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The further discussion of this subject was reserved for the next meeting of the Society, as was also the reading of Mr. H.’s paper on the subsequent quarrel between the two joint authors of Hamlet, which led to Jonson’s caricature of Shakespeare (then retired from London society to a country life of solitude) under the name of Morose, and to Shakespeare’s retort on Jonson, who was no less evidently attacked under the designation of Ariel. The allusions to the subject of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the courtship and marriage of Epicœne by Morose were as obvious as the allusions in the part of Ariel to the repeated incarceration of Jonson, first on a criminal and secondly on a political charge, and to his probable release in the former case (during the reign of Elizabeth=Sycorax) at the intercession of Shakespeare, who was allowed on all hands to have represented himself in the character of Prospero (“it was mine art that let thee out”). Mr. I. would afterwards read a paper on the evidence for Shakespeare’s whole or part authorship of a dozen or so of the least known plays of his time, which, besides having various words and phrases in common with his acknowledged works, were obviously too bad to be attributed to any other known writer of the period. Eminent among these was the tragedy of Andromana, or the Merchant’s Wife, long since rejected from the list of Shirley’s works as unworthy of that poet’s hand. Unquestionably it was so; not less unworthy than A Larum for London of Marlowe’s. The consequent inference that it must needs be the work of the new Shakespeare’s was surely no less cogent in this than in the former case. The allusion occurring in it to a play bearing date just twenty-six years after the death of Shakespeare, and written by a poet then unborn, was a strong point in favour of his theory. (This argument was received with general marks of adhesion.) What, he would ask, could be more natural than that Shirley when engaged on the revision and arrangement for the stage of this posthumous work of the new Shakespeare’s (a fact which could require no further proof than he had already adduced), should have inserted this reference in order to disguise the name of its real author, and protect it from the disfavour of an audience with whom that name was notoriously out of fashion? This reasoning, conclusive in itself, became even more irresistible—or would become so, if that were anything less than an absolute impossibility—on comparison of parallel passages,

Though kings still hug suspicion in their bosoms,

They hate the causer. (Andromana, Act i. Sc. 3.)

Compare this with the avowal put by Shakespeare into the mouth of a king.

Though I did wish him dead

I hate the murderer. (King Richard II., Act v. Sc. 6.)

Again in the same scene:

For then her husband comes home from the Rialto.

Compare this with various passages (too familiar to quote) in the Merchant of Venice. The transference of the Rialto to Iberia was of a piece with the discovery of a sea-coast in Bohemia. In the same scene Andromana says to her lover, finding him reluctant to take his leave, almost in the very words of Romeo to Juliet,

Then let us stand and outface danger,

Since you will have it so.

It was obvious that only the author of the one passage could have thought it necessary to disguise his plagiarism in the other by an inversion of sexes between the two speakers. In the same scene were three other indisputable instances of repetition.

Mariners might with far greater ease

Hear whole shoals of sirens singing.

Compare Comedy of Errors, Act iii. Scene 2.

Sing, siren, for thyself.

In this case identity of sex was as palpable an evidence for identity of authorship as diversity of sex had afforded in the preceding instance.

Again:

Have oaths no more validity with princes?

In Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Scene 3, the very same words were coupled in the very same order:

More validity,

More honourable state, more courtship lies