Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/325

 10*8. III. AFBH, 8, 1908.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

265

a Dissenting place of worship. Even school- masters had to be licensed for their duties by the ordinary, for, as the archdeacon pithily puts it, " it was never intended they should poison posterity with their errors."

It is interesting to read, as a little sidelight on prevailing habits, that one of the reasons for advocating the plurality of livings was to enable the clergy to dispense hospitality. If such were for the purpose of supplying the sick and needy, no more beneficial object can be imagined ; but I very much fear a more personal and less kindly form of hospitality was intended.

There is, however, one injunction which is very much to be commended. In levying rates for the service of the church the land is only to be taxed for the repair and upkeep of the structure. All the movable chattels are to be maintained and replaced by levying a rate on the personal estates of the parishioners. This is a shadow, thrown from a long distance, that we may well hope to be the precursor of an alteration in our system of rating, which hampers the land, already overburdened, and lets pass all the vast accumulation of personal wealth to be enjoyed without toll by its fortunate pos- sessors. HOLCOMBE INGLEBY.

Sedgeford Hall, King's Lynn.

' LOVE'S LABOUR 's LOST ' : ITS DATE. ME. D. R. CLARK, ante, p. 170, quotes some remarks on p. 38 of my little book. He, however, unintentionally does this not quite fairty. He cites them as if my words were put as a verbatim quotation. This they were not. The whole work was professedly the mere "outline" of a "story." The passage MR. CLARK cites strongly shows itself that this was meant for a mere statement only, since two words in it, intended for a verbatim quotation, are expressly so marked, as can readily be seen by any one.

But I, nevertheless, will at once grasp the whole substance of MR. CLARK'S criticism. My passage, as a whole, points out that the date of ' Love's Labour 's Lost ' is mistaken by those who think it to have been first put upon the stage in or about 1598. That it is of a much earlier date is shown by the statement that an earlier version of the play had been " enlarged " by " Shakespeare," who, MR. CLARK would have said, had "augmented " it then. I have confessedly a slow and stupid mind. But will MR. CLARK kindly point out what difference in the sub- stance of my statement is conveyed, in his opinion, by the difference between the word

" enlarged," which I use as one of description, and the word "augmented," unquestionably employed on the title - page of the Folio of 1598 1 I always like to be instructed; but my dense mind fails to grasp the substance of the correction suggested here.

Two other points are conveyed by the passage which MR. CLARK cites, in addition to the above. First, differing from my friends the Baconians, I say that it is, for the most part, utterly impossible to ascribe a precise date as that of the exact origin of any play. Next, I urge Marlow's sudden death, and the laboured and elaborate bringing in of the player of Stratford as his "mask" for Bacon (the "man behind the mask"), as betrayed by the play of 'The Taming of the Shrew.' That was the first play which followed the poems of 'Venus and Adonis' and of 'Lucrece.' I also urge the truth of my hypothesis as shown even more plainly by the two different spellings of the pseudo-word adopted. About this time it was (in 1598) for comedies, such as 'Love's Labour's Lost,' spelt as "Shakespere," and for tragedies spelt as "Shake-speare"; which latter form was again in 1599 put to a tragedy ('Henry IV.'). But in 1600 the form of name just cited was placed on a comedy as one word. In later years the use of the same forms of word became employed in a way which my little "outline" tries to explain.

If MR. CLARK will read my humble work a little more studiously, and he and his friends (who are at present Stratford believers) will meet my friends and myself (a convinced Baconian one), such consideration as I have been able to give to the "evidence" leads me to believe that both the Stratfordians and the Baconians would the better appreciate the arguments which each can adduce for the cause he has espoused.

G. PlTT-LEAVIS.

DEAN SWIFT AND THE IRISH STAGE. In his 'Closing Years of Dean Swift,' at p. 131, Sir William Wilde gives some account of a coarse unprinted poem written by the great satirist, circa 1692, under title ' Mrs. Butler the Player in Ireland to Mrs. Bracegirdle Her Correspondent in London.' Two con- temporary copies of this exist : one in an almanac formerly belonging to Swift, and the other in the first volume of a compilation called 'The Whimsical Medley' (otherwise known as 'The Lanesborough MSS.'), now in Trinity College, Dublin. Wilde's account of this collection of chroniques scandal euse& is full of blunders. He begins by calling it 'The Whimsical Miscellany,' and gives a.