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SECTION II.
THE PERSONAL CONNECTIONS OF SHAKESPEARE WITH OTHER POETS

One of the objects of the present treatise is to bring into clearer light the relations of Shakespeare with contemporary dramatists. Strangely enough this has scarcely been attempted in earlier biographies. His dealings in malt have been carefully chronicled: his connections with poets have been slurred over. It will be useful, therefore, to gather up the scattered notices of personal contact between him and his fellows in dramatic production. Mere allusions to his works, whether complimentary or otherwise, will not come under this category. Such will be found collected, and well collected, in Dr. Ingleby's Century of Praise; but they consist almost entirely of slight references to his published works, and have no bearing of importance on his career. Nor, indeed, have we any extended material of any kind to aid us in this investigation; one source of information, which is abundant for most of his contemporaries, being in his case entirely absent. Neither as addressed to him by others, nor by him to others, do any commendatory verses exist in connection with any of his or other men's works published in his lifetime – a notable fact, in whatever way it may be explained. Nor can he be traced in any personal contact beyond a very limited circle, although the fanciful might-have-beens so largely indulged in by his biographers might at first lead us to an opposite conclusion.

With John Lyly, the founder of English Comedy, he seems to have had no personal intercourse, although the reproduction by him of many of Lyly's puns and conceits, and some few of his dramatic situations, distinctly prove that he had carefully examined his published plays. Nor does the solitary reference to Shakespeare in Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, however it may display strong personal feeling, lead us to suppose that there had been any personal relations between these dramatists; in fact, the very wording of the passage properly understood distinctly disproves the existence of such relations. Of all the dramatists who had preceded him on the London stage the only two with whom he can be even conjecturally brought in personal contact before the opening of the Rose Theatre in 1592 are Robert Wilson and George Peele. It is unlikely that he should have begun his career as a novice and journeyman independent of tutor or coadjutor, and a minute examination of the careers of these two dramatists leads me to infer that they were connected with the same company as Shakespeare in 1590-1. In any case, they were his immediate models in his early work in several respects. It is from Wilson that his liking for doggerel rhymes and alternately rhyming stanzas was derived: it is from Peele that his love tragedy of Romeo and Juliet– his only early tragedy – derived, in its earliest form, as acted in 1591, whatever in it was not Shakespeare's own. Wilson was probably his tutor or coadjutor in Comedy and Peele in Tragedy. But this is after all conjecture; on the other hand, it is certain that in 1592-3 a greater than Peele or Wilson was writing for the same company as Shakespeare, and necessarily in close connection with him. For Marlowe he certainly had a sincere regard: from his poem of Hero and Leander Shakespeare makes the only direct quotation to be found in his plays; on his historical plays Shakespeare, after his friend's decease, bestowed in addition, revision, and completion, a greater amount of minute work than on his own; and the earlier of his own histories were distinctly built on lines similar to those of Edward II. and Edward III. The relation of Shakespeare's Histories to Marlowe's is far more intimate than that of his Comedies or of Romeo to any predecessor's productions. I cannot find a trace of direct connection between Shakespeare and any other poet than these mentioned, during the life of Lord Strange. His connection with Lord Southampton seems to have been more intimate than any with his fellow-poets. In the Sonnets addressed to him there is mention of other pens who have dedicated poems to his lordship, and whom Shakespeare for poetical purposes professes to regard as dangerous rivals. The only persons known to have dedicated anything to Southampton are Nash and Markham, although George Peele had written a high eulogy of him in his Honour of the Garter in 1593. Markham's dedication is one of four prefixed to his poem on The Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenvile (S. R. 9th September 1595); (1.) to Charles Lord Montjoy (in prose); (2.) to Robert Earl of Sussex (Sonnet); (3.) to the Earl of Southampton (Sonnet); (4.) to Sir Edward Wingfield (Sonnet). I am not aware of any previous attempt to identify Markham with the rival alluded to in the Sonnets of Shakespeare, and yet there are many coincidences of language which would lead to this conclusion. Take Sonnet 78, for instance. "Thine eyes … have added feathers to the learned's wing and given grace a double majesty." In Markham we find in 1, "hath given wings to my youngling Muse;" and in 3, "whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen" (cf. in 1, "that thine eyes may lighten," &c.); and in 4, the double majesty of the grace, "vouchsafe to grace my work and me, Gracing the soul beloved of heaven and thee." I do not find in Markham the "affable familiar ghost" of Sonnet 86, but this and other allusions may have referred to his Thyrsis and Daphne (S. R. 23d April 1593, five days after the entry of Venus and Adonis) which is now unfortunately lost; and there is something like it in the Grenvile Tragedy, in which Markham calls on Grenvile's soul to "sit on his hand" while he writes, which the ghost apparently does until it is dismissed to its "rest" at the end of the poem. Markham was an exceedingly learned man and the "proud full sail of his great verse" would well apply to his stilted and conceited effusion. He does not in it allude to Southampton's beauty, though he may have done so in his Thyrsis, but he calls him "Bright lamp of virtue" with which compare Sonnet 79: "He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word from thy behaviour." On the whole I incline to regard Markham as the rival poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets. As to Nash, his supposed satirical allusions to Shakespeare, as set forth by the fertile fancy of Mr. Simpson, have no more real existence than the allusions discovered by other like imaginations in the writings of Spenser. His only notice of Shakespeare's writings is the well-known mention of the representation of Talbot on the stage, and that is highly complimentary. He may be included under the "every alien pen" of Sonnet 78, but he is not (as I once thought he was) the rival poet alluded to. It may be of interest in connection with this matter to note that in The Dumb Knight, in which Markham certainly wrote i. 2, ii. 1, iii. 4, and iv. 2, Venus and Adonis is satirised as a lascivious poem.

Of intercourse with other dramatists while a member of the Chamberlain's company, the first instance is that with Lodge and Drayton. That the connection with Drayton terminated in a misunderstanding is clear from the excision of the favourable notice of Shakespeare's Lucrece from his Matilda, and from Drayton's taking the chief part in writing Sir John Oldcastle, the object of which was to keep alive the ill-feeling produced by the unfortunate adoption of that name from the old play of Henry V. for the character afterwards called Sir John Falstaff. This connection with Drayton ended in 1597, that with Lodge in 1599. If I am right in my attribution of part authorship to Lodge in Henry VI. and The Taming of the Shrew in its original form, Shakespeare revised and altered his plays, but not till after Lodge's retirement from connection with the Chamberlain's company. Soon after this, in 1601, he founded his Hamlet on Kyd's, but with Kyd himself I have not been able to find that he was at any time personally connected. Nevertheless, as regards mere outward form, Kyd was the chief model for the great tragedies of Hamlet, Lear, &c. Of course, as regards all poetic essentials, his influence on Shakespeare cannot for a moment be compared to Marlowe's.

With Marston, Chapman, and Dekker, Shakespeare's relations were ephemeral, in connection with the great stage quarrel of 1599-1601, and in no respect personal, unless we suppose that he had a hand in hiring Dekker to oppose Jonson. My own belief is that he was away in Scotland when Satiromastix was produced, and that the division of the company left in London did this without his knowledge. With Jonson his relations were evidently personal and of very varied nature. He probably introduced him to the Chamberlain's company in 1598; he certainly acted in his play of Every Man in his Humour: he did not act in Every Man out of his Humour– and then Jonson joined the Chapel children, and entered on his three years' struggle with Marston, Dekker, &c. In 1601 Shakespeare satirised these children in Hamlet, and about the same time administered the "purge" to Jonson mentioned in The Return from Parnassus: at the end of the same year, he, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston were contributors to Chester's Love's Martyr. In 1603 Jonson, who had again joined the Chamberlain's men, wrote Sejanus in conjunction with some one (with Shakespeare in my opinion), and got into trouble for it. Shakespeare certainly acted in this play, and must at that time have been on good terms with Jonson. All the allusions to Shakespeare's Henry V., &c., in the Prologue at the revival of Every Man in his Humour in 1601 by the Chapel children, and the purge administered to Jonson, had been forgiven and forgotten on both sides. But in 1605 Jonson wrote Volpone, in which Shakespeare did not act, and which gave offence at Court: and this caused a new disagreement between him and the King's men (formerly the Chamberlain's). He left them, and with Chapman and Marston wrote Eastward Ho, in which Hamlet is ridiculed, and for allusions to Scotland in which, similar to those in Volpone, the authors were imprisoned. The King's men retaliated with the additions to Mucedorus, of which more elsewhere, and Jonson did not join them again for years. He wrote for the Chapel children in 1609, and not till 1610, at the end of the year, when Shakespeare's dramatic career was just expiring, did he produce The Alchemist for them at the Globe. It is to be hoped that these two great dramatists were not at open enmity during the later part of Shakespeare's life; but all record of any real friendship between them ends in 1603, and little value is to be attributed either to the vague traditions of Jonson's visiting him at Stratford, or to the abundant praise lavished on him by Jonson in commendatory verses after his death. Much more important for ascertaining the real relations existing between them are the allusions to The Tempest and Winter's Tale so abundantly scattered through all Jonson's plays from 1609 to 1616, while Shakespeare was yet alive.

Of other dramatists who were connected with Shakespeare in King James's time I know only of Tourneur and Wilkins – the former simply as an author writing for Shakespeare's company, the latter as the playwright who wrote Pericles in its original form: the history of the production of this play has already been given.

As to Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, &c., who after 1610 wrote for the King's men, and the numerous contemporaries who wrote for other companies, no trace of any intercourse with Shakespeare, personal or otherwise, remains to us, though abundant guesses and hypotheses utterly foundationless³ will be found in the voluminous Shakespearian literature already existing. The truth appears to be that Shakespeare at no time sought for a large circle of acquaintance, and that his position as almost sole provider of plays for his company relieved him of that miscellaneous comradeship which was the bane of Dekker, Heywood, and many other gifted writers of the time. Of any one of these a far larger personal connection can be proved than I believe ever existed in the case of Shakespeare: and to this we no doubt are greatly indebted for the depth and roundness of those great plays, which could never have been conceived without much solitude, much suffering, and much concentration.

SECTION III.
ANNALS ON WHICH THE PRECEDING SECTIONS ARE FOUNDED

Until April 1564

On 26th April 1564 was baptized William, son of John Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon and Mary Arden, at that time an only child, two girls born previously having died in their infancy. John Shakespeare was son of Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield, where his brother Henry also resided: he was a glover, who speculated in wool, corn, &c. He lived in Henley Street, Stratford, as early as 29th April 1552, having left his father about 1550, and in October 1556 purchased two small estates in that town – one that is now shown as the birthplace, the other in Greenhill Street. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, whose father, Robert, a yeoman, had contracted a second marriage with Agnes Hill, widow, and in the settlement then made had reserved to Mary the reversion to estates at Wilmecote and Snitterfield. Some part of this land was occupied by Richard Shakespeare's grandfather. Mary Arden also received under her father's will, dated 24th November 1556, a considerable sum in money, and the fee-simple of Asbies at Wilmecote, a house with sixty acres of land. In 1557 John was a burgess, a member of the corporation, and by choice of the Court Leet ale-taster to the borough, sworn to look to the assize and goodness of bread, ale, or beer. In September 1558 he was one of the four constables under the rules of the Court Leet. On 6th October 1559 he was again chosen constable and one of the four affeerors for determining fines under the borough bye-laws. In 1561 he was again chosen affeeror, and one of the borough chamberlains, which office he held till the end of 1563.

1564

In July the plague broke out in Stratford, and continued to December. There died 238 in that half-year, no Shakespeares among them. John Shakespeare had had an early lesson in sanitation by way of a fine of 12d. in April 1552 for having a muck heap in front of his door in Henley Street, within a stone's-throw of one of the public stores of filth. He now contributed fairly to relieve the poor and plague-stricken; about 12d. per month.

1565

In March John Shakespeare with his former colleague made up the chamberlain's accounts from September 1563 to 1564. Neither of them could sign their names.

1566

In February he again made up these accounts, and was paid £3, 2s. 7d. "for a rest of old debt" by the corporation. On 13th October his son Gilbert was baptized.

1567

In September, Ralph Perrot, brewer, John Shakespeare, and Ralph Cawdrey, butcher, were nominated for the office of High Bailiff or Mayor. Cawdrey was elected. For the first time the name appears as "Mr." John Shakespeare.

1568

On 4th September "Mr. John Shakysper" was chosen High Bailiff. He was succeeded the next year by Robert Salisbury.

1569

On 15th April John Shakespeare's third daughter (named Joan after her deceased elder sister) was baptized.

1571

On 28th September John Shakespeare's fourth daughter Anne was baptized. William was now seven, then the usual age for the commencement of grammar-school education, the use of the Absey book and horn-book having been acquired at home. Lily's Accidence and the Sententiæ Pueriles were the usual text-books for beginners in Latin. Shakespeare had some knowledge of Latin, and a little French; all beyond this is very problematical.

1573

On 11th March, Richard, John Shakespeare's third son, was baptized.

1575

John Shakespeare bought two houses in Stratford.

1578

In January John Shakespeare paid only the amount of borough taxes paid by other aldermen. William was then fourteen, the usual age for commencing apprenticeship. There is a tradition given by Aubrey that he was apprenticed to a butcher. I believe this to be a myth, originating in the epithet "kill-cow," often applied to tragic actors. Some writers still think that the tradition may be relied on. Another story traced to the parish clerk of 1693 is that he followed his father's profession. May be so; may not be.

1579

In Easter Term Asbies was mortgaged to Edmund Lambert for £40, to revert if repayment be made before Michaelmas 1580.

On 4th July Anne Shakespeare was buried; in the chamberlain's accounts occurs this item: "For the bell and pall for Mr. Shaxper's daughter, 8d.," the highest fee in the list.

On 15th October John Shakespeare and his wife convey their interest in Snitterfield to Robert Webbe. Agnes Arden's will is dated in this year.

1580

On 3d May, Edmund, son of John Shakespeare, was baptized.

On or before 29th September, the money in discharge of the Asbies mortgage was tendered and refused unless other moneys due were also paid.

1581

On 19th January the goods of Agnes Arden, deceased, were appraised.

On 1st September Richard Hathaway of Shottery made his will.

1582

On 28th November the marriage bond between William Shagspere and Anne Hathway was given, under condition that neither party had been precontracted to another person, and that the said William Shagspere should not proceed to solemnization with the said Anne Hathway without consent of her friends. They were to be married with one asking of the banns. The bondsmen were Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, – the seal is R.H., which may be Richard Hathaway's.

1583

On May 26th Susanna their daughter was baptized. It is assumed that a precontract existed between the parents which, according to the custom of the time, "was not legally recognised, but it invalidated a subsequent union of either of the parties with any one else" (Halliwell, Outlines, p. 45). The reader must form his own opinion. Taking into consideration the low morality of the time in such matters, the fact that Anne Hathaway was twenty-six, and Shakespeare eighteen in 1582, the practice still not unknown in rural districts of cohabitation under conditional promise of marriage, should the probable birth of a child make it necessary or prudent, the fact that from 1587 to 1597 we have no evidence that Shakespeare even saw his wife, and the palpable indications in the Sonnets that during this interval he was intriguing with another woman – for my own part I cannot help adopting De Quincey's view that he was entrapped into some such conditional promise by this lady and kept his promise honourably. Compare on the precontract question the plays of The Miseries of Enforced Marriage by Wilkins, which is founded on the contemporary history of the same Calverley who is the murderer in The Yorkshire Tragedy, with Shakespeare's own views in 1604 in Measure for Measure; his opinions in Twelfth Night, ii. 4 (early part, c. 1592), and Midsummer Night's Dream, i. 1, on wives that are older than their husbands: and, by way of showing that his plays do discover sometimes his personal feelings, Valentine's resignation of Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with the story involved in the Sonnets of Shakespeare's own transfer of his illicit love.

1585

February 2. Hamnet and Judith, Shakspeare's twin children, were baptized at Stratford-on-Avon. By April 26th he had certainly attained his majority, and his apprenticeship had probably expired.

1585-7

Three or four years after his union with Anne Hathaway, he had, says Rowe, "by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, amongst them, some, that made a frequent practice of deer stealing, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park, that belonged to Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near Stratford; for this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely, and in order to revenge that ill usage made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business and family in Warwickshire for some time, and shelter himself in London." Whether this tradition be well founded or no, we are compelled by subsequent events to place the date of Shakespeare's leaving Stratford in or about 1587; and whether there be any truth in the story traced to Davenant or not, that he held horses at the play-house door, while their owners were witnessing performances inside, it is certain that he was very soon connected with the stage, first as actor, then as dramatic writer. It becomes therefore of importance to ascertain if possible the specific company with which he originally joined.

In the latter part of 1585 there were two regular theatres existing in London, the Theater and the Curtain. It clearly appears from a report by Recorder Fleetwood preserved in the Lansdown MSS. that at Whitsuntide 1584 these were occupied by the Queen's players and those of Lord Arundel. It is not clear that a third company, that of Lord Hunsdon, acted at the Theater: although Mr. J. O. H. Phillipps (whom I most usually refer to under his former and better known name of Halliwell) assures us that it is so. It is true that the "owner of the Theater," whom he takes to be a temporary occupier of that building, but whom I regard as the ground landlord, Giles Alleyn, is called a servant of Lord Hunsdon's, and that a company of actors, called Lord Hunsdon's men, acted at Court 27th December 1582; but it does not follow that these men were occupiers of the Theater. In fact the only companies anyhow known to us as in London in 1585 are the two already mentioned. It is by no means likely à priori, nor would it agree with the passages hereafter to be referred to in the writings of Greene and Nash, that Shakespeare should immediately on his appearance in London obtain employment in either. But there was a third company not noticed in Collier's Annals of the Stage, into which he may easily have obtained admittance. When the Queen's company was formed in 8th March 1582-3, by the selection of twelve players from the companies of the two Dudleys, Earls of Leicester and Warwick, there must have been sufficient men left unemployed to form another company. These were probably still retained by the Earl of Leicester: for in a letter from Sir Philip Sidney, dated Utrecht, 24th March 1575-6, mention is made of "Will, the Earl of Leicester's jesting player," who had gone with the Earl to the Netherlands in December 1575. Thomas Heywood, in his Apology for Actors, 1612, tells us that "The King of Denmark, father to him that now reigneth, entertained into his service a company of English comedians, commended unto him by the honourable Earl of Leicester." This King of Denmark, Frederick II., died in 1588, and the exact date of the transaction is fixed by documents dated October 1586, in which we find that five of these actors had been transferred from the service of Frederick II. of Denmark to that of Christian I., Duke of Saxony. I am far from wishing to adopt the conjecture of Mr. Bruce that "jesting Will" was Shakespeare; but when among the names of these five actors – Thomas King, Thomas Stephen, George Bryan, Thomas Pope, Robert Persie – we find two, Pope and Bryan, that are identical with those of two actors in the very first list extant of the first company with which we can positively connect Shakespeare as an actor; when we find this same company acting at Stratford in 1587, at the very time that Shakespeare's disappearance from all known connection with that town for nine years commences; when we find among a list of plays that had been acted by the English in Germany Hester and Ahasuerus, Titus Andronicus [and Vespasian], both of which we shall trace to Shakespeare's company; when we also find a version of the Corambis Hamlet existing early in the same country – then I think we are justified in saying that there is great likelihood of this company having been the one in which Shakespeare found his first employment. If so, he accompanied it in all its fortunes, and never (as we shall see) forsook it for another.

1586

Meanwhile in London the plague had prevailed to such an extent that the theatres were shut up during 1586. It was not then during this year that Shakespeare held horses at stage-doors, or obtained employment in London theatres. But at the end of the year Lord Leicester's players returned to England, and in January 1586-87 are mentioned together with the Queen's, the Admiral's, and the Earl of Oxford's, in a letter to Walsingham from a spy of his, which is preserved in the Harleian MSS.

1587

This same company, the Earl of Leicester's men, visited Stratford-on-Avon in 1587. I have not been able to trace their previous presence there since 1576, although other companies paid frequent visits to this town. It is singular that in this year, the only one in which this company visited Stratford during the twelve years intervening between the birth and death of Hamnet Shakespeare, we find also the only record of the poet's presence in the place of his nativity. I give this in the words of Mr. Halliwell. "In 1578 his parents had borrowed the sum of £40 on the security of his mother's estate of Asbies, from their connexion, Edmund Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath. The loan remaining unpaid, and the mortgage dying in March 1587, his son and heir John was naturally desirous of having the matter settled. John Shakespeare being at that time in prison for debt, and obviously unable to furnish the money, it was arranged shortly afterwards that Lambert should, on cancelling the mortgage and paying also the sum of £20, receive from the Shakespeares an absolute title to the estate. His offer would perhaps not have been made had it not been ascertained that the eldest son William had a contingent interest, derived no doubt from a settlement, and that his assent was essential to the security of a conveyance. The proposed arrangement was not completed, but" the poet's sanction to it is recorded. I believe that immediately after this, in 1587, Shakespeare left Stratford either with or in order to join Lord Leicester's company.

1588

The Earl of Leicester died on 4th September 1588. Previously to this date the company of players acting under his patronage had played in London, probably at the Cross-Keys in Bishopsgate Street, and more frequently had travelled in the country. At the death of Dudley, they had of course to seek for a new patron, and no doubt found one in Ferdinando, Lord Strange, whose company (containing as we shall see some of the actors already known as Leicester's men) are first traceable in 1589. An earlier company bearing the title of Lord Strange's men, c. 1582, seem to have been merely acrobats or posture-mongers. But before entering on the history of this company under its new name, of which we know Shakespeare to have been a member, we must note some particulars regarding other dramatists, especially Marlowe, Greene, and Nash, which indirectly concern Shakespeare, and have hitherto been wrongly interpreted.

In 1587, when the Admiral's men re-opened after the plague, they produced, in what succession we need not here determine, Greene's Orlando and Alphonsus of Arragon, Peele's Battle of Alcazar, and Marlowe's Tamberlaine. Those plays are enumerated in Peele's Farewell, 1589, as —

 
"Mahomet's pow, and mighty Tamberlaine,
King Charlemagne, Tom Stukeley, and the rest."
 

"Mahomet's pow" is the head of Mahomet in Alphonsus; King Charlemagne was probably a character in the complete play of Orlando, of which only a mutilated copy has come down to us; Tom Stukeley is the hero of The Battle of Alcazar; and "the rest" most likely indicate Lodge's Marius and Sylla and Marlowe's Faustus. Greene and Peele wrote no more for this company, but in 1587 removed to the Queen's men, who had been travelling in the country. On 29th March 1588 Greene's Perimedes the Blacksmith was entered on the Stationers' Registers. In the introduction Greene attacks Marlowe and Lodge, who had remained with the Admiral's men, in a passage worth quoting: "I keep my old course still to palter up something in prose, using mine old posy still, omne tulit punctum; although lately two gentlemen poets made two madmen of Rome beat it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision, for that I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the fa-burden of Bow-bell, daring God out of heaven with that atheist Tamberlaine or blaspheming with the mad priest of the sun. But let me rather openly pocket up the ass at Diogenes' hand than wantonly set out such impious instances of intolerable poetry. Such mad and scoffing poets that have poetical spirits as bred of Merlin's race, if there be any in England that set the end of scholarism in an English blank verse, I think either it is the humour of a novice that tickles them with self-love, or too much frequenting the hot-house (to use the German proverb) hath sweat out all the greatest part of their wits." For the fuller understanding of this satire it may be noted that no "priest of the sun" is known in an early play except in The Looking-glass for London and England by Lodge and Greene, which is certainly of later date than Perimedes, yet may indicate Lodge's liking for that character; that Diogenes is the name assumed by Lodge in his Catharos, 1591, and that Marlowe's name was written Merlin as often as Marlowe. There can be no doubt as to the persons aimed at, nor of the effect of the satire, for both of them left off writing for the Admiral's men; and Marlowe during the next two years produced The Jew of Malta, which can be traced to the Queen's company, and together with Greene, Lodge, and Peele produced the plays of The Troublesome Reign of King John, and The First Part of York and Lancaster on which 2 Henry VI. is founded. The internal evidence for the authorship of these last-mentioned plays is very strong: they were, however, published anonymously.