enjoyed a sermon."[1] Is this free from "conjecture?" It is not unlike the statement of Judge Willis: " Shakespeare was, I am inclined to think, present frequently at St. Clement Danes Church." Only a change of venue! And what scrap of authority has Mr. Lee for maintaining—"The copy for the press, the manuscripts of the plays, the publishers obtained from the managers of the acting company with whom Shakespeare was long connected as both author and actor"? If Mr. Lee's authorities for this detail are Heminge and Condell, he should turn to the best edition of Shakespeare's plays ever produced—the Cambridge edition — when he will find that the statements of the professed editors of the First Folio, which recently Mr. Lee has taken under his wing, are by their own confession entirely contradictory and untrustworthy. "In short, the authority of the Folio is uniformly rejected, … the assertions of its editors [are] discredited," by the editor, Mr. Aldis Wright.
I am sorry I am precluded by the length of this letter to take up other points, e.g., Mr. Lee's account of the First Folio, but this has been very ably done by Mr. Walter W. Greg, who calls attention to Mr. Lee's numerous bibliographical errors in an article in The Library, July, 1903, where it is stated: "In these cases even the expert is apt to be misled by Mr. Lee's cheerful confidence of assertion. He is equally dangerous when committing himself unreservedly to statements which require quali-
- ↑ Stratford-on-Avon (1885), p. 72. This revelation is worth contrasting with the statement (Life, p. 177):—"The creator of Falstaff could have been no stranger to tavern life, and he doubtless took part with zest in the convivialities of men of letters." Shakspere seems to have been equally at home in "church" or "tavern," not forgetting court and palace. But if Shakspere attended church, it is more than his father did, as Mr. Lee tells us (p. 186) he was "'presented' as a recusant for absenting himself from church." Not much encouragement this for young William!
