Nicholas Rowe.
2. _Some Latin without question_, etc. This passage, down to the reference
to the scene in _Henry V._, is omitted by Pope. _Love’s Labour’s Lost_,
iv. 2, 95; _Titus Andronicus_, iv. 2, 20; _Henry V._, iii. 4.
3. _Deer-stealing._ This tradition—which was first recorded in print by
Rowe—has often been doubted. See, however, Halliwell-Phillipps’s _Outlines
of the Life of Shakespeare_, 1886, ii., p. 71, and Mr. Sidney Lee’s _Life
of Shakespeare_, pp. 27, etc.
4. _the first Play he wrote._ Pope inserted here the following note: “The
highest date of any I can yet find is _Romeo and Juliet_ in 1597, when the
author was 33 years old, and _Richard the 2d_ and _3d_ in the next year,
viz. the 34th of his age.” The two last had been printed in 1597.
_Mr. Dryden seems to think that Pericles_, etc. This sentence was omitted
by Pope.
5. _the best conversations_, etc. Rowe here controverts the opinion
expressed by Dryden in his _Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age_:
“I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben
Johnson; and his genius lay not so much that way as to make an improvement
by it. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free,
as now it is” (_Essays_, ed. W. P. Ker, i., p. 175).
_A fair Vestal._ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, ii. 1, 158. In the original
Rowe adds to his quotations from Shakespeare the page references to his
own edition.
_The Merry Wives._ The tradition that the _Merry Wives_ was written at the
command of Elizabeth had been recorded already by Dennis in the preface to
his version of the play,—_The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John
Falstaffe_ (1702): “This Comedy was written at her command, and by her
direction, and she was so eager to see it acted, that she commanded it to
be finished in fourteen days; and was afterwards, as Tradition tells us,
very well pleas’d at the Representation.” Cf. Dennis’s _Defence of a
Regulated Stage_: “she not only commanded Shakespear to write the comedy
of the _Merry Wives_, and to write it in ten day’s time,” etc. (_Original
Letters_, 1721, i., p. 232).
_this part of Falstaff._ Rowe is here indebted apparently to the account
of John Fastolfe in Fuller’s _Worthies of England_ (1662). But neither in
it, nor in the similar passage on Oldcastle in the _Church History of
Britain_ (1655, Bk. IV., Cent, XV., p. 168), does Fuller say that the name
was altered at the command of the queen, on objection being made by
Oldcastle’s descendants. This may have been a tradition at Rowe’s time, as
there was then apparently no printed authority for it, but, as
Halliwell-Phillips showed in his _Character of Sir John Falstaff_, 1841,
it is confirmed by a manuscript of about 1625, preserved in the Bodleian.
Cf. also Halliwell-Phillips’s _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_, 1886,
ii., pp. 351, etc.; Richard James’s _Iter Lancastrense_ (Chetham Society,
1845, p. lxv.); and Ingleby’s _Shakespeare’s Centurie of Prayse_, 1879,
pp. 164-5.
_name of Oldcastle._ Pope added in a footnote, “_See the Epilogue to_
Henry 4th.”
6. _Venus and Adonis._ The portion of the sentence following this title
was omitted by Pope because it is inaccurate. _The Rape of Lucrece_ also
was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The error is alluded to in
Sewell’s preface to the seventh volume of Pope’s Shakespeare, 1725.
_Eunuchs._ Pope reads “Singers.”
The passage dealing with Spenser (p. 6, l. 34, to p. 7, l. 36) was omitted
by Pope. But it is interesting to know Dryden’s opinion, even though it is
probably erroneous. _Willy_ has not yet been identified.
8. _After this they were professed friends_, etc. This description of Ben
Jonson, down to the words “with infinite labour and study could but hardly
attain to,” was omitted by Pope, for reasons which appear in his Preface.
See pp. 54, 55.
_Ben was naturally proud and insolent_, etc. Rowe here paraphrases and
expands Dryden’s description in his _Discourse concerning Satire_ of
Jonson’s verses to the memory of Shakespeare,—“an insolent, sparing, and
invidious panegyric” (ed. W. P. Ker, ii., p. 18).
_In a conversation_, etc. The authority for this conversation is Dryden,
who had recorded it as early as 1668 in his _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_, at
the conclusion of the magnificent eulogy of Shakespeare. He had also
spoken of it to Charles Gildon, who, in his _Reflections on Mr. Rymer’s
Short View of Tragedy_ (1694), had given it with greater fulness of
detail. Each of the three accounts contains certain particulars lacking in
the other two, but they have unmistakably a common source. Dryden probably
told the story to Rowe, as he had already told it to Gildon. The chief
difficulty is the source, not of Rowe’s information, but of Dryden’s. As
Jonson was present at the discussion, it must have taken place by 1637. It
is such a discussion as prompted Suckling’s _Session of the Poets_ (1637),
wherein Hales and Falkland figure. It cannot be dated “before 1633” (as in
Ingleby’s _Centurie of Prayse_, pp. 198-9). The Lord Falkland mentioned in
Gildon’s account is undoubtedly the _second_ lord, who succeeded in 1633,
and died in 1643. Dryden may have got his information from Davenant.
8. Pope condensed the passage thus: “Mr. _Hales_, who had sat still for
some time, told ’em, That if _Shakespear_ had not read the Ancients, he
had likewise not stollen anything from ’em; and that if he would produce,”
etc.
9. _Johnson did indeed take a large liberty._ The concluding portion of
this paragraph from these words is omitted by Pope.
The _Menaechmi_ was translated by “W. W.,” probably William Warner. It was
licensed in June, 1594, and published in 1595, but, as the preface states,
it had been circulated in manuscript before it was printed. The _Comedy of
Errors_, which was acted by 1594, may have been founded on the _Historie
of Error_, which was given at Hampton Court in 1576-7, and probably also
at Windsor in 1582-3. See Farmer’s _Essay_, p. 200,
This passage dealing with Rymer is omitted by Pope. He retains of this
paragraph only the first two lines ( ... “Shakespear’s Works”) and the
last three (“so I will only take,” etc.).
Thomas Rymer, the editor of the _Fœdera_, published his _Short View of
Tragedy_ in 1693. The criticism of _Othello_ and _Julius Caesar_ contained
therein he had promised as early as 1678 in his _Tragedies of the Last
Age_. His “sample of Tragedy,” _Edgar or the British Monarch_, appeared in
1678.
11. _Falstaff’s Billet-Doux ... expressions of love in their way_, omitted
by Pope.
12. _The Merchant of Venice_ was turned into a comedy, with the title the
_Jew of Venice_, by George Granville, Pope’s “Granville the polite,”
afterwards Lord Lansdowne. It was acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in 1701.
The part of the Jew was performed by Dogget. Betterton played Bassanio.
See Genest’s _English Stage_, ii. 243, etc.
_is a little too much_ (line 13). Pope reads _is too much_.
_Difficile est_, etc. Horace, _Ars poetica_, 128.
_All the world_, etc. _As you like it_, ii. 7. 139.
13. _She never told her love_, etc. _Twelfth Night_, ii. 4. 113-118: line
116, “And with a green and yellow melancholy” is omitted.
Pope omits _a passage or two in_ (line 34).
_ornament to the Sermons_. Cf. Addison, _Spectator_, No. 61: “The greatest
authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of punns. The
Sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the Tragedies of Shakespear, are full of
them.”