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ſome of his contemporaries had not been long dead[1], render it highly improbable that this play ſhould have been the compoſition of Shakſpeare.
2. Love’s Labour Lost, 1591.
Shakſpeare’s natural diſpoſition leading him, as Dr. Johnſon has obſerved, to comedy, it is highly probable that his firſt dramatick production was of the comick kind: and of his comedies none appears to me to bear ſtronger marks of a firſt eſſay than Love’s Labour Loſt.. The frequent rhymes with which it abounds[2], of which, in his early perform-
- ↑ John Lowin, and Joſeph Taylor, two of the actors in Shakſpeare’s plays, were alive a few years before the Reſtoration of K. Charles II; and Sir William D'Avenant, who had himſelf written for the ſtage in 1629, (thirteen years after the death of our author) did not die till April 1668. Ravenſcroft’s alteration of Titus Andronicus was publiſhed in 1687.
- ↑ As this circumſtance is more than once mentioned, in the courſe of theſe obſervations, it may not be improper to add a few words on the ſubject of our author’s metre. A mixture of rhymes with blank verſe, in the ſame play, and ſometimes in the ſame ſcene, is found in almoſt all his pieces, and is not peculiar to Shakſpeare, being alſo found in the works of Jonſon, and almoſt all our ancient dramatick writers. It is not, therefore, merely the uſe of rhymes, mingled with blank verſe, but their frequency, that is here urged, as a circumſtance which ſeems to characterize and diſtinguiſh our poet’s earlieſt performances. In the whole number of pieces which were written antecedent to the year 1600, and which, for the ſake of perſpicuity, have been called his early compoſitions, more rhyming couplets are found, than in all the plays compoſed ſubſequently to that year; which have been named his late productions. Whether in proceſs of time, Shakſpeare grew weary of the bondage of rhyme, or whether he became convinced of its impropriety in a dramatick dialogue, his neglect of rhyming (for he never wholly diſuſed it) ſeems to have been gradual. As, therefore, moſt of his early productions are characterized by the multitude of ſimilar terminations which they exhibit, whenever, of two early pieces it is doubtful which preceded the other, I am diſpoſed to believe, (other proofs being wanting) that play in which the greater number of rhymes is found, to have been firſt compoſed. This, however, muſt be acknowledged to
touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters.” Ravenſcroft’s preface to Titus Andronicus, altered by him.
