remained upon the windows of the room in the still existing house where, on "the 15 Day of February, being Sonday, one Thomas Ardern, Gent., was heinously murdered in his own Parlour about seven o'clock in the Night by one Thomas Mosby, a Taylor of London." This event was of such note that Holinshed "thought good to sette it foorth somewhat at large," although, as he remarked, "it may seeme to bee but a private matter," and he devoted several pages of his Chronicle to a crime which led to two women -the wife and an accomplice-being burned alive, and to five men being hanged. Arden in the play is depicted as a weak, fond husband, who, in spite of the plainest indications of his wife's affection for Mosbie, nevertheless encourages his visits, and actually invites him to reside in his house during a temporary absence in London. Fruitless attempts are again and again made by those in the pay of the wife and Mosbie to compass Arden's death, both during his absence and on his return, until he is at last slain, his wife encouraging and taking part in the deed. The play is the best of the "Domestic Tragedies," but presents some obvious dramatic flaws. The whole treatment is essentially that of a chronicle, and not of a drama; there is sequence, but no evolution. The motive for the wife's desire to be rid of her husband, ample as it might be in real life, is nevertheless dramatically insufficient and unsuitable. True art indeed "holds the mirror up to nature," but as it can give at best but a partial presentment, the essential alone must be retained, and should be so presented as to satisfy us of its sufficiency. Weakness and avarice, especially as here developed, are no dramatic justification for murder. Holinshed also supplies a motive for the husband's conduct toward his wife, which the writer neglects, capable though it evidently is of powerful dramatic development. Arden's avarice is only incidentally introduced in the drama; in the Chronicle it is a mainspring of action: "Arden perceyved right wel their mutuall familiaritie to be much greater than theyr honestie, yet bycause he would not offende hir, and so lose the benefite which he hoped to gaine at some of hir friendes handes in bearing with her lewdnesse, which he might have lost if he should have fallen out with hir, he was contented to winke at hir filthie disorder." While these points indicate dramatic immaturity, the self-restrained style points rather to maturity in the writer. Also some scenes manifest considerable power, as in the quarrel between Arden and Mosbie; the night scene in which the consciencestricken servant, Michael, after failing to admit to the house his accomplices in the contemplated murder, nearly discloses his guilt; and that in which Mosbie wins over Arden's wife when she has become penitent. Such scenes have led to the suggestion that the Shakespeare of twenty-eight—his age when the play appeared—at least re-touched the play. But such suggestion is mere surmise. More valuable than disputed questions of authorship are the vivid little glimpses of the life of the day in town and country which the play affords. Three other plays-" Mucedorus," "Faire Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester," and "The Merry Devil of Edmonton"-have been remotely ascribed to Shakespeare for the slight reason that a bound volume belonging to Charles II. which contained these three was lettered "Shakespeare, Vol. I." This volume passed into the hands of David Garrick, and with his valuable collection of plays became the property of the British Museum. It has now been divided, and the plays bound separately. "Faire Em" was ascribed by Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, in his "Theatrum Poetarum," 1675, to Greene. "The Merry Devil of The three early quartos are all anonymous, and the author is unknown. Of "The Merry Devil" there were six anonymous quartos between 1608 and 1655, and an illustration of the quicksands of conjectural Edmonton." criticism may be found in the fact that it has been ascribed to T(homas) H(eywood) on the supposed evidence of an entry in the Stationers' Registers of April 5, 1608, where a book called the "Lyfe and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton . . . by T. B." is mentioned. This has been considered an obvious mistake for "T. H.," for lack of a dramatist with the proper initials; it has also been assigned to a real dramatist, Anthony Brewer, under the form of T(ony) B(rewer). The entry is perfectly correct, and does not refer to a play at all, but to a brief prose tract, which is signed with the name of the author, "Tho. Brewer," a miscellaneous writer of the time! A copy of the 1631 edition of this pamphlet is in the British Museum, and it was reprinted in 1819. The Huth Library contains an unique copy of the 1657 edition, the title-page of which bears the name "T. Brewer, Gent." "Muce dorus.' "Mucedorus" was a popular play, of which there were twelve editions in the seventy years from 1598 to 1668. The fourth edition of 1610 was "amplified with new additions," evidently by another hand, as may be partly judged by the peculiarity of alliteration which marks the earlier portion being absent from this later work. Some would assign these additions, especially Act IV. Sc. i., to Shakespeare; but the work has no claim to be his beyond that afforded by a bookbinder's lettering. It was deservedly a popular play on account of the "merie conceites of Mouse," a character whose acts are akin to those of a pantomime clown, and whose verbal errors might make him, if he could now speak for himself, claim as his descendants the Slipslops, Malaprops, and Gamps of later days. Francis Kirkman-an enterprising bookseller who tells us that he took pleasure to converse with those who were acquainted with the old dramatists, and whose zeal in collecting romances and plays led him to desire to republish "The Birth of Merlin." some of them-issued in 1662 a play called "The Birth of Merlin," which he ascribed to William Shakespeare and William Rowley. He, however, stated nothing concerning the evidence which led him. to place these names upon the title-page, nor of the edition from which he published it. The play was omitted from the folio edition issued two years later, and neither internal nor external evidence gives it the slightest claim to contain Shakespeare's work. "Edward 111." The list of the doubtful plays terminates with "The Raigne of King Edward the third, as it hath bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London. Printed for Cuthbert Burby, 1596." This date is one year before that of the earliest quarto of any known play by Shakespeare, although it is conjectured that the three parts of "Henry VI.," as well as "Richard III.,” "Richard II.," and King John," had been written by 1595. The second edition appeared in 1599, with the same title, but with no further indication either as to the author or as to where the play had been acted. In 1656, sixty years after its first publication, it was ascribed to Shakespeare in an unreliable "Catalogue" printed at the end of a tragi-comedy by T. Goffe; but no attempt was really made to connect the poet's name with the play until 1760, when Edward Capell republished it in his "Prolusions, or Select pieces of ancient Poetry." Capell reprinted the work as "a curiosity of which the greater part of the world has no knowledge," and frankly owned that "it cannot be said with candour that there is any external evidence at all" of Shakespeare's authorship. He felt, however, that "something of proof" did arise from resemblance of style, and argued that there was no other known writer of that period equal to such a play. "Edward III." opens at the Court of the king, where the assembled nobles listen to the declaration of that "hundred years' war" which, after being made famous by the victories of the Black Prince and Henry V., was to end in the defeat of England and the loss of her vast possessions in France. But though the "fleeting bark" be already under sail, and though it is recognised that "in great affairs 'tis naught to use delay," yet the struggle which is with seeming decision thus entered upon in the opening scene is at once put on one side. Not till Act III. is the French war resumed, when the battle of Crécy (1346) is the theme. Act IV. deals with the events at Poictiers (1356); while, with a total disregard of chronology, the brief Act V.—which consists of only one scene of 250 lines-is concerned with the fall of Calais in 1347. The ostensible reason for such a long break in the action of the play is to be sought in the fact that "There's a saying very old and true: "If that you will France win, --Henry V. I. i., 166. For Edward immediately finds that his "giddy neighbour" the Scot has come "pouring like the tide into a breach," and that David of Scotland has already crossed the Border and has besieged "the Castle of Roxborough, wherein enclosed the Countess Salisbury is like to perish.' And we abruptly quit the historical event with which the play opens for the world of Italian fiction when the dramatist transports the English king to Roxborough, where, after the Scots have been put to flight, he becomes the guest of the liberated countess. Two-fifths of the whole play-a thousand lines out of twenty-five hundred-are devoted to this episode, during which the main action, the French war, is wholly lost sight of, while the king becomes enamoured of the Countess and dallies in Scotland. An episode, it is true-even a lengthy one, as in the case of Fielding's great work—may at times be brought into artistic relation with the principal theme. But here it is not so, for the events thus described have no connection whatever with future action; they might be wholly omitted and the play at once reduced to four Acts, of which the first and the last would then each have but a single scene. The Countess of Salisbury, the finest character in the play, never reappears after Act II.; her very name is never again mentioned. The same is true of Edward's secretary, Ludowick, who figures prominently in Act II. Sc. ii., although it would have been both easy and natural to introduce him as an attendant upon the king in the French, as he had been in the Scotch, war. The events of this lengthy episode, indeed, are only twice glanced at in the later portions of the play; once where the French monarch, before his |