed feathers, or it may mean no more than that he was, in Greene's estimation, an upstart player that had presumed to usurp the writer's calling. Mr. White has noticed that it contains a sort of parody on the following line of the third part of the " Henry VI.”:— "O Tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide!" 2

Whence it would appear that Greene had that very play in mind: nothing more need be inferred, however, than that plays had begun to appear upon the stage, which, so far as known to these writers, were attributed to Shakespeare; came through his hands, perhaps, and from a source otherwise unknown to them; and that if they really took him to be the author (as it seems they did), they were unwilling to recognize him as one worthy to be admitted into their 1 Halliwell's Life of Shakes., 144.

2 Act I. Sc. 4; White's Shakes., VII. 411.

fraternity. Mr. White argues further, with much skill, that Greene meant to charge Shakespeare with plagiarism, also, from the rival poets, and cites as evidence of this hypothesis a sonnet from "Greene's Funerals by R. B. Gent" (1594), which says of Greene:

"Nay more, the men that so eclipst his fame,

Purloyned his Plumes, can they deny the same?"

But this is a general charge, aimed at more than one, and not particularly at Shakespeare. The apology of Chettle, however, makes it clear, that in the above passage from Greene, a sneer was aimed especially at him in respect of his supposed authorship; for it says: "I am as sorry as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene his demeanor no less civill than he excellent in the qualitie he professes; besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that approoves his art." Now, whether these "divers of worship" were some great persons about the Court, who had taken Shakespeare under their especial protection, or were merely some respectable acquaintances who had certified to his merit and character, must be left to conjecture. Mr. White appeals to these passages in further proof of his theory, that Marlowe, Greene, and Peele, wrote some plays in conjunction with Shakespeare, and that Shakespeare, in resuming his own, had in some degree appropriated their labors, and purloined their plumes; and he certainly makes a very plausible case of it. But it implies the assumption, both that William Shakespeare, in conjunction with those writers, in fact wrote the original draughts of those plays, and that it was he who afterwards re-wrote and completed them; and against these assumptions, the whole mass of evidence to be presented herein must stand arrayed; for it would be idle to imagine that Francis Bacon ever wrote a play in conjunction with either of them.

On the supposition that these plays came from Gray's