Bought from a London dealer in 1890, by William Nelson, of Paterson,
New Jersey.
[19] “New-York Times,” Sunday, December 15, 1895.
[20] Dunlap, p. 16.
[21] Dunlap gives the full cast of the “Merchant of Venice,” the
first play enacted by the Hallam Company in America, at Williamsburg,
September 5, 1752, as he received it from Lewis Hallam, Jr., by which
it appears that Mrs. Hallam, the manager’s wife, was the _Portia_,
that Miss Hallam represented _Jessica_, “her first appearance on any
stage,” and an actor named Malone played _Shylock_. The author of the
novel states that his wish was simply to depict some Virginia scenes
and personages ten years before the Revolution, or the Virginia of
1765, and trusts that his picture is at least truthful as far as it
goes, which it probably is, with the anachronism of the appearance,
in the year 1765, of Miss Hallam, a young girl of about eighteen, as
_Portia_, thirteen years after she had made her first appearance on the
stage in the same play as _Jessica_. But liberties of this kind are
pardonable in a novelist. They are taken by great authors. Scott, in
his novel of Kenilworth, the scene of which romance is laid in the year
1575, represents Lord Leicester, in passing through the court-rooms,
stopping to compliment Shakespeare on the success of his recent poem of
Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare being then eleven years of age. The poem
was printed in 1593, eighteen years after the event described by the
novelist, or when Shakespeare was twenty-nine years of age.
[22] 2 Dunlap, 24, 48: London ed.