Page:Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians.djvu/13

 the son who administered Richard's estate, was in all likelihood the poet's father." In his article on in the Dictionary of National Biography Mr. Lee says: "The son Henry remained at Snitterfield all his life, and died a prosperous farmer in December, 1596. John, the younger son of Richard, was the poet's father." How a man could die "in embarrassed circumstances," and at the same time "a prosperous farmer," is left for Mr. Lee to explain.

Piratical publishers stole the plays and poems, and Mr. Lee says the author had no redress, although we are informed that "Shakespeare brought to practical affairs a singularly sane and sober temperament," and that he "stood rigorously by his rights in all his business relations." Does it not seem odd that such a gentleman as this, who could sue a friend for "2s. lent," should allow every one of the sixteen plays published in his lifetime to be printed without his sanction (although he had recourse against the pirates at "common law," as I shall presently show), and "that he made no audible protest when seven contemptible dramas in which he had no hand "were given to the world as his composition ? How does Mr. Lee explain the fact that this man, so versed in "the practical affairs of life," showed such utter indifference to all questions touching the publication of his plays (p. 396) that, after their production, they were looked upon by him as no more than waste paper?

Then it would be interesting to know how Mr. Lee reconciles these two statements:—"The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in the belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts of the theatre" (p. 48), ("and injurious to their rights," p. 208); and "Burbage created the title part in Shakespeare's tragedy [Hamlet] and its success on the stage led to its publication immediately afterwards" (p. 222).