PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

WHEN, four years ago, I prepared the first edition of this work, I had very little idea that its appearance was to be considered a personal affront to the memory of William Shakespeare, or that I was myself to be accused of heterodoxy-rank disloyaltythreatened with active adverse operation of the Stratford curse, etc. Being familiar with the difficulty (to which the more honest commentators confessed) of believing, from internal evidence, that but one single hand wrote the Plays and Poems, I supposed myself only doing Shakespeare students a service by grouping the external evidence thereto for them as well. To be sure, the book presented an extreme view of the circumstantial case against Shakespeare, but there seemed to be no other plan of making the discussion valuable. One can hardly be expected to argue heroically in support of a conceded presumption, and I certainly did not propose to myself a re-writing of the stereotype Essay on Shakespeare, which—like Major-General Stanley's military knowledge—accrued

at about the beginning of the present century. Neither did it seem to me that orthodox Shakespeareans (if by that term we mean those who believe William Shakespeare to have written every line, exit, entrance to have made every pen stroke in some thirty-seven plays; to have borrowed plots and incidents by the handful, but never by any chance to have used the words or speech of another) were exactly in a position to protest against an alleged claimant being fully, even emphatically, heard. They had certainly had ample time to present their side. Their day in court had lengthened out to over two centuries. To raise the hue and cry against hearing the other side seemed to me as if they proposed to confess that they had half heartedly, feebly, and imperfectly presented their own case, or felt incompetent to be intrusted with it further, or lacked confidence in the presumption in their favor.

Still less was I, nor am I yet, able to see anything emotional, anything over which gentlemen should lash themselves into a temper, in a passionless historical question as to something which happened three hundred years ago. So long as the capital question of a SHAKESPEARE CANON remains open, a discussion of the secondary question of the William Shakespeare authorship, whether considered as a whole (as is the method of the Baconian Society) or as to particular works, or parts of works (as conducted by

Mr. Fleay in his admirable "Shakespeare Manual,” and Mr. Rolfe, in his invaluable "Friendly Edition "), would seem to be proper. I, for one, am willing to confess that after many years of familiarity with it the question as to what William Shakespeare wrote with his own pen, and what became his (to use Mr. R. G. White's language)" after the theatrical fashion and under the theatrical conditions of his day," is, in my opinion, an inquiry as legitimate as it is fascinating-entitled to the fullest examination and treatment on purely historical grounds; and one which may not only be pursued to any extent without casting suspicion on the querist's loyalty or othodoxy, but whose discussion is always a contribution the moreand therefore always welcome-to the world's noble and ever magnifying Library of Shakespeareana.

In leaving the subject of the authorship as a whole (for I shall never touch it, except possibly in detail, again), there are one or two points to which I ask permission to call attention, viz.:

I. The very great elaboration the Baconian Theory has received-since my first edition-at the hands of Mrs. Henry Pott, Mr. Ignatius Donnelly, and others.

II. The wonderful demonstration which my friend Ex-Governor Davis has given in his "The Law in Shakespeare," of the argument from the Legalisms which is only touched upon in my own pages. The eloquent Governor has gone beyond all his predeces

sors in showing that the Plays are not only fluent in the use of our lawyers' and attorneys' jargon and technicalities; but that their very structure is legal and juridicial; that the HAMLET, at least, was once thoroughly revised by some one learned in the law of England, by supplying the legal explanation of the succession of Fortinbras, just as, in another play, a misconstruction of the Salic law was set right, etc. On re-reading the following pages I see only two points as to which I have something to add, viz:

In the first edition I was obliged to confess that the evidence that Sakespeare's verses were favorites at court, and he the friend of Southampton, did not impress me as of any particular value. But it has since occurred to me that, although obituary poetry is not of any legal value as evidence, yet Ben Jonson, writing for his contemporaries, would hardly have introduced such a line as

"That did so take Eliza and our James,"

if he had not been pretty sure of his facts; especially since Elizabeth's courtiers were still alive, and "our James" himself upon the throne. The Plays, then, did attract some attention at court, and the playwright may have been sent for, even though we have no evidence to that effect. And I was in error also in inferring that when young Shakespeare left Stratford for London, he was liable to arrest under the statute against "schollers, idlers, common