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that there is nothing in which he is leſs accurate, than the computation of time. Of his negligence in this reſpect, As you Like It, The Merry Wives of Windſor, Meaſure for Meaſure, and Othello, furniſh remarkable inſtances.[1].
12. Comedy of Errors, 1596.
In a tract written br Thomas Decker, entitled Newes from Hell brought by the Devil’s Carrier, 1606, there ſeems to be an alluſion to this comedy:
“ his ignorance (ariſing from his blindneſs) is the only cauſe of this Comedie of Errors.”
This play was neither entered on the Stationers’ books, nor printed, till l623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598; and exhibits internal proofs of having been an early production. It could not, however, have been written before 1596; for the tranſlation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, from which the plot was taken, was not publiſhed till 1595.
13. Hamlet, 1596.
The tragedy of Hamlet was not regiſtered in the books of the Stationers’ company till the 26th of July 1602, nor printed till 1604. This circumſtance, and indeed the general air of the play itſelf, which has not, it muſt he owned, the appearance of an early composition, might induce us to claſs it five or ſix years later than 1596, were we not overpowered by the proof adduced by Dr. Farmer, and by other circumſtances, from which it appears to have been acted in, or before, that year[2]. The piece, however, which was then exhibited, was probablv but a rude ſketch of that which we now poſſeſs; for from the title page of the firſt edition, in 1604, we learn, that (like Romeo and Juliet, and the
- ↑ See Merry Wives of Windſor, Act II. Sc. laſt.—Meaſ. for Meaſ. Act I. Sc. iii. and iv.—As you Like It, Act IV. Sc. i. and iii.—Othello, Act III. Sc. iii. “I ſlept the next night well,” &c.
- ↑ Dr. Lodge publiſhed, in the year 1596, a pamphlet called Wit’s Miſerie, or the World’s Madneſs, diſcovering the incarnate Devils of the age, quarto. One of thſe devils is Hate-virtue, or ſorrow for another man’s ſucceſſe, who, ſays the doctor, is a foule lubber, and looks as pale as the wizard of the ghost, who cried ſo miſerably at the theatre, Hamlet revenge.” Farmer’s Essay on the Learning of Shakſpeare.
