opportunities of Inquiry from Sir W. Davenant,
that he was no _extraordinary Actor_; and that the top of his performance
was the Ghost in his own _Hamlet_. Yet this _Chef d'Oeuvre_ did not
please: I will give you an original stroke at it. Dr. Lodge, who was for
ever pestering the town with Pamphlets, published in the year 1596 _Wits
miserie, and the Worlds madnesse, discovering the Devils incarnat of this
Age._ 4to. One of these Devils is _Hate-virtue_, or _Sorrow for another
mans good successe_, who, says the Doctor, is "_a foule lubber_, and looks
as pale as the Visard of the Ghost, which cried so miserably at the
Theatre, like an Oister-wife, _Hamlet revenge_." Thus you see Mr. Holt's
supposed _proof_, in the Appendix to the late Edition, that _Hamlet_ was
written after 1597, or perhaps 1602, will by no means hold good; whatever
might be the case of the particular passage on which it is founded.

Nor does it appear that Shakespeare did begin _early_ to make _Essays in
Dramatique Poetry_: the _Arraignment of Paris_, 1584, which hath so often
been ascribed to him on the credit of Kirkman and Winstanley, was written
by George Peele; and Shakespeare is not met with, even as an Assistant,
'till at least seven years afterward.--Nash, in his Epistle to the
Gentlemen Students of both Universities, prefixed to Greene's _Arcadia_,
4to. _black Letter_, recommends his Friend, Peele, "as the chiefe
supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of Poetrie, and _primus
Verborum Artifex_: whose first increase, the _Arraignment of Paris_, might
plead to their opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit, and manifold
varietie of inuention."

In the next place, unfortunately, there is neither such a Character as a
Constable in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_: nor was the _three hundred
pounds_ Legacy to a Sister, but a Daughter.

And to close the whole, it is not possible, according to Aubrey himself,
that Shakespeare could have been some _years a Schoolmaster in the
Country_: on which circumstance only the supposition of his learning is
professedly founded. He was not surely _very_ young, when he was employed
to _kill Calves_, and he commenced Player about _Eighteen_!--The truth is
that he left his Father, for a Wife, a year sooner; and had at least two
Children born at Stratford before he retired from thence to London. It is
therefore sufficiently clear that poor Anthony had too much reason for his
character of Aubrey: You will find it in